Ukulele Tips & Tricks to improve your playing.

The ‘Harry Potter’ Approach to Ukulele Buying

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Want to buy a ukulele? Not really sure what to buy? For the first ukulele, you don’t usually have a frame of reference. In the early days, I would recommend spending a small amount of money, until you know you enjoy playing and you want to stick with it. Don’t get me wrong, don’t go too cheaply, so that the uke is un-tune-able. If you’re fending for yourself for your first ukulele, refer to these recommendations to help you with buying your first ukulele. Then, when you’ve been playing for a while you might want to upgrade. It’s at this point that people usually ask me ‘what is the next ukulele that I should buy’ or ‘what brand do you recommend’. I like lots of brands of ukuleles, and you’ll find plenty of reviews out there but I think it’s a bit like asking ‘what car should I buy’ or ‘what bike should I buy’. It really depends what you want to do with it – are you planning to play lots of melody? Might you need a low G string? Are you planning to play gigs with other instruments? Will you need a pick-up in it so you can be amplified or will a microphone do? Do you prefer a mellow or a bright sound? I don’t know – these are all subjective preferences, like everything in life.

For me, buying a new ukulele is a bit like that scene in Harry Potter… You know, the scene where he needs to buy his wand and he wanders (yes, pun intended) into the shop seemingly bewildered? Then, as magic happpens – the wand that’s meant for him flies at him. The wand chooses Harry:

That’s how I think about ukulele buying. I walk into a shop, play a few of them and and the ukuleles choose me. I’ve bought several instruments like that. I didn’t mean to, it just happened. Like when I go out for one drink, but that’s a different story. With ukuleles, I like to walk into a shop, feel it and hear the instrument I’m going to buy. That’s worked for me with my guitar (oo-er, the G word) and also with ukuleles. I’ve got a feel for them and have known they were ‘the one’ when I’ve played them. I’m sure the same will happen for you. Go in, play your favourite song. If you like the feel and sound of it, buy it and give yourself hours of fun. It helps when you know what you’re feeling for. I like ukes with low action, that sound good whether  you play melody or chords. But that’s just me.

It’s around this point where UAS (Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome, to the uninitiated) comes in. You may well also get bitten by the bug and buy a new uke for every day of the week. There are lots of people who have more ukuleles than they can play, some have entire walls filled with them. Not me, oh no. Obviously not me…

ukuleles on the wall

 

 

 

 

How to play the E chord on the Ukulele

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Why reinvent the wheel? That’s what I say. There is a perfectly good post showing you how to play the E chord on the ukulele on the Ukulele Hunt Site, here. See the photos and descriptions that Al wrote back in 2009. All I wanted to add to that, were, should you wish to practice the E chord on the Ukulele, here are a list of songs in the Ukulele Wednesdays Songbook that have the E chord in so that you can practice it on a song or two that you like:

A Little Respect
Be My Baby
Crocodile Rock
Delilah
Dizzy
Don’t Look Back In Anger
Don’t You Want Me
I Will Survive
Kids
Kids In America
Killing Me Softly
Nine To Five
Pretty Woman
Take Me Home, Country Roads
The Rainbow Connection
These Boots Are Made For Walkin
Wild World
You’re The One That I Want

More blogs to help you:

How to play the G chord, here.

See how to play Bb chord on the ukulele, here.

Get a free ukulele chord chart (and help with how to read it) from here.

Do you want 6 basic strum patterns to get you going? See more here.

If you’re in London, UK, you’ll learn this in our courses. Book your course to join us in London.

If you’re not, please support us on Patreon so you can get access to all our upcoming online tutorials and challenges.

How to play the A# (A sharp) or Bb (B flat) chord on the ukulele.

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Let’s make this easy. A# (A sharp) and Bb (said B flat, not ‘bee bee’) are exactly the same thing. You do the same thing with your fingers for both chords. They are “enharmonic”. In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note, interval, chord or key signature that is equivalent to some other note, interval, chord or key signature but “spelled”, or named differently. In some keys, you might call it A# but in others, you might call it Bb but as far as your fingers (and now your brain) are concerned, they are exactly the same thing. Now we’ve got that out of the way, I want to share how I play this when it is half barre chord. (That means that one finger covers 2 strings. If it were a full barre, you’d cover all 4 strings with 1 finger.) Back to the tips:

I find it easiest to play Bb by twisting my index finger towards the headstock. You need the index finger to press down on both the E and the A strings in the first fret, whilst your middle finger is on its tip on the C string in the second fret and the ring finger is on the G string in the third fret. I find this tricky to do if all your fingers go straight on, as when you put the second and third fingers down, the index lifts up. See the video at the bottom to help.

There are a lot of songs with Bb in them in the Ukulele Wednesdays Songbook. Give some of these songs a try to help you practice:

A Little Respect
All My Loving
Is This The Way To Amarillo (in the key change)
Angels
Brimful of Asha
Build Me Up Buttercup
California Dreaming
City of New Orleans
Complicated
Crazy
Dizzy
Do You Love Me
Don’t Stop Me Now
Ever Fallen In Love
Free Bird
Happy Together
I Predict a Riot
I Think We’re Alone Now
I’m into Something Good
Karma Chameleon
Keep The Faith
King of the Road
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Little Lion Man
Maybe Tomorrow
(Lookin’ Back) Over My Shoulder
Price Tag
Somebody That I Used To Know
Something
SOS
Summer of ’69
Sweet Child o’ Mine
Take Your Mama
Teenage Dirtbag
The Rainbow Connection
Toxic
True Faith
We Are Young

Here’s a video to show you how I play Bb:

More blogs to help you:

How to play the G chord, here.

How to play the E chord, on the ukulele here.

Get a free ukulele chord chart (and help with how to read it) from here.

Do you want 6 basic strum patterns to get you going? See more here.

If you’re in London, UK, you’ll learn this in our courses. Book your course to join us in London.

If you’re not, please support us on Patreon so you can get access to all our upcoming online tutorials and challenges.

I’m left handed. Can I play the ukulele?

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I want to start this blog by saying, honestly that I’m right-handed. I don’t want anyone to think I’m implying that I’m left-handed, as I’m not. I do, however, care about my students’ wellbeing and ease of playing, so I’ve done a lot of anecdotal research on this subject over the years.

I’ve been teaching since 2009 and I know a lot of left-handed ukulele players, both from my classes and also from Ukulele Wednesdays. As I wanted to get it right in the early days, (especially prior to spending years teaching in primary schools, as I didn’t want to scar or ruin anyone’s chances at a musical future) I asked a lot of questions. I’ve accidentally sat in on many hours of debate about what is the right thing to do for lefties. From this, I’ve deduced that there are two schools of thought. I’ve tried to list the pros and cons of each so that you can come to your own conclusions:

Camp 1:

They believe left-handed ukulele players should play their ukuleles right-handed, using the right hand to strum with. The justification for this is that you don’t see any left-handed pianos, or left-handed violin players in an orchestra.

Pros:

1. There are more ukulele tabs, readily available to you
2. You can play more people’s ukuleles – as there are more people who play right-handed
3. Your stronger hand makes the chords

Cons:

1. If this doesn’t feel natural to you, you’re fighting your instinct and that can make rhythms and strumming harder (though if neither hand feels natural, it doesn’t really matter)
2. You’ll find it odd playing lefty after you’ve trained yourself righty

Camp 2:

They believe that left-handed ukulele players should play their ukuleles using the left hand to strum with. If you want to, and you’ve bought a right-handed ukulele, the quickest and simplest way to change it from right-handed to be a left-handed ukulele is to switch the middle two strings around, as the outside two strings are very similar in thickness. Ideally, you’d ask a luthier to adjust the bridge and neck, too, but if you’re looking for simplicity you won’t want to do that yourself, so just switch the middle two strings for now. You can see how to change strings here

Pros:

1. If this feels the most natural way for you to hold it, you’re following your instinct
2. You can play other left-handed people’s ukuleles – as the righties can’t
3. Your stronger hand does the strumming

Cons:

1. There aren’t many ukulele tabs that are written up for left-handed players.
2. You may find it difficult to test out right-handed ukuleles, say, in a shop before buying, for example.

So, there you have it, in a nutshell. 3 pro’s and 2 cons of playing left vs right. I think the short answer is to do what feels natural for you. Some people honestly prefer to play right-handed when they’re left-handed, yet some naturally prefer to play left-handed because it feels weird to fight nature. The right thing to do is what feels right for you, so you’ll be happy and comfortable playing. Here at Learn To Uke, we’ll support you, no matter which hand you choose to strum with.

Grab yourself a left-handed chord chart from here

What if you want to get more technical than just swapping the strings around? Read more here

If you’ve enjoyed this, here are some more posts of ours that might help:

If you’re in London, UK, you’ll learn this in our courses. Join us. Book your course.

How to play the G chord, here.

See how to play Bb chord on the ukulele, here.

How to play the E chord, on the ukulele here.

Get a free ukulele chord chart (and help with how to read it) from here.

Do you want 6 basic strum patterns to get you going? See more here.

Have you already got a ukulele? You can find our recommendations, here.

If you’re in London, UK, you’ll learn this in our courses. Book your course to join us in London.

If you’re not, please support us on Patreon so you can get access to all our upcoming online tutorials and challenges.

Here is our Amazon Affiliates shopfront, with lots of other ukuleles and accessories to choose from. In the interests of transparency, we are part of the amazon referral scheme so if hundreds or thousands of you buy based on links you clicked via us, we may make a few pence. In the unlikely event that millions of you click, we may make a few pounds. If you’ve found this information useful, please share it around liberally, as we like the idea of this unlikely instance.

Updated on 27/9/2019.