Rainbow Music Ukulele Map
People learn ukulele & music theory differently, so I was interested to find the Rainbow Music site, which offers free on-line music lessons, basing learning round colour-coded musical notes.
Although you need to register to access the members’ area, once you’ve done so there is plenty to see & practice without needing to buy their paid-for resources:
- You can be guided through a number of daily music lessons for a basic week’s course.
- They explain notes, scales, chords & keys in a simple way & have some easy to use interactive features that let you try these out.
- The colour-coding is a nice visual aid to help those new to learning music.
- I found the way everything is counted in half-note intervals might confuse folk used to conventional music notation – but if you’re just starting off it’s a good way to get going, as they seem to be showing the ‘proper’ numbering alongside their own teaching numbers.
- The interactive uke fretboard has a number of pleasing features – you can click on any note on the fretboard to find out its name; click on any note name to find all instances of that wherever it appears; build up chords by clicking on the notes they contain (eg for C major – click on C, E & G to see where those notes are & work out the many ways you can play the same chord up the neck of the uke); build up scales in a similar way.
- As we’ve been discussing movable chords recently in our club nights, this might help folk piece that together if they don’t quite understand the theory yet.
Certainly a site worth playing around with to boost your music theory knowledge, especially if you’ve been struggling with some of the other, more formal, sites.
Other PLUC music theory postings.
Other quizzes.
People of Lewisham's Ukulele Club 