If you’ve got a new ukulele for Christmas or are considering taking up playing one, you’ll soon find there are lots of on-line resources to help you, whatever your level:
In 2018 we published a Twelve Days Of Ukemas guide to give you different things to try out over the holiday period, recommending some of the most useful sites and reliable tutors, suitable from total novice to intermediate & advanced players, and in many styles of playing, teaching & music genres. Check out each day for much more detail:
Have a general look around this website, as we pick out a wide selection of our favourite tools & tips, on-line uke lessons, songbooks, chords, music theory, forums, equipment & other website resources. In particular, my musings on what helped me when I first got my uke as a complete beginner may prove a useful summary if you’re totally new to playing.
Joining a local group is always a boost – whether you are a beginner, improver or expert player. Due to the pandemic, this might not be an option face-to-face currently – but look out for the many online gigs, strumalongs, lessons and festivals that are happening wordwide from groups, tutors and performers.
If you need advice on buying an instrument, Barry Maz has a wealth of independent reviews on Got A Ukulele as well as other handy info to help get you started.
One of the nice things that’s happened throughout the various lockdowns is that many uke groups and performers have set up regular online strumalongs and workshops, which are open to people wherever they are round the world.
The latest to get in touch with us has been Gregory Gent from Ukulele Gent:
Hi. If any of your uke friends are looking for a fun play-along, we do one every Wednesday at 7pm Eastern Standard Time (midnight GMT). We bring in guest teachers/performers, use percussion on some songs, teach new strums, and always have the chords/lyrics scrolling on the screen.
Each show is recorded and also uploaded to YouTube. We’ve had some really great guests (ie Victoria Vox, Stu Fuchs, Lil’ Rev), so people can go back and watch the tips and tricks from the guests as well.
If you’ve got a new ukulele for Christmas or are considering taking up playing one, you’ll soon find there are lots of on-line resources to help you, whatever your level:
In 2018 we published a Twelve Days Of Ukemas guide to give you different things to try out over the holiday period, recommending some of the most useful sites and reliable tutors, suitable from total novice to intermediate & advanced players, and in many styles of playing, teaching & music genres. Check out each day for much more detail:
Have a general look around this website, as we pick out a wide selection of our favourite tools & tips, on-line uke lessons, songbooks, chords, music theory, forums, equipment & other website resources. In particular, my musings on what helped me when I first got my uke as a complete beginner may prove a useful summary if you’re totally new to playing.
Joining a local group is always a boost – whether you are a beginner, improver or expert player. Due to the pandemic, this might not be an option face-to-face currently – but look out for the many online gigs, strumalongs, lessons and festivals that are happening wordwide from groups, tutors and performers.
If you need advice on buying an instrument, Barry Maz has a wealth of independent reviews on Got A Ukulele as well as other handy info to help get you started.
UkeAbility – Select the chords you know & be shown tunes with just those in.
UkeAbility has a nice twist on the standard playalong site!
You’re presented with a page of chord diagrams. Click to select the chords you know & you’ll be given a list of the tunes they have containing just those ones.
It’s interesting to look through & note which chords you can play without any thought – & likely to be far more that you expected! Scan through a second time: you’ll spot chords you do actually know, either through using them in context in a song you perform regularly or just ones you use occasionally & might need a little memory jog to recall.
Also, most of the moveable chords aren’t on there so, once you’re able to use those, that increases your repertoire up the fretboard giving you new voicings for familiar chords. Thus, if you know three ways to play C that gives you an even larger number of chords at your fingertips.
UkeAbility – If you select 3 chords, they have 72 songs you can play
If you’ve got a new ukulele for Christmas or are considering taking up playing one, you’ll soon find there are lots of on-line resources to help you, whatever your level:
Last year we published a Twelve Days Of Ukemas guide to give you different things to try out over the holiday period, recommending some of the most useful sites and reliable tutors, suitable from total novice to intermediate & advanced players, and in many styles of playing, teaching & music genres. Check out each day for much more detail:
Have a general look around this website, as we pick out a wide selection of our favourite tools & tips, on-line uke lessons, songbooks, chords, music theory, forums, equipment & other website resources. In particular, my musings on what helped me when I first got my uke as a complete beginner may prove a useful summary if you’re totally new to playing.
Joining a local group is always a boost – whether you are a beginner, improver or expert player. We’re a very friendly club based in Lewisham which meets every Tuesday for free jamming sessions. Everyone is welcome & we pride ourselves from having members from all over London, Kent & Surrey. We’re back strumming in the New Year from Tue 7 Jan 2020.Contact us for more details.
If you aren’t near Lewisham, do check out the Mighty Ukulele for Londonwide gigs, events & UK clubs or Uke Hunt’s extensive clubs & groups listings covering UK & Ireland; Europe; USA & Canada and Australia & New Zealand for a local group.
If you need advice on buying an instrument, Barry Maz has a wealth of independent reviews on Got A Ukulele as well as a schedule of uke festivals and other handy info to help get you started.
Penned by Dolly Parton, who wisely refused to give it to Elvis Presley to sing because he wanted half her songwriting royalties, Whitney Houston‘s 1992 cover of I Will Always Love You became a hit after it was used in the film The Bodyguard.
Part of the Magical Mystery Tour film, that was originally slated by critics when first broadcast over Christmas 1967, Hello, Goodbye has the more psychedelic I Am The Walrus as its flip side.
There are a growing number of podcasts out there, including some specific to ukuleles and others covering all types of music theory. The twice-weekly Musicality Podcast (brought to you by the people who run the Musical-U community music training website) is having a Beatles Month for April.
Through a series of interviews they will be talking to different people and analysing how & why the songs worked; the relationship between music & lyrics; production techniques; how a tribute act goes about reproducing those Beatles sounds and much more.
On the practical side, people are asked to remind themselves of the active listening techniques covered in a previous podcast – which is a great way of encouraging you to pay more attention to the music around you each day and put your musician skills to use in actually noting the instruments being played in a tune, song structures, rhythms, chord progressions etc – and pick three Beatles songs to consider in detail. There will be a live chat session later in the month.
Another exercise suggested on the forums are to make yourself a song interval chart (ie a way to help you recognise the gaps between two notes) consisting purely of Beatle numbers.
For Day Eleven, why not try a bit of folk & country music? Richard Hefner’s ezFolk site is another one with masses of free information, from beginners to advanced.
People of Lewisham's Ukulele Club 