PajMon Information Blog

Posts Tagged ‘ukulele’

Well, you’ve just got your very first ukulele. What are you going to do now? What should a beginner learn? How can they avoid getting bored with the instrument or stuck in a rut?

In this article, I’ll give you ten quick tips to make sure your ukulele playing gets off to a great start.

1. Spend as much as you can on a ukulele – having a nice ukulele will be much more encouraging than one that sounds awful whatever you do.

2. Learn three chords then start playing songs – once you start playing songs that people can recognize you’ll feel a lot better about your playing.

3. Learn how to tune up – It’s not the easiest thing to do, but absolutely essential. If you skip this, you’ll sound terrible no matter how much you practice.

4. Hold the ukulele right – start getting the good habits in right away.

5. Play with others – there are tons of ukulele groups around. If you can’t find one; start one.

6. Practice very slowly – And when I say slowly I mean snails pace. So slow that it’s impossible to play it wrong. When you can play it this slowly, gently increase the tempo.

7. Replace the strings – using a high quality string such as those by Aquila will improve the way your ukulele sounds. Particularly if it was fitted with low quality strings to begin with.

8. Steal ideas – it may seem a little like cheating, but listen to your favourite music, work out what they are doing and incorporate it into your own music.

9. Watch carefully – there are hundreds of ukulele videos online. Take a close look at the players you admire and how they play. How do they hold the ukulele? How do they strum? How do they sit? You don’t have to ape them exactly, but take pointers from what they do.

10. Love playing – if you don’t enjoy playing the ukulele, sooner or later, you’ll give up. There’s a huge array of music out there for the uke. Explore new avenues and new techniques. Have fun with your playing and don’t take it too seriously. After all, it’s called ‘playing’ music. Not ‘working’ music.