Lesson 3

Hello once again. Today I will be teaching you all about minor chords. Minor chords are similar to major chords, but unlike major chords, minor chords sound sad and melancholy. Even though minor chords sound sad, they are often used in happy songs, to add a sense of variety to them.

Theory:

Minor chords have the same basic theory as major chords. They are triads, meaning they consist of three unique notes. On a ukulele, there are four strings, so the extra string is used to play one of the notes twice. 

When you see minor chords annotated, they will be written with a small "m" after them to indicate that they are minor.

Playing Minor Chords:

The three most common minor chords are below. You will notice while playing songs that these three minor chords appear occur along with the major chords C, F and G. This is because they are all in the key of C major. But how do you know if a song is in C major? Well, if a song starts and ends on C major, this is a good sign. You can also look up what key a song is in. 

A minor

Remember that when reading chord charts, the number two represents your middle finger, not your thumb.

Now that you can play these chords, you can play the chords to the song Let It Be by the Beatles. However, don't try to learn it too quickly, because minor chords are difficult for beginners, and take a while to master.

Lesson 2

Hello and welcome back to the second ukulele lesson. In today's lesson, I'm going to be quickly teaching you how to tune your ukulele. If a ukulele is in tune, it will sound better. It isn't very hard to tell if an instrument is out of tune. If you strum a C major chord, and it sounds like anything other than happy, your ukulele is out of tune.

Tuning:

Ukulele strings

The first step in tuning a ukulele differs based on whether it is being played alone, or with accompaniment (with other instruments). If you are playing with accompaniments, the ukulele needs to be in tune with the other instruments before you can tune it to itself. To tune it to go along with accompaniment, all you need to do is correctly tune the lowest string. Then, you can use that string to tune the rest of the ukulele.

Note that percussion instruments like drums don't count, because they don't really play 'notes'.

A ukulele's strings follow the pattern of G, C, E and A. One thing to note, is that the second string of a ukulele is the lowest, not the first, like on a guitar. When tuning a ukulele, start by making sure the lowest string is a C. To do this, you can either play a on another instrument that is already in tune, or on a tuning app, but at the start I would recommend using a tuner, as there are multiple different C's on most instruments, some higher and lower, so this could make it a bit confusing.

After you have your reference to tune the C string, play the C on your ukulele, and the other instrument and decide whether the C on your instruments sounds higher or lower than the other, and adjust the pitch of your instrument using the tuning peg at the very top of the ukulele that is attached to the C string.

Note that if you use a tuning app to tune a ukulele, make sure it is specifically designed for a ukulele, because a tuning app for a guitar will not have a C on it. 

If your C sounds lower than the other C, tighten your string by turning the tuning peg away from your instrument. If your C sounds higher, loosen your string by turning the tuning peg towards your instrument. Once your C is correctly tuned, you can tune all of your other strings against it.

To tune the next string, move a finger up so it is holding down the C string on the fourth fret. But what even is a fret?

Frets:

The fret is basically how high up the string you are. If you look at the ukulele, you will notice how along where the strings are, are small metal ridges. These are called frets, or to be more exact, the spaces between them are. To play the fourth fret of the C string, means to put one of your fingers on the fourth space between these metal ridges on the C string (the second string down).

Plucking the fourth fret of the C string

By playing a string while blocking a fret, it raises the note. Since this string is the lowest, it means by raising it, you can emulate the pitches of the other notes, and tune it using itself.

The fourth fret of the C string is the same pitch as the E string, which is the second lowest string, so now tune the E string until it is the same pitch as the fourth fret of the C string. This is where you should start the tuning process if you are not playing along with other instruments.

Now that your E string is in tune, you can use it to tune the next string, the G string, which is the very first string down on a ukulele. The third fret of the E string is equivalent to the G string so follow the standard procedure and tune the G string. Make sure you can hear that it is the same pitch as the third fret of the E string.

Finally, the second fret of the G string is equivalent to the A string, the last, and highest string. To check it is in tune, strum the chords you learnt last lesson and see if they sound correct.

In Closing:

Good job, now you have learnt to tune the ukulele. Being able to tune your instrument is a very important skill, and one that shouldn't be underestimated, so you should do this often with your ukulele, at least once every two weeks to practise, and also just to keep it in tune.

If you still find it a bit unclear on how to tune your ukulele, there are a few websites and videos I have attached here, that you can use to help understand how to do this better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJGRk3Bny5M
https://ukuguides.com/maintenance/how-to-properly-tune-your-ukulele/
https://ukuleletricks.com/ukulele-tuning-how-to-tune-your-ukulele/

Sincerely,

You Can Ukulele

Lesson 1

Hello and welcome to the first You Can Ukulele Lesson!

Today I will be teaching you to play major chords on the ukulele. The major chords I will teach you today are quite common to hear in ukulele songs, and being able to play them well means you will sound great, no matter what you do.

Theory:

Major chords are chords that sound happy when you strum them. They are the basis for most pop songs, but can usually be found in every genre. But what is a chord itself?

A chord is more than one note, played together at the same time, to produce a certain sound. They can range from sounding joyful, sad, nostalgic, creepy, jarring or emotionless, depending on what type of chord they are. In this case, major chords sound happy and uplifting.

Major chords are played as triads, which means they consist of three unique notes. As you may have already realised, a ukulele has four strings you can play notes on, but major chords only have three unique notes, so what is the fourth string doing?

The fourth string is used as a double-up of one of the other notes in the chord. Usually, the note that is doubled is the root note, which the note the chord is named after. However, doubling the root isn't always easy to play, so in some chords, one of the other two notes are doubled. Now that you understand the very basic theory behind a major chord, let's learn how to play one!

Playing Major Chords:

In this first lesson, we will learn the easiest and most common four major chords. They are:

C major, G major, F major and A major.

Me strumming a C major chord on a ukulele

To play any sort of chord you have to put your fingers in certain configurations on the top end of the ukulele. First, hold the ukulele so that the neck of the ukulele is parallel two you, and the top end of the ukulele is pointing directly at your chin. Then rotate the ukulele so that it is at about a 90 degree angle away from up. Make sure that the larger end of the ukulele is on your dominant side. (If you are left handed then read this website article and decide whether to play the ukulele left or right handed https://www.learntouke.co.uk/im-left-handed-can-i-play-the-ukulele/) Below is an image of me holding a ukulele.

Now, for the finger postions. Finger positions for the ukulele in this article will be shown using diagrams from riffspot.com. If you ever want to learn a chord that wasn't mention in a lesson, just search it there. To read these diagrams you need to understand three things. The four strings are represented from left to right on the diagram. So the left-most string on the diagram is the top string when you hold the ukulele. The second thing is that the further down the string the diagram is shown, the further up the neck of the ukulele you play it. If the diagram has a number and then the letters "fr." it means you play the chord starting on that row of the ukulele.

The most important thing to know is that the numbers represent where to put each finger. Since there is no way to use your thumb while playing the ukulele, the number one is your second finger, the number two is your third finger, and so on. So to play the chord C major, you need to put your fourth finger on the third row of the bottom string.

C major

Now practice playing each of these chords on the side of the page. If you would like to check if you are playing them correctly, I would suggest watching the middle portion of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOnudEb1urU.

G major

Now that you can play these four chords, you might find you would like to learn your first song, and a lot of videos online have hundreds of songs you can play with "just three chords," etc.
However, these are usually massively simplified and won't sound as good until you can play them with the proper, but harder to play chords. Even though barely any songs use only chords out of these four, I was able to find, "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash, which has this structure for each verse.

C
My daddy left home when I was three
F
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
G                                                   C

F major

Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze
C
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
F
But the meanest thing that he ever did
G                                                   C
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."

A major

Now that our first lesson is over, I would suggest practicing switching between each of these four major chords while slowly strumming each one. Don't worry about focusing on how you strum, you will pick this up as you learn. Below are a few videos to help extend your understanding of today's lesson.

How to play C major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdybOl8JbIg
How to play G major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCx_5fHoST0
How to play F major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiB8BlWhFJs
How to play A major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkNjNz0atUc

Sincerely,

You Can Ukulele

You Can Ukulele: Introduction

Hello all and welcome to You Can Ukulele. In this blog/tutorial I am going to be teaching you how to play ukulele, even if you have never played in your life.

In each lesson I will start by explaining what you will be learning, and the theory behind it, (don't worry, I won't get too technical). Then I will give instructions on how to do it, with a step by step guide and pictures to help understand it better.

My Ukulele

Then, at the end of the lesson, I will detail a song that you can play on the ukulele using the techniques learnt in that lesson, plus others from past lessons and also something you can practice if you want to get better at a particular skill.

While a ukulele blog can be helpful on your journey to mastering this instrument, there will be a point where you may already find it is too easy and you are not progressing. If this is the case, I would recommend finding a teacher. Also, to further understanding of a certain concept, at the end of each lesson I may provide further sources of where to learn to do something.

I look forward to helping you on your journey to becoming a ukulele master.

Sincerely,

You Can Ukulele