Transposing Notes from guitar to Ukulele

trevorb

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Hi All,

I'm not even sure if that is the best way to put it coming from a non-musical back ground but it is the best I could come up with. This is what I am wondering: How do I find out the corresponding note on my Ukulele from a guitar. Say a song I am trying to learn is saying to pick a certain note in each chord before strumming.....

D:x00232 ....picking the second open string (from left to right)
C:x32033 ....picking the first 3 string (from left to right)
G:x20033 ....picking the 2

How does all of this correspond to a Ukulele??? If there is a website or program that would allow me to figure this out I would love to find out about it. There are so many more songs that have tab out there for guitar than for Ukulele.

Thanks for any help. And yes, I do capitalize Ukulele and not guitar.
 
If you have the chord already identified, you don't need to transpose, just use uke tab if you know the chords.

If you are looking to transpose the melody, all you need to do is find out what the tuning of rhe guitar strings are (sometimes they use different tunings like drop D) then figure out the plus or minus of the frets that you put on the uke stings.

I actually found it easier to put uke tab to music sheet standard notation; just because I athen knew exactly what notes were called for. WIth a 6 string, you may have 5 or 6 notes on a chord and you got to figure which notes to drop. (some are repeating )
 
It helps if you know a bit about notes and frets. The "bass line" you're picking on the guitar goes D-C-B (the actual notes, not the chords). That's a bit tricky on the ukulele as C is the lowest note. So, if you want the same "tune", you need to do it an octave higher, which would be 2225 0003 0232, but that puts your little line on the top of the chords, rather than the bottom. If you wanted it to be a bassline, you could change the key. If you want to know more about that, let me know.
 
It helps if you know a bit about notes and frets. The "bass line" you're picking on the guitar goes D-C-B (the actual notes, not the chords). That's a bit tricky on the ukulele as C is the lowest note. So, if you want the same "tune", you need to do it an octave higher, which would be 2225 0003 0232, but that puts your little line on the top of the chords, rather than the bottom. If you wanted it to be a bassline, you could change the key. If you want to know more about that, let me know.

YOur answer seems so much better than mine. But I never played guitar or bass before and I am having to transpose some guitar tabs to uke.
 
It's often a question of either wanting to keep the harmony/chords the same, or needing actual melodies and bass lines to stay. If you just need the harmony, it's almost always easy. So many chords which are a bit of a beast on guitar are really easy on ukulele. But given the very small range of the ukulele, it can be really tricky to accomodate melodic ideas.

I think the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra do a great job of arranging popular songs which manage to keep essential bits of melody. Not bass, as they actually have a bass player (who I believe also does all the arranging).

BTW, SuzukHammer, I'm a Music teacher. ;)
 
Just for the record... if you're playing the same note on the uke that you'd play on the guitar, you're not actually "transposing". Transposing means to put a song in a different key.

If you're taking something written for one instrument (or group of instruments) and redoing the arrangement to suit another instrument (or instruments), then the best word would probably be "transcribing".

Sometimes, when transcribing something for the uke, you also have to transpose in order to get it to "fit" the range of the uke.

JJ
 
Trevorb- I feel your pain! I am fairly new to playing uke (6mos) and am really attracted to songs that have beautiful guitar melodies that are fairly complex. I don't know enough about music and have minimal knowledge of the guitar to be able to figure it all out. I am very frustrated about this. I wonder if Aldrine could give us some UKE MINUTE solutions on how to work it all out. He'd probably just say that the easiest thing to do is to create your own arrangement like he would do rather than trying to pick through guitar music for a uke solution. Best of luck on your quest.
 
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