Ukulele Online

Getting your ukulele in tune is absolutely vital. You would think it goes without saying, but it’s surprising how many people think it’s ok to play an out of tune ukulele. Luckily, it’s easy to find a free online ukulele tuner.

For a listen and compare tuner, this site has a tuner with a number of possible variations on the standard ukulele tuning.

If you’re looking for tuning notes for low-G ukulele, baritone ukulele or a number of other common variations you can find them on this page of ukulele tuning notes.

For a tuner that will tell you when you’re out of tune, you can download AP Tuner for free (although it will bug you to register at a hugely overpriced $35 – you could buy a real life tuner for around half that). To use it, you’ll need a mic to plug into your computer. The notes you want to tune to for gCEA are G4, C4, E4 and A4. Don’t feel you need to get the notes bang on – you’ll be there forever.

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: