Baritone Ukulele?

Down Up Dick

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I consider the baritone ukulele to be a small (concert? Soprano?) guitar at least somewhat similar to a tenor guitar, and that’s the way I play it. The baritone is “Chicago” tuned similar to a tenor guitar. It’s tuning is confusingly different than a ukulele, though, of course, easy to figger out if one tries. Yet, I notice that many UUers tune their baritone ukes to GCEA instead of just playing a tenor uke.

I like to play the baritone uke because of it’s Aquila strings and small, couch friendly size. It’s a nice change from a big banjo or tenor guitar.

Anyway, whadaya think?
 
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When I first got my baritone uke I had a hard time memorizing the chord “names”, shapes are similar just a different name. I think that is why people tune them GCEA instead of DGBE. I love the deep mellow sound of the baritone, very guitar like. So I would think in terms of a tenor tuned instrument for the chord “shapes”. A baritone G is formed like a tenor C, a D like a G, an A like a D. I then started in on six string guitar and now I think in guitar chords for a baritone and can mentally switch to uke chords for GCEA tuned ukuleles
 
I like baritones. I have a Harmony baritone tuned GCEA, and I built a tenor guitar for nylon strings and tuned it DGBE. I'm currently building a baritone for steel strings to be tuned DGBE. Just some different approaches to my musical family.
 
Just noticed you were posting as I was. I'm not that great of a player, but the different tunings cause me no grief. I play guitar a lot in church, and one of my favorite worship guitarists uses a capo a lot in songs he writes. I got used to capoing on 5 on some songs, so learning uke chord voicings has not been a problem.
 
I like baritones. I have a Harmony baritone tuned GCEA, and I built a tenor guitar for nylon strings and tuned it DGBE. I'm currently building a baritone for steel strings to be tuned DGBE. Just some different approaches to my musical family.

The steel string sounds like an interesting project.

I have an old Gianinni baritone with a 19” scale length that I have tuned to GCEA in the past. It is back to DGBE

To answer your question Dick it the baritone at GCEA become a super super tenor. The larger body and long scale length gives a bigger more resonant sound.
 
I have several 19" scale instruments in various tunings. At the moment, this includes DGBE, EbAbCF, FBbDG (this one is a 6-string guilele), and cFAD (reentrant, super tenor). As I've written before, I think of all of them as if they were GCEA (i.e. as transposing instruments) even though none of them are actually GCEA at this time.
 
Well, Jim. I have enough transposing with my 5 string banjos. I like to pick up an instrument, see what key the tune is in and whale away.

Now, if could just get Irish musicians to play medleys instead of playin’ the same darned tune over and over and over.

Anyway, I think the baritone ukulele is a different instrument from the sopranos, concerts and tenors. I enjoy playin’ it, and I don’t play the others much anymore.
 
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I play baritone for two reasons -- I love the sound of it, and because it has adequate spacing between frets for me. Smaller-sized ukuleles are hard for me to play cleanly because the frets are too close together, particularly as you get up the fingerboard. I have one baritone tuned DGBE, the usual way, and another tuned ADF#B. I come at it from a guitar background, as I've played guitar my whole life.
 
Yeah, I like the baritone a lot too. I’m surprised that you tune a baritone ADF#B. That’s where I have my best soprano tuned.

I tuned my old one to CGBD to play Plectrum tunes, and the low C will speak good enough for me.

I’m hoping to learn lots more from my new Baritone Tenor Guitar Group. I need lotsa help.



Strike the first line, second sentence. I goofed — sorry.
 
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Right, there's all kindsa tunings you can do on these. I have one of my baris in ADF#B because I play classical music on the baris, and I find that some pieces are easier to "fit" into one tuning or the other, depending on what key the piece of music is in. Some of the classical music "fits" better in a lower tuning, and some fits better in the higher tuning. So I have flexibility in which tuning I can use, for any given piece of music. Works for me!
 
What classical music do you play, John? I’ve been playing Bach’s Cello Suite on my Cello Banjo. It’s been a struggle though because of my poor memory. I like Bach a lot, but I have a classical fake book that I use too. I also play some classical pieces by ear. I usta play them on my flute or other instruments.

I usually stay with Baroque or Classical periods.
 
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I've learned a few so far, including "Gymnopedie #1" by Erik Satie, and "As When The Dove (Laments Her Love)" by Handel. I'm working on "The Girl With The Flaxen Hair" by Debussy. It's very challenging to take one of these pieces and adapt it to uke, but it sure is fun, and I feel it helps keep my aging brain working. Good mental exercise! Very impressive that you play the flute, too.
 
I’ve heard “Gymnopedie #1”.

I agree that working on challenging pieces is akin to solving difficult puzzles or figuring out why your hobby car won’t run correctly. Unfortunately, stuff gets more difficult to figger out as we age, but it is certainly good for us to keep trying.

What other kind of music do you play? I like folk music a lot, and good, rousing gospel music. I like Jazz too, but I don’t play it.
 
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Well, let's see. I play some jazz standards, and some popular movie/Broadway show tunes. I'm a big rhythm 'n blues fan, though I haven't tried to play that on ukulele yet. I also play bass, and sometimes do so in a big band that plays Basie, Ellington, etc. Thanks for asking.
 
Tenor guitar is tuned EADG with steel strings
 
I love playing baritone ukuleles, and my brain, after a long adjustment period, can now readily recall the different names for chord shapes in both tenor ukulele and baritone ukulele tuning. I can switch from one to the other with only occasional mess-ups.

Baritone ukulele led me to tenor guitars because I really like the sound of steel strings. I now own a few tenor guitars, but I also own two steel string (19 inch scale) baritone ukuleles, one built by Rick Turner and one built by Mike Pereira. I also have a nylon string baritone ukulele tuned GCEA one octave below tenor ukulele for an even deeper than baritone tuning voice, and I have been considering restringing one of my steel string baritones GCEA one octave below tenor ukulele to see if it retains the crispness of steel strings when tuned that low.
 
Keen to hear a result of your low octave GCEA experiment, i have been considering this for a tenor guitar as this would mean i could return my tenor ukulele to linear GCEA tuning from its current re-entrant dGBE tuning (d4 g3 b3 e4) and be consistent.

I suspect steel would sound better as i presume nylon is a bit muddy on a ukulele at that pitch.
 
I was findin’ that I couldn’t seem to find tenor guitar music that I wanted. But, much to my embarrassment, I suddenly realized, checked and found out that I can play baritone uke music on my TG, so now I have music to play.

An old dog CAN be taught new tricks; it just takes a bit longer.
 
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In the original tuning CGDA you can also play viola music, although violinists always hog the good parts
 
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