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Hey, how you doing? Justine here!
Today we're gonna do a lesson on getting started on a Ukulele.
Great fun little instrument these are.
I’ve only been playing a few months but it’s really really good fun.
If you play a bit of guitar, the skills kinda transfer over pretty easy.
That's kind of a cool thing!
And if you’ve never played a musical instrument before
it’s a nice little starter one this one.
It's got nylon strings so it's easy on the fingers.
The chords are pretty simple to play.
Small, portable - great for parties you know
it’s a really good little instrument
In this lesson I want to show you
how to tune that thing,
how to hold it, how to strum it and I show you
four really simple chords
and give you some progressions to put those chords in
so you can play some tunes.
That’s the aim of our little lesson today.
So first thing, getting your Uke in tune.
Really really important, nylon strings tend to go out of tune a bit.
So I would recommend getting something like a clip on tuner
or something that is there all the time.
So you can tune up really quick you know
rather than having to get a tuner out and do all of that sort of stuff.
Either a little clip-on tuner.
This particular Uke has a built-in tuner,
This is a Maton Ukulele Australian Guitar Company
makes great instruments all around you want to check them out its Maton.
Maton.com.au is their website.
If your looking for a uke this is a great one.
Doesn’t matter what one you do this one as I should mention is a concert size Uke.
There's a soprano Uke which is a lot smaller - same tuning.
Although sometimes they tune the smaller ones up a tone from what
I'm going to show you. And there is a couple of bigger ones as well
this one is a concert one if you want to get one of this size.
So the tuning is C, oh sorry, G, C, E, A
and it seems to be commonly called when I looked it up “My dog has flees “
I don’t know where they get that name from
But you can hear that the fourth string which is the one closest to the ceiling
is actually the highest note.
So it’s kinda high - low - getting higher
It’s going from the top down okay you know I mean physically down
The string closest to the floor is the one I call the first string
So first string, second string, third string and fourth string
So from the ground it would be A, E, C and G
and from the ceiling down G, C, E, A. Okay?
Now like I said I really recommend that you get a tuner
If you don’t have a tuner
I'm gonna play the notes for you now so you can tune up
So, this would be the top string or string four. It’s the note G.
Okay, and now to the third string just the note C. It’s the lowest note on the Uke
And to the second string which is the note E
And now to the first string, the one closest to the ground, the note A
Okay, so when you pick it up and strum it.
“My dog has flees” that’s what you want to be hearing. Okay.
So that’s first really important thing getting your Uke in tune
Second thing - holding the Uke. Now
It makes sense to me that you should be stable not supported by this hand
so that means I have to support it with this hand
But just supporting it with this hand
and leaving this one free means I've got to hold it so tight
I can't strum very freely and that’s no good
and if I just support it with this hand then I can’t change chords
So really it’s a bit of balancing act where
Some of the weight of the neck is held by your hand that is fretting the chords
which is quite different to guitar
On guitar you would never be holding the neck
The neck should just be completely stationary
and it does make changing chords a little trickier
when you have to support the neck a little bit, Okay?
and otherwise it’s just your forearm kind of holding the Uke down
I have seen a few people talk about being able to hold the Uke like that
and play quite freely but I haven't been able to get it together that quickly
so it might be difficult for you too
one thing I do find - especially for the very first time - I just rested the Uke in my lap
like it was a guitar and now my strumming hand feels quite free
and I’m not going to hold the neck up so much
So you might want to try that as well
Doesn’t really matter whichever way you really want to do it.
you going to be holding it up quite high it's not like a guitar
where you would be playing it right down on your lap that feels pretty weird
So going to have it a little bit further up
So it really is what’s comfortable for you
If I was going to play it standing up I would almost certainly use a strap
It’s so light and small you could use a bit of string
It wouldn’t be big deal
So generally, you’re just using you’re forearm to hold the Uke against your body
and a little bit of support from the left hand.
The first thing you want to get sorted out, is just how you going to hold it
Now strumming - normally with Uke you strum with your first finger
There are other techniques, you could do fingerstyle and all sorts of stuff
To start off with you want to be just using your first finger
and interestingly you strum kind of around where the neck meets the body of the Uke
It’s not like a guitar where your back here
it’s more here
Now I recommend just starting off, just doing four down strums
with your first finger
and then get used to doing some up strokes and
make sure your fingers not getting caught in the strings
and going down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up
A really common kind of pattern could be like
one, two, and three and four, down - down up - down up - down, that kind of a pattern
Works really great on the Uke
But there’s lot s of different kind of strumming patterns
you can use - like on the guitar
that's one of the things you want to be studying as you progress
is learning different strumming patterns
and different ways of playing them
To start of with, don’t feel stress
just first finger strumming around the joint of the neck
and the body of the Uke strumming it up and down
That’s all you need to really be worrying about
To start off with
So let's get to a close up and check out your first four chords
The first chord where looking at is a C chord
And all we need to do to play a C chord is to put our third finger
in the third fret of string one
The string one is the one closest to the ground. Okay?
so - open , open, open, third fret
This is a C chord
Okay. Very very easy
Okay now the really really easy one - A minor
All we need to do is put that second finger
in the second fret of the top string or string four
Okay. So it's second - open - open - open
Just make sure your second finger is not laying over
and muting the third string
Nicely using the tips of your fingers
that would be an A minor chord.
C (plucking the chord)
Am (plucking the chord)
From A minor we can get to F really easy
I know the F chord on guitar is a bit of nightmare. But on the Uke,
all you do is to start with A minor
you put your first finger down in the first fret of the second string
and you leave your second finger down
You got second fret, open, first fret, open, and we got an F chord.
Okay, so start with the first finger first fret, second string
second finger, second fret, fourth string
The one we got that's an F Chord
Okay and the last chord we look at today is this one
and this one is a G chord. I can here some of you guitar players say
no it’s a D chord! Well, it looks like a D chord but on the Uke its a G chord
open, first finger is going in the second fret of the third string
third finger is going in the third fret of the second string
and the second finger is going down in the second fret of the first string
Okay, first finger,
second finger
third finger
(plucking G chord)
Okay, this is a G chord
So we got C
Am
F
G
(plucking C, Am, F ...)
I recommend doing that as a little exercise
to getting used to those chords,
C
Am
F
G
and back to C
Just using those four chords that we learned, there are hundreds
and I actually mean hundreds of songs that you can play
Now all you want to do is to start off learning some chord sequences
I cant teach you the actual songs and name them
because the I get into copyright problems, I got to get clearances
it gets all complicated
So I'll put a list of songs upon the website, okay
and use this particular chords because I can get away with that.
So the first really common chord sequence
that you going to get
is going from the C chord
to the G chord
to the A minor
and to the F
C
G
Am
to F
I’m using my thumb here just because it's really easy for me to hold the Uke.
and kinda strum with my thumb. You probably want to use your first finger
(strumming with first finger)
Okay. C, G, A minor, to F, okay
This chord sequence is used so much it's insane
You might have seen the Axis of Awesome doing these little four chords
in a medley of different songs that used it
So this is that chord sequence right
So if you want to dig that video out and check out all the songs that they do
Again you can google it and I'll put a list up on my website
that chord sequence, actually called a 1-5-6-4..Okay, 1-5-6-4
that’s the name of chord sequence
But there’re others even the chord sequence I’ve showed
you at the beginning there’s lots of songs that use this
having this 1 chord - the C, the A minor, F to G
Hundreds,maybe, it cant be a hundreds but there’s lots and lots of songs
that do use that chord sequence
So that’s what I would recommend for the Uke, to start. If you going to get started on the Ukulele
Rather than trying to learn to learn loads of different chords,
and any sort of fancy stuff, check out those four chords
get really comfortable with them and confident with your strumming
Once you got that together that’s kinda of the thing
you need if your playing on a party or whatever you want to have a good repertoires of tunes
that are really easy. That you can play if you had a couple of beers
It’s not going to stress you, not kinda get complicated you know
That’s what I recommend to starting off with on the Ukulele
I’m going to say I’m planning more lessons, some Uke songs and some
more videos and some more complicated chords
but as I said for getting started on the Uke you got enough to get yourself going
So, have fun on that fantastic
I really really enjoying the Uke
It's such a laugh.
I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do
and I'll see you for plenty more lessons very soon
Take care of yourselves!
Bye-bye.