The ukulele is a great instrument to learn. The basics are really easy to pick up. It's particularly suited to young children, with its diminutive size, and will teach a number of skills that translate to other instruments, particularly the guitar. To get you started on your journey, here are ten tips that will kick start your ukulele playing.
1. Record your own playing as often as you can. It's difficult to play and listen at the same time. Quite often just noticing what you're doing wrong is enough to fix the problem.
2. Use your ears. Listen to everything. Work out what you're hearing. Steal anything you like the sound of.
3. Practice so slowly you can't possibly make a mistake. Once you've got a phrase under your fingers, it's easy to speed up. Once you've got a mistake under your fingers, it's nearly impossible to get rid of it.
4. Learn to read ukulele tab. Tablature is a method of showing how to play melodies on the ukulele as well as chords. It's easy to understand - much easier than standard music notation. There is plenty of ukulele tab available on the net and it's a lot of fun to play. Search for 'how to read ukulele tab' on Google and you'll find some helpful articles.
5. Once you've decided you enjoy the ukulele, get a nice one. Almost everyone starts of playing on a very cheap ukulele. These ukes are fine for deciding if playing the ukulele is for you. But once you're into it, get yourself a decent quality ukulele. It'll be easier to play, sound better (so you'll be more pleased with the way you sound), and will give you more impetus to practice.
6. The type of strings you use can make a big different to the sound of your ukulele. The strings you get with your ukulele are likely to be cheap and nasty. It's worth replacing them with higher quality strings such as Worth, Aquila or D'Addario.
7. Don't hold your ukulele too tightly. The ukulele is small and it's very easy to smother the sound out of it. Don't hold it too tightly or you'll lose a lot of volume and tone. Watch how masters like Jake Shimabukuro and hold the uke.
8. Listen to lots of ukulele players. The more you listen, the more you'll get a feel for the ukulele and the way it sounds. It will influence how you play subconsciously.
9. Take the time to tune up properly. Because it's short, it can be quite hard to get the ukulele in tune. But it has to be done. If your ukulele is out of tune, you WILL sound terrible. There are plenty of tools online to help you to do this. My particular favourite is the AP Tuner.
10. Enjoy yourself. The big appeal of the ukulele is that it is the most fun instrument around. People try to denigrate the ukulele as a toy. I think that's a huge compliment. Toys are fun to play with and so is the ukulele.
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