Transcribing Songs in Alternate Tunings to the Ukulele
It has come to my attention that too many people are treating their
ukulele just like their guitar in the way they change tunings. You do
not have to tune a ukulele down a half step whenever the guitar tab you
are reading is tuned down from standard E. Standard tuning for a
ukulele has the low string at C. As long as the song you are tabbing
out for the ukulele is tuned above C on the guitar, there is no need to
tune your ukulele to different tunings to play the song. Even if the
tuning used on the guitar is lower than C for a song, you can still use
standard tuning to play the song. The key to doing this is to
transcribe the chords used onto the ukulele in the correct key.
For example, if the song is played on a guitar that is tuned down one
half step (standard Eb), you can still play an Eb chord on the ukulele
without changing tunings. When they use an Em chord in that tuning on
guitar, you would just play Ebm on the ukulele. The same could be said
for any other chord. Say they used a G chord in that tuning on guitar.
To play that chord on a ukulele, you would just play an F# to play the
same chord in the same key, just using a different tuning. This makes
sense because when you compensate for the guitar being tuned down one
half step, the same G chord played in standard tuning becomes a F# chord
in the lower tuning using the same fingering.
Knowing this, when you look at guitar tabs for songs played on guitars
tuned lower that standard E, you can translate the chords played in that
tuning to the some chords played in the standard ukulele tuning without
having to tune the ukulele. All you have to do is to figure out the
key of the chord you are playing on guitar and play the same chord on
the ukulele. If you play a G chord on a guitar tuned in standard D, the
chord would be a F chord. In that case you can play the F chord on the
ukulele for that song and get the same results without tuning your
ukulele. Knowing all of this, it makes more sense to play the songs in
their proper key without tuning the ukulele, than it does to tune the
ukulele down a half step, just to copy the guitar tabs over to ukulele.