Ukulele Tuner: Tune G C E A With Your Mic

Yes. It is free, needs no account or app, and runs in any current browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

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On a clean, sustained note the reading is steady to about a cent, far finer than the ear can tell. Pluck one string at a time, keep the others quiet and tune in a quiet room. A string counts as in tune within 5 cents, when the needle centres and the note turns blue.

Look at the 4th string, the one nearest your face. If it is about as thin as the 1st string, it is a high G: use the Ukulele mode. If it is the thickest string on the instrument, often wound, it is a low G: use Low G. Most soprano and concert ukuleles come strung high G; tenors come either way. Never tune a high-G string down an octave or a low-G string up one: it will go slack or snap.

Yes. Open this page on your phone, allow the microphone and hold the phone 20 to 50 cm from the soundhole. A phone microphone hears a ukulele clearly, and tapping a string button plays its reference note if you would rather tune by ear.

Press Start Tuning and allow the microphone. Hold the ukulele close, pluck one string with the pad of your thumb and let it ring. The tuner names the string it hears: if the needle sits left of centre the string is flat, so turn the peg to tighten it; right of centre is sharp, so loosen it. Tune the strings in any order, then check them all once more, because changing one string's tension slightly moves the others. Tune up to the note rather than down to it: if a string is sharp, drop below the note and come back up, so the peg settles under tension.

Soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles share standard tuning G C E A. Counting from the string nearest your chin: 4th string G4 (392.00 Hz), 3rd string C4 (261.63 Hz, middle C), 2nd string E4 (329.63 Hz), 1st string A4 (440.00 Hz). The G is tuned above the C instead of below it. This is called re-entrant tuning, and it gives the ukulele its bright, close-voiced strum. The old reminder is to sing "My Dog Has Fleas" on G C E A. The baritone ukulele is tuned D3 G3 B3 E4 (146.83, 196.00, 246.94 and 329.63 Hz), the same notes as the top four strings of a guitar.

Low-G tuning swaps the high G string for one an octave lower, G3 (196.00 Hz), so the strings run low to high: G C E A. It adds bass notes and suits fingerstyle and jazz, and it needs a thicker low-G string. Choose Low G above so the tuner expects the lower octave. Older songbooks often use D tuning, A D F♯ B, a whole step above standard and brighter still on a soprano. For D tuning, or any other tuning, switch to Chromatic and tune each string to the note it needs.

New nylon and fluorocarbon strings stretch for days, sometimes a week or two, so a freshly strung ukulele drifts flat within minutes. Retune often, and speed things up by gently pulling each string a few centimetres away from the fretboard along its length, then tuning again, until it holds. Friction pegs that slip back can be fixed by tightening the small screw on the end of each peg, a little at a time. Temperature and humidity change the pitch too, so tune in the room where you will play, and let a ukulele that came in from the cold warm up first. If the open strings are in tune but chords sound sour higher up the neck, the strings may be worn out; new strings usually fix it.

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Yes, in any current mobile browser. MIDI keyboards and pad controllers need Chrome, Edge or Opera, on a computer or an Android phone.

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