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If you highlighted the 4 strings of the Ukulele (default tuning) to notes on the piano, where would they come in relation to middle C?

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2 Answers 2

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The standard tuning of a Ukulele is a bit confusing because it is not strictly ascending.

This tuning is g4-c4-e4-a4, it means that the corresponding notes are G above middle C, middle C, E above middle C, A above middle C, from the string which is highest on the fretboard to the string which is closest to the ground.

Ukulele Tuning

It is easy to play it on the piano with the right hand and the fingering 1-2-4-5.

Piano diagram for Ukulele

If you mount a thicker string for the G you can use the variant g3-c4-e4-a4 (the G one octave below) which is closer to the kind of tuning you have on a guitar (successive fourths). In this case the first string is G below middle C. It is more difficult to play the resulting piano chord with one hand.

Note that using different tunings on a ukulele for a given song is very frequent. On sheet-music there is usually a little diagram for the tuning in the form of a tablature.

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http://www.get-tuned.com/ukulele-tuning-piano.php enter image description here

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    We prefer not to have link-only answers because if the get-tuned.com goes down or gets re-worked, the answer would likely become useless. I edited in the illistration. May 14, 2011 at 16:16
  • @musicwithoutpaper: The image you selected is relevant but I think we cannot add an external image here without permission of the artwork's author. We should discuss this on meta.
    – ogerard
    May 14, 2011 at 16:20
  • @ogerard: Inserting the image and mentioning the source should be fine. May 14, 2011 at 17:42
  • @ogerard You should look on Meta Stack Overflow for relevant discussions. Basically, we're covered under Fair Use. So don't worry about external images. They should be uploaded through the answer interface, though, we don't want to rely on random website hosts.
    – user28
    May 14, 2011 at 18:18

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