By Greg Olwell Showing the speed of the contemporary culture, online ukulele video instructor John Atkins has already posted a lesson of last week’s viral video by 12-year-old Grace VanderWaal on America’s Got Talent. Under his YouTube channel, The Ukulele Teacher,…
With great teachers from around the world teaching compelling classes at the same time, the question becomes, “How to choose?”
This lesson will introduce you to the sound of slack key as well as one of the open tunings, some new chord shapes, and picking patterns on ukulele.
By Greg Olwell In this video clip, Jake Shimabukuro demonstrates how to play a triple strum. It’s a fast, flashy strum, which he thoroughly and patiently breaks down into an easy-to-follow three-step motion. Jake originally filmed this lesson for…
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By Greg Olwell In some corners of the world, folks will claim that Arrested Development was one of the all-time funniest TV shows. The show, which was about the highly dysfunctional Bluth family, spent three seasons on Fox before it…
By Holly Rudin-Braschi Oh-muh-gawd! You just got your first ukulele and are so excited. But, you don’t have any idea how to play and you want to start now. Perhaps you were inspired to purchase your ukulele because a friend invited…
Contemporary ukulele virtuosos like Jake Shimabukuro, James Hill, and Herb Ohta have made it clear that just about any type of music can be played on a uke: rock, classical, jazz, you-name-it. So why not blues? Blues is the common…
After a ukulele is built, the biggest impact on its tone (besides the player) is the choice of strings. There are a variety of different string types from which to choose, but there is no “best” string for everybody and…
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I was just experimenting with playing some basic shapes and found “Old Folks at Home.” It’s a beautiful tune. I hadn’t really thought much about it, but the melody is really gorgeous. It uses really simple chord shapes but the…
A dexterous Grammy-winning guitarist fluent in swing and traditional folk lead and accompaniment flatpicking styles, Marcy Marxer has played the ukulele almost as long as she has the guitar, having studied with legendary uke master Roy Smeck in the 1980s.…