Learning how to tune a ukulele has to be one of the most important things you do before you start strumming the ukulele. If you play out of tune, you’ll develop a bad habit of sounding way off and trust me you want to avoid this embarrassment. If you ever intend to play in a band, you will have to be in tune to be in harmony with the other instruments playing. The ukulele is indeed a beautiful instrument to play, but it sounds beautiful only when it’s in tune. I can’t stress enough how much you should develop the habit of playing in tune. This is important for your development of playing music by ears. That last thing you would want is to be accustomed to playing out of tune.

How do you tune a ukulele?

I’ve learned how to play music by ear with years of ear training. Believe me when I say that these electronic tuners are far more accurate than the human ear. So, I wholeheartedly recommend you invest a couple of dollars in a ukulele tuner. I’ve tried many different tuners available and have come to the conclusion that Snark SN2 is the best for ukulele tuning. Go ahead and buy the Snark SN2 ukulele tuner which is a snap on device that will detect if your strings are out of tune. Of course, you would then adjust your strings to be in perfect tune. Just know that the first thing that Jake Shimabukuro does is tune his ukulele before every performance. Jake is the legendary Hawaiian ukulele player, so let’s model his habit of playing ukulele in tune all the time.

Other Ways to Tune your Ukulele

Another common way to tune your ukulele is basically having one string tuned and tuning all other strings according to the one tuned string. This is called relative tuning. The third string which is C, would be the tuning to follow. Once you know C is in tune, you can tune the other strings. Here’s how you do it:

1. One you know that the 3rd string is in tune (C String), you can go ahead and play the seventh fret of this string to get G. So, you will want to then match the fourth string (G String) to sound exactly like the seventh fret of the C string.
2. Play the 4th fret on the C string to play E. Match the second string to the sound of E on the C string. So, you want to make sure that the E string sounds exactly the same as the E on the 4th fret of the C string. Until it does, you will need to adjust the second string until it sounds identical.
3. Once the E string is in tune, you can then tune the very first string which is A. So, play the 5th fret of the E string to get the A note. You can now match the first string to this note.

After this you should have the whole ukulele in tune. The problem you may face with this is that if you start with an untuned string, you will end up with the whole ukulele being out of tune. This is a great method of tuning your ukulele if you do it right, but I will suggest again that ukulele tuners are the way to go, especially if you’re beginning to learn the ukulele.