Learn to play ukulele
45 posts
Mastering chord changes!
Tamás GállOver 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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Chords 01: C major
Tamás GállWe 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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Working out songs on your own
Tamás GállAfter 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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Chords 02: A minor
Tamás GállIn 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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Chords 03: F major
Tamás GállIn 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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Why use a capo?
Tamás GállThe 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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Chords 04: G major
Tamás GállThe 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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Chords 05: C major, A minor, F major and G major
Tamás GállWe have already learned four chords. I hope you have managed to memorise how to fretC major,A minor, F majorand G major . These are excellent basic chords with which to begin learning because they appear in songs constantly. There are very few songs in which at least one of the four does not occur.…
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Chords 06: D major
Tamás GállWe 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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Chords 07: E major
Tamás GállThis 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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Chords 08: A major
Tamás GállAfter 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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Eight Tips for Beginners
Tamás GállBased 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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