PLUC – Lessons in The Limelight: Matt Stead

Matt Stead found that there were plenty of lessons out there for complete beginners, but not so much content for folk as they improved and wished to learn more advanced playing techniques. He decided to set up several series of free structured video courses, giving all the details you’d get from face-to-face lessons with him. He hopes to encourage people to learn those good habits at the very start that make your playing easier and stop you becoming bored by progressively honing your skills in fresh areas.

They are well worth investigating and would certainly help you spice up the tunes you do. Why not try out a couple a week in your practice to see what new methods you can accomplish over a few months?

• Ukulele For Beginners – Thirty videos taking you from choosing a size of uke, tuning up, holding a uke & whether to use a strap, playing different types of chords clearly, changing chords easily, how to strum correctly, working out how to strum to any tune (without learning lists of ‘strumming patterns’ by rote!), playing in waltz time (known as 3/4 time), using sheet music, making your playing more interesting with dynamics and swing, fingerstyle, intro to playing scales, learning the fretboard and picking out melodies by ear.

• Intermediate Ukulele – Twenty-five videos covering topics such as creating chord melody arrangements, adding percussive sounds to your strumming (eg chucks/chunks, muting and drumming), playing triplets, alternating thumb picking, accents & syncopation, twelve bar blues, mastering the E chord, hammer-ons/pull-offs/bends/slides, moveable chord shapes, soloing with pentatonic scales, transposing songs into different keys, circle of fifths, turnarounds and diminished chords.

• Ukulele Next Steps – This course is still in development but videos so far include jazzy chords, chord melody, creating two-part harmonies and three moveable chord shapes you can play all over the fretboard.

• Playing Up The Dusty End – Twenty-four videos showing you how to become more adventurous in your playing by using the possibilities of opening up the whole fretboard. Learn all the notes with simple tricks and melodies, improve your barre chords, use moveable chord shapes effectively, play jazzy songs, chord melodies and pentatonic scales across the fretboard to improvise and solo.

• Uke Theory – Thirty videos imparting useful skills that help you understand how music works. Unlock the fretboard by learning about the different scales – chromatic, major, minor & pentatonic, how chords are built, common chord progressions, twelve bar blues, circle of fifths, reading tablature (aka tab), using suspended & augmented chords (sus & aug), modes, intervals, time signatures and reading music.

Warm-up Exercises from Matt’s Beginners Ukulele Course – see his YouTube Channel for more.

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – Whole Wheel

Christopher Davis-Shannon, aka the Tinman, has a website with playalongs of old-time tunes as well as various tutorials and Uke Minutes with different tips and techniques, including singing whilst playing, practice exercises, strumming methods, picking patterns, chord melody, using a metronome and showboating tricks:.

His latest YouTube series 12 Keys In 12 Weeks (#12Keys12weeks) gets you playing a different scale each week. He provides a number of exercises, including a little melody up the scale for each one using broken – arpeggiated – chords that ‘fit’ within that key by containing just notes from that specific scale (known as a chord family).

In the first video, below, he is demonstrating C major – check the original YouTube page for links in the description for his free worksheets (and more detailed lessons on scales and chords within them). As he progresses, he’s starting to add in different chord voicings to get you to follow the melody notes and play further up the neck. By the end of the series you should be more confident at playing in any key.

Should you want to understand a little more how he arrives at the chords for each scale, have a quick look at a Circle of Fifths.

If you’re playing in the key of C major, take all the chords nearest C on the wheel in a little ‘L’ shape. These chords are made up from the same notes that you’ll find in that specific scale. Go through the letters alphabetically from C right round to C again to get the whole scale.

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – C Major Chord Family

 

When playing chords in this key, the letters on the outside are major chords, the ones on the inside are minor ones and the one out on the leg of the ‘L’ is a diminished chord (dim7 or sometimes written as °):

C major – D minor – E minor – F major – G major – A minor – B dim – C major

 

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – G Major Chord Family

 

 

 

For G major, you’ll get: G major – A minor – B minor – C major – D major – E minor – F# dim – G major

 

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – D Major Chord Family

 

 

 

 

For D major, you’ll get: D major – E minor – F# minor – G major – A major – B minor – C# dim – D major

 

And so on, round the wheel in the same way for each different key.

 

 

See more of our posts covering improving your chord playing; musical keys, the PLUC Transposing Tool and other PLUC Weekend Workouts. Original Circle of Fifths diagram from Wikipedia’s public domain images.

Here’s Christopher, with the first video in the series – C major:

 

Chord A Day

Csus4 ukulele chord – 31 Jan (Photo credit: Ukulele Chords)

Fancy learning a new chord every day? Then hop over to Curt Sheller’s All Things Ukulele site.

There are also a number of other useful free resources on there – including lots of lessons covering chords, techniques, learning the fingerboard, strumming, finger-picking, scales, rhythm, ear-training & songs.

Jeanette

 

PLUCking Ukes – Striking A Chord

learning chords (Photo credit: khrawlings)

Especially when you are new to playing or are learning a tune with some unfamiliar chords, you often find it’s useful having the chord diagrams to hand on your songsheet. To save you drawing them on freehand, here are a few of our members’ tips:

• Colin recommends the self-inking five-fret blank ukulele chord stamp bought recently from Shropshire firm Pencraft. He found it invaluable when going through his songbooks putting the songs into 2nd and 3rd positions. They do two sizes for ukes & each currently costs £10 plus £3 p&p. At present, they include a free Wheel of Fifths and a Ukulele World DVD with every order.

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

Ear Training: Loud music warning campaign (Photo credit: .m for matthijs)

Theta Music Trainer has a huge variety of different music training games on their site. You can sign in for free & play the first few levels of all their ear training games without paying for a subscription, which gives you access to the higher levels.

Topics include Scales, Intervals, Melody, Chords, Chord Progressions, Theory & Notation, Rhythm, Tuning & Pitch and Sound. If you have a microphone, you can even test your singing! Just playing regularly for a few minutes at a time will help improve your listening skills.

Other quizzes include: PLUC Weekend Workout – EarMaster Reference Songs For Intervals; PLUC Weekend Workout – On-line Ear Trainer; PLUC Weekend Workout – Speak Ukulele Challenge!; PLUC Weekend Workout – memrise on-line courses; PLUC Weekend Workout – Flashcard Machine; PLUC Weekend Workout – Music Reading Knowledge; A Question Of Uke – TV & Movie Themes; PLUC Weekend Workout – Fretboard Master Game; PLUC Weekend Workout – Guitarator Chord Quiz; PLUC Weekend Workout – Vocal Match Game