I admit, I do it all the time. It’s a simple matter of maths. I have three guitar capos and one ukulele capo. I usually use the first one that comes to hand. For the most part, a guitar capo – depending on the capo itself – will do the job. However, it is much larger than necessary and will get in the way of your playing. It’s worth investing in a smaller capo just for your uke.
Buying a Ukulele Capo
There are plenty of ukulele capos around. However, these tend to be the cheap, wrap around type. They do the job OK, but if you want a better quality capo, buy a mandolin capo. Mandolin necks are roughly the same size as a ukulele neck, so their capos fit perfectly well. They also have higher quality level capos which can be put on and taken off quickly and easily and can be adjusted more accurately to the size of your ukulele’s neck.
Linguistically speaking, if a noun starts with a vowel sound it’s ‘an’ and for a consonant sound it’s ‘a’.
But there is plenty of disagreement on whether the word ‘ukulele’ starts with a vowel sound or not. The Hawaiian way of pronouncing it is ‘oo-koo-lay-lay’ i.e. with a vowel sound. The most common way to pronounce it in the mainland US, and the rest of the English speaking, world is ‘yoo-ka-lay-lee’.
Hardcore ukulele traditionalists (aka pedants) will tell you that the Hawaiian pronunciation is the only true and correct pronunciation and therefore only ‘an ukulele’ is correct. However, unless you live in Hawaii, your English teacher is unlikely to be familiar with the derivation of the word ukulele and will strike a big red line through ‘an ukulele’. But it would certainly be fun proving them wrong. Unless you’re trying to embarrass your English teacher, stick to ‘a ukulele’.
There is one issue that is completely clear cut: anyone who says ‘ook’ rather than ‘uke’ is clinically insane and should be dragged to the nearest brain-doctor.
Unfortunately, there’s no cut and dried, standard tuning for the ukulele. The tunings that have been used on the ukulele have changed over time.
Standard Ukulele Tuning
The most common tuning nowadays is gCEA and is largely regarded as the standard tuning. The small ‘g’ is to indicate that the G string is pitched between the E and A strings rather than lower as most instruments are. This type of tuning is known as re-entrant tuning. Here is how the notes sound from G to A:
Ukulele D Tuning
This used to be the standard tuning for the ukulele. If you look at sheet music from the 1920s and 1930’s, it often has accompanying chords for the ukulele in this tuning. This tuning is the same as C-tuning but two frets higher. So, if you put a capo on the second fret of a C-tuned ukulele you’d get the same notes. It sounds like this:
Standard Baritone Ukulele Tuning
There are four main sizes of ukulele: soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. The soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles all have the same tuning. The baritone, however, is much larger and is tuned DGBE. This is not re-entrant but goes from low to high – just like the four highest strings of a guitar. The notes for the standard tuning for baritone ukulele sound like this:
Unfortunately, there’s no cut and dried, standard tuning for the ukulele. The tunings that have been used on the ukulele have changed over time.