Make Your Melodies Sing with Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs
These are the most commonly used form of ornamentation on the uke, and valuable techniques to have at your disposal
Lessons and Advice
Add Pizazz to Any Song on Ukulele With a Respectable Intro and a Snazzy Outro
The history of intros and endings in American music is a treasure trove of cool chord combinations, melodic hooks, and rhythmic memorabilia. Here's some for ukulele.
Ukulele Lesson: Understanding Chord Progressions
This ukulele lesson will help you recognize common chord progressions, which will help you learn songs faster when you hear them in a song.
Get a Smoother Sound on Your Ukulele Using Legato Techniques
BY DANIEL WARD | FROM THE SPRING 2019 ISSUE OF UKULELE In music performance and notation, legato (Italian for “tied together”; French lié; German gebunden) indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, the player makes a transition from note to…
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Learn to Play ‘Happy Birthday To You’ on Ukulele
Learn to play "Happy Birthday" on ukulele: Here's a simple beginner version with 3 chords to strum (C, G7, F) plus a more advanced chord-melody version.
Smartphone Blues: The Fastest Way to Become a Better Ukulele Player
Record yourself playing these blues pieces and listen back to hone in on what you need to practice most
Learn Two Ukulele Arrangements of the Jazz Standard “Avalon”
"Avalon" became a jazz standard and favorite jamming vehicle for instrumentalists like Django Reinhardt, Benny Goodman, Red Nichols, and Coleman Hawkins.
James Hill’s Arrangement for Ukulele Orchestra
BY JAMES HILL // FROM THE FALL 2018 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE Theme from La Réjouissance (G. F. Handel), arr. J. Hill These days anyone can access original manuscripts for most public-domain works. The free Petrucci Music Library made it…
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Ukulele Lesson: Daniel Ward’s Backwards Method for Learning Songs
BY DANIEL WARD | FROM THE FALL 2018 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE This is it. Stepping out onto the stage, you know this is no group sing-along. You are solo. Perhaps it’s a new arrangement by James Hill, a cool…
Nailing It: A Revealing Look at the Hands of Top Ukulele Players
Here, the ukulele’s right-hand women and men share the long and short of their rhythm styles and manicure strategies for a wide variety of musical styles.