Wondering how to tune your ukulele? These are all great ways to get your ʻukulele in pitch
Getting Back to Basics. Plug In. Clip On. Phone App.
Joe Souza here actually standing in our Sound Studio to take a journey back bu t not that far back I remember growing up as a young ukulele player there was no tuners you just basically tuned by ear well today as a modern day ukulele player we have all these options of how to get our ukulele into tune so as we go and visit all of these different methods we're going to learn a lot today on the breakdown now when it comes to tuning your ukulele it's really all about accuracy especially today you know we got abs we got clip-on tuners we got like really really accurate chromatic tuners and it's just a matter of how to tune your ukulele to achieve that accuracy now here today we're going to actually use one of our kanile customs that has our go to stealth tuners now these tuners are exclusive to kanilea and they're very unique in a sense on how to tune your instrument in fact we have a video all about the goto stealth tuners so check it out also when we go to tune our instrument we want to tune up remember that now we don't want to tune past and then come back down we actually want to tune your ukulele up to pitch so we start below pitch and bring the instrument up to pitch and really try not to go sharp or pass that Perfect Pitch another thing that you have to remember when you're tuning your ukulele is tune your ukulele go ahead turn that knob that's the way you're going to tune the instrument don't be afraid of it because that's how you're going to get your instrument into pitch the other thing that you have to remember is when you bring your ukulele up to pitch it may start to slack and that's natural the strings are stretching they're being played so that you may have to tune up it's okay so as we go and learn about the different methods we'll see that the tuning key plays an important role in keeping your ukulele up to tuner up to pitch so the first method actually is going to be using a phone app super cool all of the knowledge of mankind in the palm of my hands including haratuma ukulele so I'll go ahead and open up my tuning key app get it ready to be tuned and oh my gosh the needle just starts bouncing all over the place and even though we're in our Sound Studio where we really control the sound just by my voice I'm talking in the key of F I think anyway so it's picking up all of the Ambient sound which makes it really really hard to tune especially if I'm at ukulele Club where there's a bunch of ukulele strumming and tuning or even on stage at a concert where I really need my ukulele to be accurate in Pitch oh my goodness it's almost impossible to pitch but here we are we're going to show an example of bringing that ukulele in tune using one of these cool little apps so I'm going to go ahead and hit the string and you'll hear I want that note to ring so I hit the string look at the tuner oh okay I have to tune up so I'm going to go ahead and bring the tuning peg up a little bit oh I'm getting close so again tuning up you'll notice I'm not going because I'm hitting all kind of notes and the tuners jumping all over the place I hit the note once I'm there it's in tune now I'm going to check the C foreign [Music] there we go now e [Music] close [Music] and we're there now the air [Music] perfect and here I let that note ring now we're in Pitch or at least we think we are what's cool today is we have our clip-on tuner so the clip-on tuner actually puts all of that coolness in the app but right into the palm of your hands to be then put onto your instrument and one of the benefits of really using a clip-on tuner is you're going to get an accurate reading you're not going to get all of the ambient noise or the potential wrong note you're going to get an accurate note right from your ukulele so you'll notice I'm going to go ahead and clip it right onto the top of my headstock but I'm not clipping it over my logo I'm clipping it to the side and the reason why is it's going to get all the vibration and the accuracy that I'm looking for and when I go to turn it on I'm going to go ahead and push that button hold it get it turned on and one of the cool things about the Cornelia Chromatic tuner is it has the ability to tune chromatic also guitar bass violin and ukulele now for myself I like to keep it in a chromatic tuning because I do play a low G sometimes or a high G and in order to really get that accurate tuning and be able to understand between the octaves we need to have the setting on chromatic so now I'm going to go ahead and just verify the accuracy of my phone app so I'm going to go ahead and hit that G string oh a little flat I'm gonna bring it up ah pretty good and here we are with c wow nice e right on and a right on so the chromatic tuner that was actually on my phone app was pretty accurate when we look at the chromatic clip-on tuner the biggest difference of course is Ambient sound and in this case we're getting a nice accurate reading and even though I'm still talking and everybody could still be strumming my tuner is giving me the accuracy right from my ukulele so now we know that the kanileo ukulele chromatic tuner accurate now we're going to go ahead and we're going to check turn the tuner off by holding the button and we're going to check it electronically with a really really cool accurate chromatic tuner that actually has a built-in mic which is a really cool feature similar to our phone but it also has the ability where we can plug the instrument in and get a direct signal right from our under saddle pickup where the string energy is created right here on the instrument so we'll go ahead and we'll plug into the instrument and very similar to a pickup when we're going to go and plug into a system I'll plug in first and then turn on the tuner now with the tuner on it's picking up the reading directly from our pickup so I'm going to go ahead and hit that G string oh we're right in Pitch there's our c here's our e and our a and everything is right in Pitch so the accuracy of the Chromatic tuner with this quarter inch end pin direct signal coming in so no Ambient sound nothing to mislead us as far as achieving that accurate tuning just kind of verifies how our clip-on tuner and really even our phone app is pretty accurate so now we took a really close look at really three different methods on how to tune our instrument you know and each of them are very unique in their own way that whole chromatic thing basically covers any instrument when we start to get into the very particulars especially with the clip-on tuner and being able to tune a guitar a violin obese and very specific instruments like an ukulele it's going to look for a specific note that's why I say just tune with a chromatic setting which gives you all of the notes that you really need in order to tune really any instrument that you're going to be playing now here's a pro tip after you're done jamming all night go ahead and wipe down your instrument bring your instrument back up to tune you want to store your instrument in tune and the reason why is most of the time your ukulele is going to be staying in its case even if you play for 8 hours a day it's still going to spend 16 hours of that day in its case so you want to make sure that you keep your instrument up to tune while you're storing your instrument [Music] I hope you enjoyed the video giving you some insight on not just the different methods of tuning your instrument but even how to tune your instrument if you like this video go ahead smash that like button if you have any comments or any questions leave it in the comments section so we can go ahead and get back to you and if you really love what you see here on the breakdown remember to subscribe to our channel so you can stay up to date with all of the latest here at Cornelia ukulele so everybody take care stay safe.
