r ransom

100% clip on tuner for me

Oh...it's the name of a song!  Okay.  That makes things fall into place.  Thank you

All the books say to tune the ukulele, all we need to know is "my dog has fleas".

Eh?
Search engines don't want to tell me why these four words have to do with gCEA.

Is there some basic pop culture references I'm missing?

David Milano wrote:....

I attached a link to a (little-viewed) video of myself playing a Joni Mitchell tune. It was posted for the adult class to help  a couple of the more advanced beginners transition from strumming to finger-picking. The song is pared down to minimize complexities. If you look at the YouTube description you’ll see that I also posted sheet music for it in tablature form, which the students thoroughly ignored. Fun is so much more pleasant than the technicals, especially when one is getting older and not sopping up new ideas and skills like a hungry child might!

That's a very strong argument in favour of learning the ukulele.  Absolutely love that song and the way you played it.  This looks like it will take a while to understand enough to try it, but it's good to have a goal.

M Ljin wrote:For reference I think the first video (the king’s forest) was played with a high G.

Ah.

Do you think it would have a nice sound if played with the low G?  

.

Looks Sounds like it is low G for me.  
Her teaching style is a good match for my brain.

I'm confused nearly to the point of giving up.

Help

I'm going through the first pile of ukulele books from tne library and half says the only correct way to tune a ukulele is GCEA and the other half, including the dummies books, say that gCEA is the only right way to tune for proper sound.

Who do I believe?

Some books suggest that I can finger/fret/whatever the same for both tuning.   Other books insist they have different fretting fingers and that we must learn the proper way.  

Making things worse, they say uppercase is lower and lowecase is upper but not one book explains what upper g and lower G means.   Or what tuning up vs tuning down and why we can't tune down a g without floppy string....i don't know.  The dummy books are especially assuming that I speak music.

I did not expect so much conflict on, what I foolishly assumed was such a foundational topic as tuning.

My question

1. Which gives the sound I want for the music in the first video, softer rounder sound?  If that makes sense.  Less merlot and more barolo if music was flavored.

2. Double checking, I would need to change the string to go from g to G and back again (i think this was confirmed upthread).  So I should choose one.

3. Is the finger on the fret stem the same for both?

4. Is there some way to tell what string is on a ukulele?  

Thank you.   That's helpful

In the first video, the person uses his little finger to press down the string.  

In other videos, they don't need that finger.  

Is it possible to play without the little finger pressing down the string?