25 ukuleles or guitars, a 45-minute lesson – and ten minutes go on tuning? It doesn’t have to be that way. With a little organisation the class sounds clean quickly, and the children learn to tune on their own along the way. General tips for lessons are in Instrumental classes at school.
Before the lesson
- If the instruments stay at school, you or a helper tune them in advance – for example during the break before. Instruments stored in the same room hold their tuning better.
- Pre-stretch new strings: after fitting, tune each string, gently pull it away from the fretboard and retune, several times. That saves weeks of constant retuning.
- If the instruments come in from the cold, let them warm up in the room for a few minutes before tuning.
Tuning stations
Set up three or four stations with a tablet or phone running the tuner. The children come in turn while the others have a quiet task – for example finding a chord from the song sheet or tapping a rhythm softly on their knees. Quiet matters: a microphone-based tuner hears less well in a noisy room.
To the tuner- Tuning helpers: children who can already tune confidently become helpers at a station. A little “tuning certificate” for tuning on their own three times is motivating.
- Clip-on tuners: small tuners clipped to the instrument’s headstock pick up the vibration directly and work even when it’s noisy.
The right peg
The most common stumbling block: a child plucks one string and turns the peg of another. A coloured dot on each peg with the same colour at the string end can help. The app’s tuner also notices when turning doesn’t change the plucked string at all, and then gives a hint.
A listening check at the end
Finally, have each child strum a simple chord in turn, such as C on the ukulele or Em on the guitar. An instrument that isn’t in tune yet stands out at once – without anyone having to judge it in front of the class: “Let’s quickly retune that together.”