Ukulele tuning

[Jim Armstrong]

I apologize for asking a non-mandolin question, but y’all are a wealth of musical knowledge and I’m sure y’all have suggestions. My 5 year-old granddaughter is wanting to play the ukulele and I was going to play guitar along with her. Is there an open G tuning for the ukulele where she could strum along and sound close when I change to C or D? I’m wide open to suggestions and thanks for the help.

[ProfChris]

Standard uke tuning is gCEA (the 4th string, nearest your nose, being high, i.e. re-entrant tuning). But aDF#B is also possible with the same string set.

This means that gDGB can work, but to play along when you shift to C and D she will have to barre the 4th and 5th frets.

I've found that 5 year-olds can fairly quickly pick up the fingering for open chords in gCEA, though the G chord is the hardest for them. You can make it a bit easier as follows:

G - 0232, barreing strings 1-3 at the 2nd and then fingering fret 3 on the 2nd string
C - 0003 (the easiest uke chord)
D7 - 2223 (barre the 2nd). D6 (2222) would also sound fine for most songs. D (2220) is quite hard to fret cleanly, so I wouldn't even try that to begin with.

If you place her thumb on the back of the neck, these chords become quite easy. If she curls her thumb around, only the C is easy!

The other thing to watch for is the action height at the nut. Cheaper ukes notoriously come with sky-high nut action, and if you deepen the slots until fretting a string between 2 and 3 gives you an almost unnoticeable gap above the 1st fret, chords become vastly easier. I think this is vital for a small child, otherwise the amount of finger pressure needed will be too great for comfort.

I wouldn't worry about the action at the 12th, unless it's ludicrous (2.5 to 3mm is normal, but 4mm doesn't make much difference in ease of playing down at the nut end).

[EdHanrahan]

This means that gDGB can work, but to play along when you shift to C and D she will have to barre the 4th and 5th frets.

While C and D are the 4 & 5 chords, they'd fall at the 5th & 7th frets. (Hey, I've made similar mistakes posting at 5am.)

Otherwise, nice analysis!