PLUC Weekend Workout

Our newest member, Dave, recently found this useful YouTube which gives a number of simple – but deceptively challenging! – finger independence exercises, from Rob MacKillop.

It’s a short sequence which will help you develop dexterity in your fingers and also, importantly, train your hand to relax & only use as much pressure as needed in forming chords. Dave’s been using this about a week & says it’s definitely helping to loosen up his hand for the tunes he is trying to learn.

More PLUC Weekend Workouts.

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PLUC Weekend Workout

Escape the first four frets of your ukulele with the first in a new series of tutorials from Ukulele Russ. Here he shows you how to move up the C major shape, complete with a couple of song examples:

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

Tamás Gáll has just developed a new chord training site called It’s Chordtime, which allows you to change chords to a regular metronome tempo and help become a smoother player.

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

Want to brush up on your knowledge of the fretboard? Need to know how to relate written music to the notes you play? Then head over to Tom Potts’ handy Ukulele Note Finder tool.

All you need to do is hover over a position on the fretboard & it’ll tell you where else you’ll find notes of the same pitch (ie octave) elsewhere on other strings. Or, if you are looking at a piece of music, go to the bottom of the screen, find the note on the stave you have to identify, & it gives you your various playing options on the fretboard.

In the example below, you can see there are four high Cs (C5) on a standard gCEA-tuned 12 fret instrument. The open C string is an octave lower –  C4 / middle C. Use the various search boxes on the right hand side of the PLUC site pages to look up more articles, tools & tips from us about very basic understanding of music, notes & fretboards if this is all unfamiliar to you!

Tom’s Ukulele Note Finder (http://www.permanentleisureltd.co.uk/music/Ukulele.html)

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

Uke Nut is an interesting blog, covering various ukulele resources, including links to a selection of fingerstyle tunes & practice drills. Amongst the instructional postings are some links to a useful site of tools – MusicTheory.net.

Uke Nut has customised the Fretboard Memorisation Tool for a standard gCEA-tuned uke. Use it to practice identifying the notes up to the 10th fret. This will help you develop your skills, including helping you form moveable chords more readily.

Ukulele Fretboard Memorization Tool from MusicTheory.net, customised by Uke Nut

 

More PLUC fretboard-related, moveable chord & quiz posts.

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

Yet another free courses website is ALISON. There are over 300 courses available, including an Introduction To Music Theory.

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

Yhancik’s LastGraph – Rainbow Music Soundwaves (Photo credit: yhancik)

Try Hooktheory’s daily ear training challenges to see if you can identify the notes or chords in a song. There are three levels: beginners, intermediate & advanced. See if you can top the leaderboard for solving the puzzle accurately & quickly.

Other PLUC music theory postings.

Other quizzes include: A Question of Uke – TV & Movie Themes; PLUC Weekend Workout – Flashcard Machine Ukulele Chords; PLUC Weekend Workout – Theta Music Trainer; PLUC Weekend Workout – memrise on-line courses; PLUC Weekend Workout – Speak Ukulele Challenge!; PLUC Weekend Workout – On-line Ear Trainer; PLUC Weekend Workout – EarMaster Reference Songs For Intervals; PLUC Weekend Workout – Music Tech Teacher; PLUC Weekend Workout – Fretboard Master Game; PLUC Weekend Workout – Guitarator Chord Quiz; PLUC Weekend Workout – Vocal Match Game; PLUC Weekend Workout – Open University Intro To Music Theory