One of the things that I teach almost every single person who comes to me for a ukulele lesson is....how to tune your ukulele. Seriously. It's so important to know how to tune your ukulele properly. Playing in a group? Yeah, you don't want to be so out of tune that everyone notices. Playing solos? Also you need to be in tune so you don't cause a giant case of Audience Cringe.
Tuning your ukulele isn't as difficult as you might think. With all of the amazing options out there for tuning, there are lots of different ways you can get tuned up before a group or solo practice session.
Let's check out some of these options.
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Tuning Apps. Of course! If you have a smart phone, you can find HUNDREDS of tuning apps in your app store, many of them for free.
The app I prefer to use is called gStrings. It's got a lot of features for a free app, but takes a little bit of time to learn. That said, if I don't have a tuner handy, it's the best way I've found to tune up my ukes.
Websites. There are even a few websites that you can use to tune your ukulele. The UkeBuddy website has a great
online ukulele tuner that you can use to turn high G, low G, and baritone ukuleles. To use an online tuner, you need to have your microphone turned on so it can detect the sound coming from your ukulele.
Clip-on Tuners. Whenever I've bought an "entry-level" ukulele, they almost always come with an electronic clip-on tuner. These types of tuners are very popular, and for good reason: they're easy to use, you can use them on lots of instruments besides ukuleles, they're affordable, and you can get them with zero features or with loads of cool features like a metronome! (More on playing with a metronome later. I hate playing with a metronome, but I gotta do it.)
So these are my two favorite clip-on tuners. The Snark (aptly named), and the Lekato. The Lekato (the black rectangular shaped tuner) has a bunch of other features, and can tune to frequencies other than 440 Hz and also has a metronome function!
To use a clip-on tuner, clip it on to the headstock of your ukulele. (That's the top of the ukulele, where the tuners are.) Next, turn it on.
You'll notice that it lights up, and you might see a little letter somewhere near the top or bottom of the tuner. The letters are for different instruments - ukulele (U), guitar (G), violin (V), and if you see a smalle letter C, that means it's set for chromatic and can be used for any instrument. Using a chromatic tuner can also be helpful when you're diving into the world of alternative ukulele tunings (another can of worms for another blog post, yee haw!).
Next, gently pluck the string on your instrument that you want to tune. You should see the note that it's tuned to appear on the tuner.
But you see where that little needle is below the center point of the arc? That means the A string is flat. So you turn your tuning pegs up a tiny little bit until you see this...
Bing bing bing! We have green! This means that our A string is in tune and we can move on!
A few of my top tips for tuning:
1. When you pluck your string for tuning your ukulele, don't pluck it a zillion times in four seconds. Give it one nice, gentle pluck and let that tone ring out. Some electronic tuners use both sound and vibration, so give it a nice clear vibration to get best results.
2. Don't turn the tuners a whole lot when tuning your ukulele. Just maybe just a quarter inch at a time.
3. Always tune UP. Meaning: if your string comes up as sharp, tune it down below the desired note/tone, and then gently move it back up to the correct tuning.
4. Think of tuning as an exercise in mindfulness: sure, you could whiz-bang your way through it, but why not take it slow? Take a moment to be aware of your breath while you tune your ukulele. Take it easy. Allow yourself to do some deep listening (also called Nada Yoga) as the sound of your string rings out - can you let yourself listen to it until the sound has completely faded?
5. Don't forget to turn your tuner OFF when you're done! A couple of my tuners will automatially switch off if I set them down after I'm done and they're inactive for a few minutes, but my favorite tuner, the one pictured above, doesn't have an automatic shutoff and there's no bigger bummer than pulling your tuner out of your case and finding that the battery is dead.
There you go! My top tips for getting to know your tuner, and using to learn how to tune your ukulele. If you've got anything helpful to add for someone learning how to tune their ukulele, just drop it in the comments!
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