Fingerpicking With The Ukulele Fool

At this time of year you’ll spot a number of interesting new resources to help your playing. This one is a free twenty-one day fingerpicking video course from Lisa, The Ukulele Fool. Learn different fingerpicking patterns and techniques with songs such as Amazing Grace and House Of The Rising Sun. Sign up here.

The Ukulele Fool – check out her YouTube Channel https://m.youtube.com/c/TheUkuleleFool

 

New Uke For Xmas (2021)

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:

• Two useful free guides for beginners can be found from Ukulele Hunt‘s Alistair Wood – So You’ve Just Got Your First Ukulele & Ukulele Tricks‘ Brett McQueen – Your First Ukulele Lesson and Then Some.
• 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:

Day & Summary	Day & Summary
01 –  Helmut Bickel – Fingerstyle	02 – New Uke For Xmas – Useful sources
03 – Bernadette’s 30 Day Challenge	04 – Songs & Songbooks – eg MUJ
05 – James Hill’s Uketropolis	06 – Danno Sullivan – Play It Daily
07 – Cynthia Lin – Tutorials	08 – Phil Doleman’s Two Minute Tips
09 – Samantha Muir – Classical Uke	10 – Ten Thumbs Productions – Tutorials
11 – Richard Hefner – ezFolk Lessons	12 – Stuart Fuchs  – Tips & Tutorials

• 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.

Good luck & happy strumming!

Jeanette

 

New Uke For Xmas (2020)

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:

• Two useful free guides for beginners can be found from Ukulele Hunt‘s Alistair Wood – So You’ve Just Got Your First Ukulele & Ukulele Tricks‘ Brett McQueen – Your First Ukulele Lesson and Then Some.
• 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:

Day & Summary	Day & Summary
01 –  Helmut Bickel – Fingerstyle	02 – New Uke For Xmas – Useful sources
03 – Bernadette’s 30 Day Challenge	04 – Songs & Songbooks – eg MUJ
05 – James Hill’s Uketropolis	06 – Danno Sullivan – Play It Daily
07 – Cynthia Lin – Tutorials	08 – Phil Doleman’s Two Minute Tips
09 – Samantha Muir – Classical Uke	10 – Ten Thumbs Productions – Tutorials
11 – Richard Hefner – ezFolk Lessons	12 – Stuart Fuchs  – Tips & Tutorials

• 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.

Good luck & happy strumming!

Jeanette

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

Phil Doleman, familiar to many as a mainstay of nearly every uke festival, has been busy during lockdown recording a pile of new tutorial videos. 

In addition to his playlists of handy Two Minute Tips and growing selection of Ukulele Lessons, there are now a number of Intros, Vamps & Endings videos. There is a pile of free resources to accompany these on his website, along with his clearly-written books, CDs and Patreon pages, all especially useful while you can’t catch him performing or teaching in person. 

The mini workshop here shows you how to play all over the ukulele neck with just four shapes. Phil explains how to use this knowledge to be able to create a couple of hundred different chords! As always, he’s very practical and describes how to incorporate these into your regular playing, rather than just trying to learn everything he’s told you by rote – which isn’t the way to learn musically:

 

To supplement this, you might also like to view Phil’s YouTube of Learning The Fretboard Notes Quickly & Easily or how to combine the two to make your moveable chords using a fretboard diagram.

 

New Uke For Xmas (2019)

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:

• Two useful free guides for beginners can be found from Ukulele Hunt‘s Alistair Wood – So You’ve Just Got Your First Ukulele & Ukulele Tricks‘ Brett McQueen – Your First Ukulele Lesson and Then Some.
• 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:

Day & Summary	Day & Summary
01 –  Helmut Bickel – Fingerstyle	02 – New Uke For Xmas – Useful sources
03 – Bernadette’s 30 Day Challenge	04 – Songs & Songbooks – eg MUJ
05 – James Hill’s Ukulele Way	06 – Danno Sullivan – Play It Daily
07 – Cynthia Lin – Tutorials	08 – Phil Doleman’s Two Minute Tips
09 – Samantha Muir – Classical Uke	10 – Ten Thumbs Productions – Tutorials
11 – Richard Hefner – ezFolk Lessons	12 – Stuart Fuchs  – Tips & Tutorials

• 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.

Good luck & happy strumming!

Jeanette

 

UK Christmas Number Ones – 2015

The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir, from PLUC’s local NHS Trust, were responsible for 2015’s charity Xmas number one. Released after they were runners up in the BBC’s The Choir: Sing While You Work  and at a time of crisis for the NHS, A Bridge Over You combines two previous hits: the iconic Bridge Over Troubled Water (probably Simon & Garfunkel’s best-known hit) and Coldplay’s Fix You (used for various good causes, such as a tribute highlighting the aftermath of the 7/7 London Bombings in 2005).

Helmut Bickel gives one of his fingerstyle tutorials for Fix You.

Enjoy Paxukulele & Sunny performing Bridge Over Troubled Water:

More info on Wikipedia.

 

UK Christmas Number Ones – 1965

Two for the price of one today, with The Beatles’ double A-sided single Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out, released on 3 Dec 1965, the same day as their Rubber Soul album.

Day Tripper  – tutorial & free songsheet from Stu Fuchs. We Can Work It Out – chord melody video lesson from Craig Williams and chords from Ukulele Cheats.

Here’s Toast Garden:

And NewUkeNewYork:

More info on Day Tripper & We Can Work It Out Wikipedia entries.

 

UK Christmas Number Ones – 1992

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.

Here’s Brooke Palmer from The Uke Revolution with her simple playalong (PDF here):

More info on Wikipedia.

 

UK Christmas Number Ones – 1975 & 1991

The first song to be number one with the same version; the only two-time Xmas chart topper with the same version and one of only two UK number ones containing the word ‘fandango’ (put a comment below if you know the other – or I’ll give the answer in a few days!), Bohemian Rhapsody is arguably Queen’s best-known track.

Sam Laming provides a four-part tutorial (tabs provided from the second onwards):

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Here’s a rendition from Jake Shimabukuro:

More info on Wikipedia.

 

Carry On Campanella

A rather pretty style of playing ukulele is campanella (from the Italian for ‘little bell’), a way of picking which allows multiple strings to ring at the same time, creating a harp-like sound.

Jonathan Lewis devotes his site Jon’s Ukulele to campanella fingerstyle ukulele, including some interesting examples of Celtic, medieval, Baroque & folk tunes. He has a number of tutorials on there, including a useful free How To Play Campanella Ukulele guide. Many of his posts and YouTubes include a tab of his arrangement.

Recently he made the following free book available for circulation. It contains ten traditional tunes (some are known by different titles in various regions):

Campanella Ukulele: Ten Morris tunes now available to download for free (or a contribution if you insist). I may expand it at some point in the future but as I’ve been promising to publish the tabs for a long time I decided to release it now.
Here’s the link to Gumroad
Go to my YouTube to hear all of the tunes, there’s a playlist of Morris tunes

1. The Banks of the Dee
2. Brighton Camp
3. Bumpus O’Stretton
4. The Cuckoo’s Nest
5. Galopede
6. Lads a Bunchum
7. The Nutting Girl
8. Old Molly Oxford
9. The Princess Royal
10. Ribbon Dance

Here he is performing Brighton Camp (also known as The Girl I Left Behind Me & Waxie’s Dargle) :