Learning The Ukulele - Seven Top Tips
Learning The Ukulele - Seven Top Tips
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The ukulele is a great instrument to learn. The basics are really easy to pick up. It's particularly suited to young children, with its diminutive size, and will teach a number of skills that translate to other instruments, particularly the guitar. To get you started on your journey, here are ten tips that will kick start your ukulele playing.
Take the time to tune up properly. Because it's short, it can be quite hard to get the Ukulele for sale in uk in tune. But it has to be done. If your ukulele is out of tune, you WILL sound terrible. There are plenty of tools online to help you to do this. My particular favourite is the AP Tuner.
That's because the chords you're playing are in one key and the song was recorded/written in another. Why? Because oftentimes, the chords you find in fake books, song sheets and online sites are transposed into a key that's easy for beginners, like the key of C. The chord progression is the same but the key is different. That's why it sounds fine when you're singing and playing the song by yourself but not fine when you play along with the recorded version.
If you are not sure how the strings should sound, you are better off to use an electronic tuner to tune your ukulele. This way you can be sure that the instrument is properly in tune. Once you have been playing the instrument for a while, you will then know how to tune by ear. There are many different electronic tuners available on the market today. They are normally called chromatic tuners and they are not very expensive.
You can play and sing at the same time - As adults, many of us become nervous and almost ashamed of singing. Children have no such problem and love to sing. Teaching them to play a wind instrument such as the recorder prevents them singing. Similarly, a piano is too loud and will overwhelm the child's voice. Give a child a Ukulele and they'll be singing and strumming before you know it.
There are only four strings on the Ukulele for sale, so there's a tendency amongst ukulele players to make sure that every one counts. Most guitarists are quite happy with three-note major and minor chords. Since I started playing the ukulele my knowledge of how chords are formed and how they can be manipulated to create new and interesting sounds.
The best way to pick up on these chord variations is to listen to the melody. It's often easier to work out single notes than it is full chords. If you can figure out how to play the melody, all the better. Melody notes are often picked up on in the chords. So if you can find Ukulele these notes, they will help you find those subtle chord variations.
After making five albums with Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder was hit by writer's block. The guitar didn't inspire him any more. So he picked up a ukulele and wrote Soon Forget. Writing this song kick his song writing back into gear and the song went on to appear on Binaural. Report this page