aarondminnick
Well-known member
I'm learning to play melodies on both uke (C tuning) and guitar and was musing over the challenges of playing melodies on baritone uke (or actually, any uke in G tuning). The main difficulty is that many popular songs/songbooks for general use (such as the Daily Uke books) have a range of somewhere below middle C, up to C or D in the staff.
That range works very well (perfectly, actually) for a low-G tenor, which is my main axe. They also work well on a guitar played an octave below written pitch (as is the convention)--you can play down to A on the 5th string, which covers many of the melodies that dip below the staff.
But these melodies don't work nearly as well on baritone uke, since the lowest note is D. You end up either shifting octaves or playing way up the neck since for practical purposes you are starting the range on the 2nd or 3rd string, and high D is on the 10th fret of the 1st string.
It occurred to me that adding a fifth (low A) string to a baritone uke would solve many of these problems. I know that's getting close to guitar/guitalele territory, and the short scale/body size of a bari are not optimal for low A, but I was wondering if anyone had considered building such a beast specifically for melody playing.
That range works very well (perfectly, actually) for a low-G tenor, which is my main axe. They also work well on a guitar played an octave below written pitch (as is the convention)--you can play down to A on the 5th string, which covers many of the melodies that dip below the staff.
But these melodies don't work nearly as well on baritone uke, since the lowest note is D. You end up either shifting octaves or playing way up the neck since for practical purposes you are starting the range on the 2nd or 3rd string, and high D is on the 10th fret of the 1st string.
It occurred to me that adding a fifth (low A) string to a baritone uke would solve many of these problems. I know that's getting close to guitar/guitalele territory, and the short scale/body size of a bari are not optimal for low A, but I was wondering if anyone had considered building such a beast specifically for melody playing.