Don't you have a trouble to remember chords on your baritone?

Guitalele is a ukulele guitar hybrid. His tuning is ADGCEA, which has same higher four strings as ukulele of GCEA turning. Baritone is good instruments with deep sound and much sustain like guitar. But Baritone's standard tuning is GDBE, which is same as higher four strings of guitar. In terms of chord shape, ukulele and guitalele are same and baritone and guitar are same too. If you are ukulele player, guitalele may be a more familiar than baritone.

If you can play Amazing Grace or Old Folks at Home on ukulele, I think it is not big deal that you play them on the key of C on guitalele (See the figure below). But baritone has a problem of F chord same as guitar. More over we can remember guitalele chords much easier than baritone chords, because they are similar.

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I have a guitalele. I enjoy guitalele's ADGCEA tuning with my ukulele's GCEA tuning.

Sometimes, when playing my baritone, I get confused mid-song and go for a C-tuning chord shape by mistake. But it happens less and less as I continue to practice with the instrument.

Initially, I would just play songs using exactly the same shapes that I would use on my tenor uke and just accept the fact that I was in a different key. I think that maybe it only really becomes an issue when you really want to play a song in the original key.

When I was mostly playing tenor I would often transcribe songs into the key of C to make life a bit easier for myself. And now on my bari I transcribe them into G instead

To expand a little bit - you can use the same shapes so it's not as if you have to retrain muscle memory. If you had to do that then the transition between bari and soprano/concert/tenor would be much harder imho. What changes is the 'labelling' of the shapes. What you need to develop is a little dial in your brain that switches back and forth between GCEA and DGBE. And just remember to have it set to the right tuning before you start playing. It's definitely tricky to start with but it gets easier.

jollyboy said:

When I was mostly playing tenor I would often transcribe songs into the key of C to make life a bit easier for myself. And now on my bari I transcribe them into G instead

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Yes, I do same thing but I can not sing Amazing Grace on G.

jollyboy said:

To expand a little bit - you can use the same shapes so it's not as if you have to retrain muscle memory. If you had to do that then the transition between bari and soprano/concert/tenor would be much harder imho. What changes is the 'labelling' of the shapes. What you need to develop is a little dial in your brain that switches back and forth between GCEA and DGBE. And just remember to have it set to the right tuning before you start playing. It's definitely tricky to start with but it gets easier.

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That is true and most people get used to it.

Hi, jellyboy!

I've learn House of Rising Sun by you. We play it key of Am and use Am C D F Am E7 Am E7 and repeat them.

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I can easily switch between ukulele and guitalele because their shapes are same. If I take key of Em on baritone, the chord shapes are same as ukulele but I can not sing it on Em.

More over, baritone chords might be even difficult than guitalele.
Guitalele has 6 strings, baritone has 4 strings. The difference is two strings. There are 5 chords up there (See the figure above). There are 15 open strings there (white circles on guitalele). There are only 5 open strings on baritone. That means that the added 10 (2x5) strings are all open. Because baritone and guitar tuning are weak at C/Am, this happens. GCEA tuning is optimized on C/Am. Ukulele and guitalele are lucky instruments.

As the c-tuned ukulele is similar to the guitalele, a g-tuned Bari is similar to a conventionally tuned guitar. Shapes though (as others have pointed out) are all similar. You just have to remember different chord names, which really does get easier in time. Some folks don't want to do this and just get different strings to allow them to keep their instruments in the same tuning. To each, his own.
For my voice, G is often the best key, so those same wide open chords (like C) that you like on the c-tuned uke or guitalele are my nice key of G chords. This is one of the perks of having differently tuned instruments.

Hi, bunnyf!

I have never thought your idea. If I have ukulele and baritone, I only need to know key of C on ukulele. Then these shapes work as key of G on baritone. I can cover almost all of the songs by one key.

Just the opposite. I have been playing guitar for 57 years and ukulele for only about 8 years. I still find myself using guitar names for chord shapes when teaching ukulele students.
I would find a baritone much easier to transfer from guitar, but I like the sound of a re-entrant tuned C6 tuned uke much better.

Hi, Jim! Thank you for your reply!

No, you and I are same. I am guitarist too. And we are taking same horizontal memory shown below. You are talking about red horizontal memory between guitar and baritone and I am taking about green horizontal memory between guitalele and ukulele. They are very good memory with visual memory. People tend to use blue vertical memory. It is hard to remember. Guitalele is ukulele and it is very friendly instrument for uker. Hence I am persuading jollyboy to sell his baritone and by a guitalele here (joke).

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One of my friends has a guitalele and there is one in the shop where I teach. It's a lot of fun to play, but I don't believe I'll ever own one.

You could as well take the easy way and restring your bari with Aquila (23U) GCEA strings - no more problems switching between all uke scales, same chord shapes everywhere.

DGBE tuning is guitar tuning - do we really want this on a ukulele???

Louis0815 said:

You could as well take the easy way and restring your bari with Aquila (23U) GCEA strings - no more problems switching between all uke scales, same chord shapes everywhere.

DGBE tuning is guitar tuning - do we really want this on a ukulele???

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Well I do. Although I prefer dGBE to get the Ukulele sound. Changing Gears to move from C to G tuning isn't that hard, although you do have a couple of months of confusion to wade through.

Hi, Louis0815! Thank you for the reply. No, I don't want DGBE tuning on ukulele. I explain it to Jack.

Hi, Jack! Thank you for your post. Ukulele and guitar have common ancestor　(renaissance guitar), which has GCEA tuning. Guitar has got two more strings, witch requires bigger scale. He could not keep GCEA tuning and get EADGBE tuning, which is same as DGBE tuning of baritone. Guitar's tuning is shifted to prefect 5th up (same as perfect 4th down). All of the chord shapes are shift perfect 5th up (See the circle of 5th figure below). See the guitar's G7 chord (in the 3rd figure), it is same as C7 on our ukulele.

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Ukulele's open strings produce C6 chord and basically she is good at key of C. On the other hand, guitar is better at G rather than C, because of the perfect 5th shift. Key of C is more simple and useful than G (figure below).

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Jack, I think you know that many people give up guitar because of F (red crossed in the figure below). It has barre and requires 4 fingers. It is same as Bb in ukulele. It is not usually appear on key of C on ukulele. But this shape appears as F on guitar, because of perfect 5th shift from GCEA to (EA)GDBE. The shift is shown by red to green on the top figure. Guitar's three chords shapes in the key of C is same as the ukulele's F, Bb and C (green) in the key of C. Many people give up guitar even on key of C.

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I think ukulele's advantage is not only four strings but also GCEA tuning to gutiar. And guitalele takes two advantages of GCEA tuning for ukulele players. One is same shape as ukulele. Second is the easiness of GCEA. And even if you've gave up guitar once before, now you can play guitalele with your ukulele skill.

I see your point but a baritone in G is easier for me to sing with. I thought about GCEA tuning when I first got my Bari last year, but decided to learn the difference in chords, particularly when I learned that the F is easier on a Baritone than Bb is on the C uke. I think that's because of the lower tension on the Bari and wider frets. Since I learned the differences (C/G) I found the Concert (in C) is easier to play and the Baritone is easier to play too. It is a matter of muscle memory and not worrying about the notes, but the sound/pitches.

I tune two of my tenors dGBE an play a lot more G than C scale. I did however just switch one of my Tenors back to C tuning, hi G, to make it easier to play some of my books. I have a Concert in Linear C and find that interesting to shift from Linear to re-entrant interesting.

But I don't take playing Uke too seriously. I like to "Play with my Ukes" not slave over them.

I gave upon six strings, so I'll just stick to four strings, which is enough for me.