Learn to play ukulele
45 posts
Chords 09: F minor
Tamás GállF minor is a classic example of a chord that looks difficult but really is not . At least when we first look at a hand fretting F minor, it may seem as though the ukulele player's hand has cramped up. In reality we are simply seeing a slightly rotated wrist and fingers carefully placed at the follow…
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Singing and Playing the Ukulele
Tamás GállThe title could just as well be "Singing and Playing an Instrument", because it makes almost no difference which instrument we pick up: we can run into the same difficulty when we try to sing and play at the same time (wind instruments excepted ). This is no magic trick either, and of course it can…
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Chords 10: E minor
Tamás GállThe easiest way to remember E minor is to say that we are building a “small staircase” with our fingers. The only thing we need to memorise carefully is where the staircase begins. Start at the second fret of the lowest string, then move one string over and one fret higher each time as we place thre…
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Chords 11: G minor
Tamás GállG minor is the drunk person's staircase. If E minor is a beautiful, orderly staircase, G minor looks as though the bricklayer forgot to sort the bricks by size. :) Compared with G major, only one note is different, but because of where that note falls, the fingering changes completely: 0231. The upp…
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Chords 12: D minor
Tamás GállI often say that anyone who knows F major also knows D minor. That is a slight exaggeration, of course, but it is true in the sense that F major provides an excellent starting point. We simply add a ring finger capable of flattening neatly and squeeze it onto the second fret of the second string, be…
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Rhythm and Strumming 1
Tamás GállDear Ukulele Players! Before I turn to the subject in the title, please allow me a brief announcement. As you may have noticed, we removed the blog posts about the Spring Ukulele Meetup planned for March 24, and we also posted on Facebook that — because of circumstances I think everyone is familiar…
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Chords 13: C minor
Tamás GállC minor is the second chord in our series where barre technique is effectively required. We touched on the subject with D major, but here it becomes much more important. We will learn two C-minor fingerings, 0333 and 5333. In the first we use a small barre covering only the three lower strings. In t…
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How to Restring a Ukulele
Tamás GállThis restringing video arrived very late compared with the launch of the blog — you only had to wait about nine and a half years for it. One reason is that, slightly embarrassingly, I do not have a huge amount of experience restringing ukuleles. The other is that I am one of those people who do not…
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Chords 14: C7
Tamás GállC7 is one of the easiest chords in the world. In terms of simplicity, it rivals C major. I did make one mistake in the video: I forgot to show the alternative fingering. C7 can be played not only as shown on the left — and in the video — but also as you can see in the picture on the right: barre the…
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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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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 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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