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Learn to play ukulele

45 posts

Learn to play ukulele

Mastering chord changes!

Tamás Gáll

Over the past few years I have had the good fortune to teach ukulele, among other things, to a number of enthusiastic beginners. Unfortunately I have never had enough time to teach more people, but the experience has been extremely instructive for me as well. Different people find different parts of…

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Learn to play ukulele

Chords 01: C major

Tamás Gáll

We are starting a new series whose aim is to teach complete beginners as many chords as possible. In today's video we learn C major, the simplest chord and probably the one with which almost every beginner starts learning chords. Over the course of the series we will go through the basic chords, pro…

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Learn to play ukulele

Working out songs on your own

Tamás Gáll

After the instrument reviews, let us move on to an interesting and exciting blog post. I was certainly excited about making it, because I had only one chance to record the video with the particular song involved. From time to time I see questions on forums and Facebook – and I receive emails asking…

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Learn to play ukulele

Chords 02: A minor

Tamás Gáll

In this part of our series for beginners we learn A minor. LikeC major, A minor is not a difficult chord; it is easy both to play and to remember. Like every chord, A minor can be fingered in several different ways. We will learn the simplest version, written as 2 0 0 0. This means pressing the seco…

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Learn to play ukulele

Chords 03: F major

Tamás Gáll

In this part of our beginner series – followingC major and A minor – we learn F major. This is the first chord that requires more than one finger – two, to be exact. If C major and A minor already feel secure, it is time to put the middle and index fingers to work at the same time. It is not a diffi…

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Learn to play ukulele

Why use a capo?

Tamás Gáll

The main purpose of a capo is to change the ukulele's effective tuning in a single movement. Clip it onto the neck and every string immediately sounds higher. This is useful because if we have learned a particular chord progression or song accompaniment – perhaps one involving complicated finger mov…

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Learn to play ukulele

Chords 04: G major

Tamás Gáll

The fourth basic chord is G major. Add it to the C major, F majorandA minorwe have already learned, and we will be able to play quite a large number of songs – at least accompany them with chords. Compared with the first three chords, G major initially seems the most complicated, because the first t…

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Learn to play ukulele

Chords 06: D major

Tamás Gáll

We have completed the first four chords and hopefully can now strum C major, A minor, F major and G major with confidence. The series continues with D major, taking us into the category of slightly more difficult chords. The challenge with G major was forcing the fingers into a somewhat unusual hand…

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Learn to play ukulele

Chords 07: E major

Tamás Gáll

This may be the first chord that makes beginner ukulele players genuinely wince. However we twist our fingers, E major is simply not very comfortable to fret. There is no need to be frightened of it, of course; it simply requires a little more patient practice than something like C major. In the vid…

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Learn to play ukulele

Chords 08: A major

Tamás Gáll

After the difficulties of E major, we get a little relaxation and learn A major. If we had arranged these chords strictly by difficulty, A major really should have come before E major, but never mind – this is the order we ended up with :). Anyone who can already fret F major and A minor will have a…

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Learn to play ukulele

Eight Tips for Beginners

Tamás Gáll

Based on the experience of many, many years, I have collected a few thoughts that I would like to share with you in a slightly unusual video. It is unusual because this time you will hear only a few random chords — in other words, we are not learning a song — and I will be talking even more than usu…

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