Monday, September 1, 2008

BARITONE UKULELE (Reference)

Arthur Godfrey with Martin Baritone Ukulele


Steven Strauss is gathering a few students after our Berkeley Ukulele Club and he wanted some people to play the baritone ukulele. I had just got one from eBay so I have volunteered. I spoke about my UAS addiction in my first blog. So I bought some new Aguila strings and they stretched for about a week and now the instrument is sounding quite good with a deep rich tone. I have been cheating and playing the songs I know from my soprano and tenor in the same chord positions. So the songs are based in G instead of C.

The barre chord shapes are the same for the baritone, BUT we start with DGBE and five frets up (towards the hole) we see the familiar GCEA. So if you play with barre chords already you just need to learn from the 5th fret down (towards the pegs).

Here’s a very thorough library of Baritone ukulele chords on www.ezfolk.com
http://www.ezfolk.com/baritone-uke/chords/

I found a technical pdf that talks about baritone ukuleles as well as other instruments that have a 4-3-4 tuning. The baritone is tuned DGBE which is the same tuning as the top 4 strings of a guitar (top meaning the strings closest to the floor). Most baritones have the Low-D string but some people may hold a preference for the re-entrant tuning and have a High-D. There are other instruments with this same tuning that are referred to in this document such as a Lute, Renaissance Guitar, Quatro. http://www.thecipher.com/Basic_UkeChordsDGBE_Cipher.pdf

(Note: 4-3-4 means from the D it is 4 steps to the G, 3 steps to B, 4 again to the E)

YOU TUBE & Midnight Ukulele Disco BARITONE UKULELE VIDEOS

WS64 from Germany: plays and sings the Beatles Blackbird
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mYG8rgrTn3w
TMSampson: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj81jrHjQuc
(Khabu is playing a Mike DaSilva Ukulele www.ukemaker.com)
YourPhoenix:
+ (Colbie Callait) Bubbly
...
Added 1-20-2010: See my other site,
Humble Baritonics

2 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this Article HU....

    The Baritone Uke is the next and last (for awhile ;) purchase for my uke collection

    ReplyDelete
  2. Todd thanks for reading. Let me know if you find any new info for tablature for the Baritone. I'm playing with the Low-D.

    ReplyDelete