Baritone Ukulele?

[Down Up Dick]

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?

[DownUpDave]

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

[tonyturley]

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.

[tonyturley]

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.

[DownUpDave]

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.

[Jim Hanks]

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.

[Down Up Dick]

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.

[John boy]

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.

[Down Up Dick]

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.

[John boy]

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!