Low G Madness

In a moment of madness I ripped the high G string off my Indonesian made Sono and Rosewood Tenor Uke and replaced it with the D (fourth) string off of an old classical guitar I have that never gets played because the a couple of the tuning pegs are stripped and broken.

It sounds great, I like it, really nice and low, trouble is, my old guitar chords work on it and most of my uke strumming stuff works but I have gotten so used to using that high G as part of my Uke fingerpicking and melody style that I am completely lost now with the low G in place.

I suppose I have to start learning some new stuff that is just for a low G set up Uke, it's all very confusing but I love a challenge and i like the sound. I also feel like I should have at least one low G uke kicking around just in case someone turns up who likes to play one.

Any suggestions as to how I begin to get my head around this mind warp.

Bill1 said:

Instead of learning finger picking patterns as boxes on the fretboard, see if you can do the extra work to get enough control of your fingers to be able to find the fifth or the third or the seventh note etc in a given chord, irrespective of which string it is on. Then learn the picking pattern as a sequence of notes like I V III I etc, not as a box, and pick it out whether you have high or low G. Read up on how chords can have different arrangements of the three or four notes to help back up your physical picking work (also know as inversions).

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Cheers Bill.

I have a VW Vanagon and a Ford 4 door long bed dually 7.3 diesel pickup. There are many similarities. There are many differences. Each starts with a turn of the key. When I want to pull the horse or hay trailer, I do not use the VW. To haul nice stuff when it rains, I don't use the Ford. It is exactly the same thing with a ukulele strung reentrant and another strung linear. It is a different vehicle. I really understand incorporating the middle G with the thumb rather than an other finger. When playing a G and an E at the same time, it is the logical way to do it. You need another ukulele as the easiest way to be able to do both kinds of playing.