Try not using your tuner for a week.

For many months, I didn't have a clip-on tuner (I had given mine away with some ukes to my parents). During those months, I mostly tuned by ear because my tuners weren't convenient and I'm lazy.

Finally, I decided to buy a clip-on tuner. But the few months without it caused me to:

1. Don't like having a clip-on tuner clipped to my uke all the time.

2. Because I don't have the clip-on tuner on the uke, I still mostly do relative tuning by ear (since I'm too lazy to clip on the clip-on tuner), and...

3. I can tune the uke much faster by ear (relative tuning) vs a tuner (absolute tuning).

I'm glad that I was "forced" to tune by ear for those months. It saves me a lot of time whenever I feel like picking up my uke and play.

Now, I don't want to say that tuning by ear is absolutely great. It's got issues like being off key and deviating from equal temperament tuning (which can cause problems higher up on the frets).

I'm probably restating what many here already know; but for those who tune exclusively with tuners, try to use just your ears for a week. Here's my instruction:

1. You only have to tune 3 strings: g, E, and A against the C-string.

2. The 4th fret on the C-string is the E note, pluck the 4th fret on the C-string, then lightly touch the E-string. If it is already in tune, you'll feel it vibrating (sympathetic resonance). The strength of vibration indicates the in-tune-ness.

3. If the E-string isn't vibrating or vibrating very little, you can adjust its pitch relative to the C-string 4th fret. This requires your ear to compare 2 pitches.

4. In the beginning, your ear may not know which pitch is higher when the pitches are close. In this case, just adjust the E-string way off, then you can tell which is higher/lower easily. In time (like a week), your ear will be trained to tell pitches 8-10 cents apart; which will give you the sympathetic resonance, then you just need to use your finger to feel the strength of the resonance to tune the strings to within 1-2 cents.

5. The 3rd fret on the E-string is the G note. Use this to tune the G-string. And the 2nd fret on the G-string is the A note.

Like I said before, the good thing about this way of tuning is that most of the time, when you pick up your uke, all its strings are already in-tune relatively (i.e. you get a nice strong sympathetic resonance) so you can play immediately; or with very slight adjustments to 1 or 2 strings. If you had used a tuner, then most likely you'd have to make adjustments to all the strings.

I've debated about posting this since I believe most folks here already know. But, I also think it might be helpful to people like me. If I never gave away my clip-on tuner, I'd still have a tuner permanently attached to my uke and would have never bothered to tune by ear.

I think it is something easy to try and can save you a lot of time.

This topic always takes me into the way back machine. That is the way we used to tune our guitars back in the days before electric tuners. I don't remember anyone having a tuning fork. We used a pitch pipe. Or if we were at someone's house and their parents had a piano we would tune to the piano. Sometimes someone would just pick a string that sounded good, tune to it, then we all tuned to them. As long as it was relative. Truth be known, we were kids and tuning was not something we put a lot of thought into. Besides, steel strings don't go out of tune like ukulele strings do. I think that these days there is a Zen experience to tuning by ear and a lot of people find the process fulfilling. As for myself, I quit playing guitar for a long while and had not seen an electric tuner until I bought my first ukulele and the tuner came with it. It was a God send. I still have it, an Eno ET-33. I have three of them actually, I like them so much. I also have a tuning app on my tablet and one on my phone. But occasionally I get a little nostalgic and I will just pluck the A string and it if sounds good to me I'll tune the rest of them off of that one. When I do, I get a lot of self satisfaction out of playing that relative tuning. It takes me back. And if there are two or three of us so moved, one tunes relative and then everyone else tunes to them. So I do see your attraction to it. Just that most of the time I am not in that mood.

For the record, I used to be a proponent of leaving the tuner on the headstock so that I wouldn't lose it. Then after several years of that I started taking it off. I don't know what prompted that, it's just the way it is right now. Either way is fine.

Not on your life. I will never give it up. I use the D'Addario Micro, very unobtrusive.

---

This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
8 tenor cutaway ukes, 4 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 38)

Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
Member The CC Strummers: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers

I think you make a number of good points.

It is valuable to use a tuner or app that will play the reference pitch so it can sustain. It may be easier at first than trying to match a pitch as it decays. It is helpful to tune by ear and then double check against the tuner. It is not that tuners are necessarily bad, but the goal should be to train one's ear rather than the eyes.

Bouncing off what Rllink said, I remember (with a smile) the old days where we didn't use tuners of any kind. Say 1970. We used two guitars and a bass in our band, and we'd get to the gigs plenty early, before it got too noisy, so that we could get tuned up-- we'd just stand there plunking away, looking back and forth at each other, nodding, shaking, adjusting, and adjusting some more, then test our efforts by playing a few chords together with the bass, until finally we'd all say, "We're good!" On any given occasion, I'm sure we were either slightly north or slightly south of "universal", but we were happy as larks and had a great time (didn't sound half bad, either, for a bunch of highschoolers)!

I once ran a beginners Ukulele Workshop, and one thing we did was get everyone to tune up 'by ear'. Most found no problem with it,although there were always a couple who struggled!

Long time ago, I used to tune a guitar by ear, (I didn't even know about tuners, except tuning forks), it used to take a long time - but nowadays, I can tune to the lowest string on ukes, but why bother, I've got tuners!

Actually, I just took a couple of my ukes out of their gig bags to have a quick play on them - I didn't need to tune them, they were still in tune from when I put them away - months ago! :music:

When I don't have a tuner or are too lazy to use one, I tune from the "A" string.
1) "E" at the fifth fret to Open "A"
2) "C" at the fourth fret to Open "E"
3) "g" at the fifth fret to "C" at the twelfth fret for high "g" tuning
4) "G" at the fifth fret to Open "C" for low "G" tuning

kohanmike said:

Not on your life. I will never give it up. I use the D'Addario Micro, very unobtrusive.

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:agree: I have the micros on my ukes and my ubass, and their micro soundhole tuner on my 2 most played intruments.

But, If i grab an instrument to strum a song or 2 and it sounds close, I just play...

I rarely use the tuner since COVID. Since I don't have to match anyone else's tuning, I tune to "My Dog Has Fleas". If I'm playing the mouth harp in a rack, I'll tune to the harp. I'm an old guy who got my first guitar in 1960 and in the sixties and seventies, before the advent of electronic tuners, the mouth harp was my "go to" tuner. These days, when I do take out my Snark, I usually see that my tuning has crept sharp over the weeks.

Here's something that may be new to you. There are instructions that come with a clip on tuner, but, like the instructions on a shampoo bottle, no one ever reads them. The Snark instructions begin with the warning that you should put the tuner on the headstock only long enough to tune your instrument, then take it off until the instrument needs tuning again. There is a solvent in the rubber pads that can react with the finish on your headstock. This is also true for vinyl backed straps or even leaving your instrument on a naugahyde covered couch.
My friend George was disappointed when part of the decal on his Martin headstock came off with the Snark which had been on the headstock for days.
I leave the tuner clipped to my mic stand when I'm playing out and on a table beside where I practise at home, but I think tuners (capos, unclipped strings, cigarettes. . .) fastened to the headstock are ugly (or at least, "not aesthetically pleasing").

Completely disagree!

Buy a better tuner (like UniTune clip on) and use it early and often.
Most of the uke videos I see on Facebook and YouTube need to tune their ukes!!

sopher said:

Completely disagree!

Buy a better tuner (like UniTune clip on) and use it early and often.
Most of the uke videos I see on Facebook and YouTube need to tune their ukes!!

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While most people can tell relative pitches, very few can tell absolute pitches. For example, given a pitch, few people (even ones with extensive training) can say that pitch is higher or lower than middle C. This was surprising to me when I first heard it; and I thought I can surely tell if a note is middle C after many years of playing the piano. Turns out it is true, and I can't identify the middle C note! If you don't believe me, ask somebody to play a single note near the middle C, it can even be the D note (a whole step away) and you'll have a hard time deciding whether it is middle C. I couldn't even tell if the notes were several steps away. In fact, nobody in class was able to (this experience happened in a college music theory class).

But, we are very sensitive to relative pitches. Given 2 pitches, we can easily tell which is higher or lower. Given 2 pitches we can easily tell if harmony existed. Given a set of pitches, we can easily anticipate the next logical pitch, or detect a cadence. All this comes from just years of listening to music. Sure, music from other world regions may sound different enough that you can't anticipate, but once you get to listen to them enough, you'll develop the same feel. Music is a language; and human languages have commonalities.

Anyway, I digress. What I hope to convey above is that you'd be surprised at how hard it is to tell whether a uke is tuned relatively vs absolutely. Of course, this only works for the solo uke (when multiple ukes are performing, you can multiple sounds and as I've mentioned, it is pretty easy to tell relative pitches apart).

Therefore, if you are just playing the uke by yourself, relative tuning as I first mentioned in the thread vs if you've tuned with a tuner, you can't tell them apart.

Mike $ said:

That's weird that their wasn't even one person who knew the highest note they could sing and then just simply count the notes in between from the given note to their highest. For instance, I can sing the F note above middle C and above that, my voice can't really hold a note unless I'm singing falsetto. I would love to try this experiment because lots of times, thought experiments don't work half as well as practical experiments do.

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You could be gifted. Although the class was at a local college (San Jose State U.), it's designed for music majors so the students are fairly serious. Nobody in the class of ~25-30 was able to tell. I thought I can tell after years of playing the piano, but turns out I wasn't able to. This gives me an interesting idea.

clear said:

While most people can tell relative pitches, very few can tell absolute pitches.
Therefore, if you are just playing the uke by yourself, relative tuning as I first mentioned in the thread vs if you've tuned with a tuner, you can't tell them apart.

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Most of the uke videos I see on Facebook and YouTube are not in absolute tuning or relative tuning. There are only 4 strings but most people can't seem to get them in tune with themselves. I'd be thrilled if more people could tune using any method, even if it involved dead cats. I blanch at the very prospect of getting people to set aside the "easiest" method, even for a week.

I used to make sort of a game out of tuning ukuleles by ear when I'd visit a music shop and then I'd pull out my phone to see how close I was. Depending on the shop, some of them are horribly out of tune, so you need to have some idea of what a C sounds like. I took it as a bit of ear training along with my ukulele sampling.

Of course, if you have no idea what your doing, it could be dangerous.