Baritone Ukulele article
A Guide to Baritone Ukulele
The largest common ukulele size, explained properly — its tuning, its history, and the guitar-like sound that sets it apart.
There's a particular kind of hush that falls over a folk session when someone pulls out a baritone ukulele instead of the usual soprano — a deeper, rounder voice that sits somewhere between a ukulele and a small guitar. It's the largest of the common ukulele sizes, and it plays by slightly different rules to its smaller relatives. Here's what makes it what it is.
What Makes a Ukulele "Baritone"?
Size and tuning, mostly. A baritone ukulele has a longer scale — around 19 inches, noticeably more than a soprano or concert — and a body built to match, giving it more volume and a fuller low end. But the real defining feature is how it's tuned: D–G–B–E, from the lowest string to the highest, which happens to be exactly the same pitches as the top four strings of a guitar.
DGBE: The Tuning That Changes Everything
Most ukuleles use re-entrant tuning, where the fourth string is actually tuned higher than the third, giving that familiar bright, jangly ukulele sound. The baritone breaks from that entirely. Its tuning is linear — each string genuinely lower than the one above it — which is why it sounds so much more like a small guitar than a scaled-down soprano. It also means a standard GCEA chord chart simply won't produce the same chord on a baritone; you need charts written specifically for DGBE.
How It Compares to the Rest of the Family
| Size | Typical tuning | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | Re-entrant GCEA | Bright, classic ukulele sound |
| Concert | Re-entrant GCEA | Slightly fuller, still bright |
| Tenor | Re-entrant or linear GCEA | Warmer, more volume |
| Baritone | Linear DGBE | Deep, guitar-like, mellow |
A Later Arrival in the Ukulele Story
The ukulele itself grew out of small Portuguese string instruments carried to Hawaii by immigrants in the late nineteenth century, with the soprano becoming the size everyone recognises. The baritone came along much later, taking shape through the 1940s to 1960s as makers looked for a larger, lower-voiced format that would feel more familiar to players coming from guitar.
A Sound of Its Own
What you get is something that sits comfortably between a conventional ukulele and a small acoustic guitar — mellow, warm and surprisingly versatile for fingerstyle playing, singer-songwriter accompaniment, folk, country and gentle acoustic pop. It fills a genuinely useful middle ground rather than simply being "a bigger ukulele".
Who Tends to Take to It
Guitarists usually feel immediately at home, since the tuning matches strings they already know. Ukulele players moving up from soprano or concert sizes should expect a short adjustment period while their fingers learn that familiar chord shapes now sound different. Either way, a baritone ukulele rewards patience rather than punishing beginners, and the slightly wider fret spacing that comes with its longer scale tends to feel welcoming rather than daunting once you're used to it.
Taking It Further
If you're ready to actually buy one, our buyer's guide covers what to look for properly, our step-by-step setup guide walks through tuning it correctly for the first time, and if you're brand new to the instrument entirely, our beginner's guide is the gentler starting point.
The Bottom Line
The baritone ukulele isn't simply the biggest option in the family — it's a genuinely different instrument in feel and tuning, one that borrows as much from the guitar as it does from its smaller ukulele cousins. That's exactly why it's carved out such a devoted following of its own.
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