Beginner guide

How to Tune a Cavaquinho

Updated 2026 · 6 minute read · By Cavaquinho Online

If you have just picked up a cavaquinho, tuning is the first wall you hit — and the most common reason a beginner thinks they are playing a chord wrong when the chord is actually fine. A cavaquinho that drifts out of tune makes even a correct shape sound sour.

The good news is that four steel strings take less than a minute to tune once you know the target notes. This guide covers the standard tuning, how to use a free online tuner, how to get close by ear with no tools at all, and the two things most English-speaking players get wrong because they assume a cavaquinho behaves like a ukulele.

What exactly is a cavaquinho?

The cavaquinho is a small four-string instrument from Portugal that became central to Brazilian music. In a samba circle it is the harmonic engine: while the percussion carries the rhythm and the seven-string guitar walks the bass, the cavaquinho fills the middle with chords and syncopated attacks.

It is roughly the size of a soprano ukulele, but the resemblance stops at the silhouette. The cavaquinho has steel strings, which give it a bright, cutting, almost mandolin-like voice, and it is played with a pick rather than fingers in most Brazilian styles.

The standard tuning, string by string

Hold the instrument in playing position. The string closest to your face is the 4th; the one closest to the floor is the 1st.

Brazilians call this tuning DGBD or, spelled out in solfège, Ré-Sol-Si-Ré. You will see both written on Brazilian chord sheets and in the diagrams on this site.

Notice that the outer strings are both D. That doubling is not an accident: it lets a four-string instrument sound fuller than it has any right to, because the root of many common chords rings twice, an octave apart.

Tuning with the online tuner

1. Open the tuner and allow your browser to use the microphone. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere — the analysis happens in your browser.
2. Sit somewhere reasonably quiet and hold the instrument close to the microphone.
3. Pluck the 4th string alone and let it ring. The tuner shows the note it hears and how far off you are.
4. Turn the tuning peg slowly until the display reads D and the needle sits in the centre.
5. Repeat for G, B and the high D.
6. Go around a second time. Steel strings pull on the neck, so tuning the fourth string changes the first slightly.

Tuning by ear, with no tuner at all

If you have one reference note — a piano, a phone app, another instrument — you can tune the whole cavaquinho from it using the fretboard itself.

1. Tune the 4th string to D from your reference.
2. Press the 4th string at the 5th fret. That gives you G. Tune the open 3rd string to match it.
3. Press the 3rd string at the 4th fret. That gives you B. Tune the open 2nd string to match.
4. Press the 2nd string at the 3rd fret. That gives you D. Tune the open 1st string to match.
5. Check the two D strings together — they should sound like the same note in two registers, with no beating or wobble between them.

That last check is the most useful ear training a beginner can do. When two notes an octave apart are slightly off, you hear a pulsing wah-wah-wah. The closer they get, the slower the pulse. When it disappears, you are in tune.

Cavaquinho vs ukulele: the mistake to avoid

They look like cousins, and historically they are — the ukulele descends from the Portuguese machete, which sits on the same family tree as the cavaquinho. Portuguese immigrants carried the machete to Hawaii in the 1870s and the ukulele grew out of it.

But they are not interchangeable, and two differences matter the moment you start playing.

Two practical consequences. First, do not put nylon strings on a cavaquinho or steel strings on a ukulele — the instruments are built for different tension, and you risk damaging the neck or the top. Second, ukulele chord charts will not work: the same shape produces a different chord because the tuning is different.

If your cavaquinho came from Portugal

This is worth checking before you fight with your instrument. The cavaquinho is Portuguese by birth, and Portugal never settled on a single tuning. Portuguese sources describe several regional traditions — a Braga tuning often written as G-G-B-D, a Coimbra tuning of E-A-B-D, and others — and none of them is the Brazilian D-G-B-D.

The practical point: if you bought the instrument in Portugal, or learned from a Portuguese player, confirm which tradition you are in before assuming the chord diagrams on this site apply. Everything here is written for the Brazilian D-G-B-D tuning used in samba and choro.

Common problems

Going further

Resources from Cavaquinho Online

A note of honesty: the material below is written in Portuguese. Chord diagrams and fretboard maps are language-independent and work for anyone, but the explanations are not translated. Many readers of this page are Brazilians living abroad, so it is here for them.

Our own book

Guia Prático do Cavaquinho

Chord dictionary with 72 chords, full fretboard map, samba and pagode strumming patterns and a 30-day practice plan. Paperback and Kindle on Amazon. In Portuguese.

Sheet collection

350 simplified songs for cavaquinho

Repertoire in simplified chord sheets, using only major, minor and seventh chords. Comes with a chord dictionary and video support.

Full course

Victor Cazzoli · from zero to pagode

Seven modules, around 150 video lessons, from the first chord to playing along in a samba circle. 30-day guarantee.

Affiliate disclosure: the two links marked Sheet collection and Full course are affiliate links. If you buy through them, Cavaquinho Online earns a commission at no extra cost to you. This does not change what we write here.

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