10 Quick Tips for Ukulele Beginners

If this is your first time picking up a ukulele, there are a number of things you may be asking yourself. And the answer to those questions may determine whether you stick with the uke as your instrument or abandon it all together.

This article is going to take you through the first steps you should be taking in order to boost your ukulele playing.

1. Buy the best ukulele you can afford - the more you invest in your playing, the more you'll want to practice.

2. Build your repertoire early - it only takes three chords to play a whole bunch of songs. Once you have a few songs under your belt you'll be able to play for people.

3. Learn to tune the ukulele - too many performances have been ruined by out of tune ukuleles. This is the first, and most important, step to making sure you sound great.

4. Learn to hold the ukulele - make sure you don't smother all the tone out of it.

5. Join a group - the fastest and funnest way to get better at playing the ukulele.

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. Find ukulele videos - and study them carefully. Watch how the great ukulele players such as Jake Shimabukuro and Roy Smeck play. Get pointers on their technique. Adopt and adapt their style of playing to suit your own and how you like to play.

10. Have fun - it's called PLAYING music for a reason. You don't 'work' music. It should be enjoyable and rewarding. Find ways that you can practice and still have fun. This is definitely the most important tip of all.

By Al Wood