Ukulele Sizes Explained: Soprano, Concert, Tenor, and Baritone

Ukuleles come in four common sizes: soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone. Three of them are the same instrument in different sizes. They are tuned alike, they use the same chord shapes, and anything you learn on one carries straight over to the others. The baritone is the odd one out, with a tuning of its own. Keep that one fact in mind and most of the confusion around sizes goes away.

The four sizes at a glance

Sizes are usually described by scale length, the length of string that vibrates between the nut and the saddle. The figures below are approximate, and they vary a little from maker to maker.

What changes as the body grows

Size affects three things you will notice straight away, and one you will notice later.

• Sound. A bigger body generally gives more low end and more volume. A smaller one sounds brighter and more percussive. Neither is better. A soprano sounds the way most people imagine a ukulele sounding, and a tenor sounds rounder.
• Fret spacing. A longer scale puts the frets further apart. That means more room for your fingertips inside each chord, and slightly longer stretches between frets.
• String feel. Tuned to the same notes, a longer string has to be tighter. Tenor strings tend to feel firmer under the fingers than soprano strings, which feel soft and easy to bend out of tune if you press hard.
• Room up the neck. Larger ukuleles usually have a few more frets, and the upper ones are easier to reach. That matters once you start playing melodies higher up.

Soprano, concert, tenor: same tuning, same chords

All three are tuned g-C-E-A, with the high g string on top. A C chord is the same single finger on all of them, and every chord chart, song sheet and piece of tab you find works on any of the three without changes. If you learn on a soprano and later pick up a tenor, your hands only need a few minutes to adjust to the wider frets.

The one variation you will meet is the fourth string. Tenors in particular are often strung with a low G in place of the high g, which adds a few deeper notes without changing any chord shapes. That choice has its own guide: low-G vs high-G tuning.

Baritone: the different one

A baritone is tuned D-G-B-E. Those are the same notes as the four highest strings of a guitar, and the strings normally run from low to high, with no high string on top the way standard tuning has. Each string's note name is a fourth lower than on a standard ukulele: G becomes D, C becomes G, E becomes B, and A becomes E. (The fourth string actually drops further than the others, because the baritone's D is a low string where the standard g is a high one.)

Because all four note names move by the same step, the chord shapes stay the same and the names change. Hold the shape you know as C and a baritone gives you a G chord.

Playing alone, this hardly matters. Read a standard song sheet, use the shapes you know, and the whole song simply comes out lower. It matters when you play with other people. If everyone is reading a C chord and you play your C shape on a baritone, you are playing G against their C. To play along you learn the baritone names for your shapes, so that a written C sends your fingers to 2 0 1 0.

If you already play guitar, none of this is new. Baritone chords are guitar chords with the two lowest strings left off.

The tuner in Lazy Lopez: Ukulele has a Baritone preset alongside Standard and Low-G, and when the tuner is set to baritone the app's chord library renames itself to match: the same shapes, called what they actually sound like.

How to choose

If you can get to a shop, hold each size for a minute and play one chord on it. Comfort tells you more than a description can. If you are choosing from a distance, these are fair starting points:

• You want the classic sound, or something small to carry around. Soprano.
• Your fingers feel crowded on a soprano. Concert or tenor. The extra space between frets makes three-finger chords easier to fit.
• You are drawn to fingerpicking and melody playing. Tenor is a common choice, for the room on the neck and the fuller tone.
• You play guitar, or you want a deeper voice. Baritone, knowing that most ukulele lessons and song sheets are written for g-C-E-A.
• You have no idea. A concert sits in the middle on size and sound, and it is hard to go wrong with one.

Whichever you choose, the first steps are the same: get it in tune, then learn a few easy chords. The right size is the one you keep picking up.