Learn to play ukulele
45 posts
With a pick or without?
Tamás GállOne of the eternal—almost religious—questions among ukulele players is whether you are “allowed” to use a pick. In the video below I explore the subject a little, but if you do not want to watch it, I will give away the answer: yes, you are. Who could forbid it ? Of course, it is another matter what…
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The tenor ukulele, baritone ukulele and guitar
Tamás GállThe relationship between the ukulele and the guitar is a frequently recurring question, and the baritone ukulele naturally has a special role as a kind of “bridge” between them. I decided to make a video featuring all three instruments and, while only brushing the outermost layer of music theory , t…
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Chords 22: B7
Tamás GállIf you happened to miss the blog post about B majorplease read it. At the beginning I summarize the basic things you need to know about barre chords, which I will not repeat here. The barre version of B7 differs from B major in that you do not need to place your ring finger on the fourth fret of the…
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Chord sequences for warming up
Tamás GállI would like to show you two chord sequences in the next video. I “developed” them a few years ago because I became bored with strumming the same basic chords as a warm-up or whenever I tried a new instrument. In these sequences we alternate between two chord shapes, and it does not matter where — m…
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Chords 21: B Minor
Tamás GállIf you happened to skip the blog post about B major, please read it. At the beginning of that post I summarize the basic things you need to know about barre chords, so I will not repeat them here. B minor differs from B major in that you do not need to place your middle finger on the third fret of t…
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Chords 20: B Major
Tamás GállAfter many chord-learning videos, we have reached a real milestone: this is the first barre chord we learn. A barre chord means using one finger — usually the index finger — to fret all four strings at once (or two or three strings in the case of a partial barre), while the remaining strings are fre…
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Rhythm and Strumming 2 — Muting the Strings
Tamás GállYou can never practice rhythm enough, and almost every day the internet offers new rhythmic patterns and techniques connected with the subject. If you would like to see the Rhythm and Strumming 1 blog post and video, click here . Most videos about rhythm focus primarily on the movement of the strumm…
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Chords 19: F7
Tamás GállF7 can be derived from two other chords in two different ways. The most logical starting point is probably F major, because we add only one note: place the ring finger on the third fret of the third string, giving us an Eb. If we want to find a relative in terms of the fingering shape, think of G mi…
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Chords 18: E7
Tamás GállE7 is a genuinely beautiful chord. It sounds excellent on the ukulele, and although the fingering may look strange the first time, the second attempt will already feel much easier. Compared with our usual hand position, we need to rotate the hand slightly. Turn the back of the hand a little toward t…
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Chords 17: G7
Tamás GállJust when a beginner finally starts to believe that nothing could be worse than the finger-twisting horrors of G major, they see G7 and realize that yes, something can. Of course it is not really that terrible either. As I always say, it is a matter of practice. A good way to exercise the fingers is…
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Chords 16: A7
Tamás GállAs you can see in the diagram below, this is not exactly a complicated chord. So you would be perfectly justified in asking why we do not learn it immediately after C major or perhaps A minor , since only one position needs to be fretted. If you look through the chord videos, you will see that the f…
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Chords 15: D7
Tamás GállD7 is an interesting little chord for two reasons. First, we come across it quite often; second, close to the headstock there are two different ways to finger it, one of which is particularly unusual. In the video I show three fingerings in total. Two use a barre (2223 and 5655), while one does not…
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