Alternate Tunings for Ukulele

[Nickie]

Two new friends from Sweden just loaned me their ukulele songbook. Most of the songs are in Swedish and they are all in D tuning.

[cdkrugjr]

Nylon strings don’t have quite the same resilience as do steel, but you can try pretty much anything up or down a tone with most bog standard uses.

See if you can find a copy of The Uke Buke for a bunch of arrangements gc’e’g’ (Open C w/ Low G)

[Joe King]

Two new friends from Sweden just loaned me their ukulele songbook. Most of the songs are in Swedish and they are all in D tuning.

You can either put a capo on the 2nd fret to play in the correct key relative to the D6 tuning, or otherwise completely ignore that and just use the same fingerings shown in the song books, in the standard C6 tuning, although you will not be playing in a key (or keys) with chord shapes that are very different to the standard C6 chord shapes, as the D6 chord shapes will have different fingerings for C, G, etc.

Also, if the chord had a named pictogram, and it shows a C chord, etc, just play that same named chord in whatever tuning you have. If someone is playing guitar, piano, uke etc and playing a C chord, and say looking at standard notation, that C chord will at least have the C, E, and G notes in it on every one of those instruments.

So the D tuning in the song book does not have to be an obstacle, unless you want it to.

[roger67]

From the master, James Hill: BEBE for baritone ukulele.

[ripock]

Thanks for that. It was interesting to see an open 5 chord tuning.

[Jim Yates]

I usually stick to C6 tuning, either gCEA or GCEA, but I sometimes tune my reso-uke to open C - GCEG to play slide or some Everly Brothers stuff, like Wake Up, Little Susie.
I have a flea-market Harmony soprano tuned D6 - aDF#B, because it seems to sound good up there.

[merlin666]

I have some old songbooks that are in D so I just use the chord diagrams and play a note lower, which also suits my voice. The tricky part is when I want to use some piano parts as instrumental filler. Transposing that to uke tab is quite time consuming for me.

[roger67]

Thanks for that. It was interesting to see an open 5 chord tuning.

You bet! I tried playing this tuning with a low B and it sounds just as good, if a bit darker and bluesier. But I like that sound, so it's great either way. It's a strange and wonderful tuning, and reminds me a little of DADGAD for guitar--you can get both Celtic and blues voicings depending on the chords used.

[roger67]

I usually stick to C6 tuning, either gCEA or GCEA, but I sometimes tune my reso-uke to open C - GCEG to play slide or some Everly Brothers stuff, like Wake Up, Little Susie.
I have a flea-market Harmony soprano tuned D6 - aDF#B, because it seems to sound good up there.

Open C is just great for slide, isn't it?

I keep a number of instruments semi-permanently in different tunings as well. Some guitars and ukes just seem well suited for certain tunings--that's what I've convinced myself anyway. It's a good excuse for my GAS/UAS "problem."

[roger67]

Excellent article by Heidi Swedberg on alternate tunings for ukes:

https://www.ukulelemag.com/stories/e...ernate-tunings

So many tunings, so little time!