Discount Musical instruments - By 2Kool4Skool

Finger Position on the Uke

Contrary to what you might think by looking at a chord diagram, the best spot to place a left-hand finger on fretboard is NOT in the middle of the frets, but rather immediately beside a fret (i.e. just to the left of it). The reason for this is that it requires for less pressure to properly hold the string down in that location than exactly between two frets, or anywhere to the left of that. If you press down on a string without adequate pressure, the result is often a very annoying buzzing sound!

In general, you should press on strings with your finger tips rather than the pads of the fingers, so that you are only pressing down on the string you should be pressing down on. If you playing a chord and are touching an adjacent string by accident, you may very well stop that string from vibrating, and the lovely note that should be produced by that string will no longer sound.

Glossary of Uke terms

If you want to be a cool ukulele player, you definitely have to learn how to talk the talk! Because we ukulelists are a little different, the strings are numbered from the bottom up, if you are holding the uke in a normal playing position (this is the numbered the same way as the guitar, actually). So, the first string is actually the one closest to the floor, and the fourth string is the one closest to your nose (assuming your nose is where it should be). Each string also has a letter name, taken from the musical note that sounds when you play that string with no finger pressing down on it. The letter names, from the 1st to 4th strings, are: G, C, E, A (maybe "George Clooney Eats Acorns" will help you remember?).
 
We also have a confusing little system for telling you where to place your fingers. We will say things like "put your finger on the 1st fret", when what we really mean is put your finger immediately beside the fret, using proper finger position. If you put it *right* on the fret, you would be touching the vibrating part of the string, and you would produce a sort of muffled, "dampened" sound, instead of a nice clear ringing one.

Reading ukelele chord diagrams is simple, when you know how!

The standard ukulele chord diagram is simply a vertical representation of the ukulele fretboard. The horizontal lines represent the frets, while the vertical lines represent the strings. The numbers on the vertical lines represent the fingers of the left hand (index=1, middle=2, ring=3 and pinky=4). A little "o" above a vertical line indicates that the open string (a string with no left hand finger on it) below that "o" should be strummed. A little "x", which you probably will rarely see, would mean that you do not strum that open string.
 


Tuning the uke
Whether a ukulele is in tune in or out of tune can make the difference between sweet, soothing sonorities and piercing noise that makes your cat hiss. Ukuleles require frequent tuning, so it is important that you spend a little time getting good at this. If you have been strumming vigorously for several minutes, or if the temperature or humidity changes, or if it has been sitting around for a while, you will have to tune it again. Fortunately there are only four strings to contend with!

There are many methods of turning the ukulele. If you have a very inexpensive ukulele, structural imperfections may make it impossible to tune it perfectly at all. You can compensate for this however by making small adjustments to make it sound good for a particular key. For now, I'll show you a couple of quick ways to tune your and ukulele to make it sound good most situations.

Tuning to an External Source

At some point, you must tune at least one of your strings to a reliable external source (like a piano, guitar, pitch pipe, tuning fork, etc.) to ensure your ukulele is in tune with the rest of the world. If you don't do this, you can still get your ukulele in tune with itself, but it will not be possible to play with other instruments and sound good. Similarly, you may find it difficult to sing along with your ukulele chords if the whole ukulele is tuned too high or too low.


 
If you're not sure which tuning head controls which string, just follow the string all the way along to the head of the ukulele until you see which tuning head it connects with.

You can also obtain either a pitch pipe or a tuning fork to give you a reliable pitch to match one of your ukulele strings to. Both of these devices are inexpensive and very portable , and can be obtained here. Once you have tuned 1 string, you can tune all of the other strings on your ukulele to that string using the relative tuning method outlined on the next page!
Relative Tuning

In order to use a relative tuning method, you must have at least one of your strings in tune with a reliable external source, as discussed above. If you are camping way out in the backwoods somewhere and don't have access to such a source, you can still tune your ukulele this way but it may or may not be in tune with other instruments.

There are four steps in this common relative tuning method, one step for each string:

1.    Tune your third string, the C string, to an enternal source such as a pitch pipe, tuning fork, guitar, piano etc.. Remember to loosen the string you are about to tune so the note goes below the correct pitch, and then slowly rise it up to the correct pitch in order to pick up any unwanted slack in the string. Remember to do this for all of your strings. If you don't have an external source available, just tune this string to what you remember the C string sounding like, or just leave it as it is.
2.    Tune the second string, the E string, to the C string (the string you just tuned!). To do this, play the note on the 4th fret of the C string (another E), and turn the tuning head for the second string until it sounds like this note.
3.    Next, we skip over to that high fourth string (the G string) to the second string, the one we just tuned. Do this by playing the note on the 3rd fret of the second string (another G) and matching the sound of the fourth string to it.
4.    Finally we go back to the first string, tune the 4th string the one we just did. For this, play the note on the second fret of the 4th string, and match the sound of the first string to it.


And here you have it! After you've done all this, strum a chord, preferably the first chord in the next song you are about to play. It should be sounding pretty good. Is something sounds a bit off, you can tweak one or two of the strings to get it just right!