Baritone tuninng Gcea

davegraham

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Hello,

About a month or more ago, I posted a thread on tuning your baritone ukulele to GDAE. Now, I'm posting a thread on the Gcea tuning - but not just any Gcea tuning. As you can probably tell by the capitalization, I'm talking about low G linear tuning. This tuning, however, is what I call a double octave tuning, or super-low G tuning. What you do is take the G string, and use an E string from a nylon guitar set which would tune up to be a whole octave lower than a regular low G string. As for the other strings, any baritone set that is made for ukulele tuning will suffice. The result is pretty neat. You have a baritone in uke tuning, but with a good bottom end sound. This works really well in a rhythm capacity, but with some practice (in order to compensate for the super low G string's octave drop) you can get into some more intricate work as well. Just another post for those who may be interested, nothing more, not trying to change the uke world here. Hope you like it.
 
I'm still trying to read and play music on the baritone, and I'd be totally lost if I changed tuning.
But I'd like to hear how it sounds. Do you have a recording?
 
I think I would know if I recorded something. If you're asking if anyone has ever used this tuning in a recording, then I don't know.
 
Yes, Glen Rose does use Gcea on his baritone, but is his G string 2 octaves lower? That's what I'm talking about. Playing with this tuning variation does require a bit of modification on some chords in order not to sound too dissonant, but it's been proving itself to be quite interesting to me.
 
Do you mean a G two octaves lower than re-entrant tuning? Or a single octave below linear tuning?

I call that an "octave ukulele" in the tradition of octave mandolins, tuned an octave lower than a standard mandolin.

You can do an octave uke (yes, G, C, E, A) either in linear tuning or re-entrant. Start with the highest tension classical guitar strings you can find...D'Addario has some, Savarez has some. Use the bottom four strings...three wound and an unwound.
 
Mr. Turner,
The tuning that I am talking about is where you take a low-E string from a classical guitar set, and place it in the fourth position on your baritone-it will tune comfortably and perfectly to G (a very low G. The other strings (cea) are tuned just like a standard ukulele, and this can be accomplished by using any baritone string set of choice that is made for GCEA tuning. It requires some restructuring with chord fingerings (for example, a C chord in this tuning is best played with one finger on the first string-third fret and another finger on the fourth string-fifth fret). A little bit of re-learning here, but the results are fun, and the bottom end that one gets here is very nice for anyone looking for a little more "muscle" in their sound.
 
Hi Dave,
Please post a sound sample or video, I'm sure everyone would love to hear what you've come up with.

Mr. Turner,
The tuning that I am talking about is where you take a low-E string from a classical guitar set, and place it in the fourth position on your baritone-it will tune comfortably and perfectly to G (a very low G. The other strings (cea) are tuned just like a standard ukulele, and this can be accomplished by using any baritone string set of choice that is made for GCEA tuning. It requires some restructuring with chord fingerings (for example, a C chord in this tuning is best played with one finger on the first string-third fret and another finger on the fourth string-fifth fret). A little bit of re-learning here, but the results are fun, and the bottom end that one gets here is very nice for anyone looking for a little more "muscle" in their sound.
 
Got it. So your low G is an octave and a fourth below the C. Very cool; I like the concept. That might work on a tenor scale, too. I'll try it. Might be slightly floppy, but an extra high tension classical low E could be the ticket. That's kind of the effect that the Brazilian 7 string and some jazz 7 string players get with that big low A as the bottom string...a full fifth below the low E. You can play real bass lines on the instrument while comping chords and playing melody. Makes me want to build a harp uke with 5 strings on the fretted portion!
 
Yeah, that harp idea does sound pretty neat. May be straying a little off the uke path into other instrumental territory, but who cares? I don't know if using the "super" low G on a tenor would work, but it's certainly worth trying out. That's one of the things that I like about baritones, their scale lengths make for some broad possibilities in the tunings department. I have to say, however, that I do prefer the gcea (or Gcea) tuning on one of the three other sizes-nothing against those who can make it work on a baritone, I just never cared for the sound much myself.
 
Mr. Turner,
The tuning that I am talking about is where you take a low-E string from a classical guitar set, and place it in the fourth position on your baritone-it will tune comfortably and perfectly to G (a very low G. The other strings (cea) are tuned just like a standard ukulele, and this can be accomplished by using any baritone string set of choice that is made for GCEA tuning. It requires some restructuring with chord fingerings (for example, a C chord in this tuning is best played with one finger on the first string-third fret and another finger on the fourth string-fifth fret). A little bit of re-learning here, but the results are fun, and the bottom end that one gets here is very nice for anyone looking for a little more "muscle" in their sound.

Rick built me what he calls an Octave Ukulele: it's essentially a baritone ukulele with linear GCEA tuning with each of the four strings an octave below tenor GCEA tuning, and the strings are the bottom four (E, A, D, and G) strings from a classical guitar nylon string set. To get the effect you suggest, I could leave the low G string (i.e., the low E string from a classical guitar string set) in place and simply replace the C, E, and A strings with baritone ukulele strings made for linear GCEA tuning in the same octave as a linear GCEA tenor ukulele. Sounds interesting. I'd love to hear a sound sample.
 
Mr. Turner,
I read from another post about you building an octave ukulele, where all of the strings are an octave lower than a regular uke. This sounds like a fuller version of my idea with just the G string "octavated". I had an idea: have you ever considered making an 8-string octave uke where the 2nd set of strings were tuned to regular uke tuning (GgCcEeAa)? All of the strings would be in octaves, and I think that would sound tremendous. What do you think?
 
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