You Can Teach Uke! Tips to Help Your Students Build Skills, Confidence, and Musical Joy

By Sarah Maisel | From the Spring 2025 issue of Ukulele magazine

Craig Chee and I have been fortunate to teach and perform ukulele all around the world for more than a decade. Along the way, we’ve shifted our focus toward teaching children and other teachers. In this lesson I’ll walk through some of the ideas and exercises that have worked for us and share some suggestions for those undertaking their own teaching journey.

Always Be Kind

I feel like being kind as a teacher is common sense, but you’d be surprised how many students will say to us, “My old teacher used to make me feel like I was stupid,” or, “My piano teacher was so mean I quit playing music as a kid,” and other similar sentiments. Every student, even adults, wants a teacher that shows empathy, kindness, and understanding. Those are the teachers who will be the most successful with their message. I’m not saying you need to always tell your students they are amazing (even when they’re not), but it’s important to be encouraging and find constructive ways of helping them reach their goals. Kindness goes a long way, and as the saying goes, it doesn’t cost you anything to be kind.

Multitasking Tools

I remember watching an episode of one of Alton Brown’s cooking shows, where he complained about kitchen gadgets that do just one thing. It is a waste of space if you have a tool that can only do one task, he opined, so multitasking tools are the best way to go. I find this true for musical exercises as well. In some cases, I enjoy creating exercises utilizing transitions or chords that a student finds difficult. It gives them a warmup that has them working on something practical, and in the end will be more beneficial than single-subject warmups. I also find having students practice dynamics and timing to be a huge benefit.

For example, if a student is having difficulty with the transition shown in Example 1, I’ll have them form chord shapes with their fingers without any picking or strumming to start the muscle memory. They can then begin to add in picking or strumming once they feel more proficient at the movement. I’ll then have the student work with a metronome. Once they are able to play the transition with the metronome, I’ll have them add in dynamics. This is now their warmup exercise every day for a few weeks, serving several musical functions at once instead of just focusing on the chord transitions alone.

Craig’s 1-2-3-4 Exercise

This exercise was born from Craig’s experience with cello. It gives students the opportunity to work on finger groupings, note length, picking tone, and dynamics. 

Keep all four fingers on the first (A) string, fret 1 through fret 4. When you play notes on frets higher than 1, you will have more than one finger on the string. For example, holding fret 4 with your fourth finger, you should have your first (fret 1), second (fret 2), and third (fret 3) fingers down as well. If you hold fret 3 with your ring finger, your first and second fingers should also be down on their respective frets.

Play quarter notes in this order: 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Example 2a). Do not pick up your fingers; all fingers must be on the fretboard once you’ve played the fourth note. Repeat with orders notated in Examples 2b–2e. Remember to keep all fingers on the first string on the subsequent frets when adding a note higher than fret 1 for all variations.

Be Deliberate with Assignments

I always got frustrated with teachers who would say, “You know your scales, now go home and practice.” It’s all well and good for those who have endless imagination, but many students need more guidance. There is so much to work toward with scales, but what is the goal of the student? In the beginning, they may want to just learn the scale from root note to root note. But after that, what should they do? Make sure to have some assignments prepared. 

Example 3 shows a C major scale (C D E F G A B) in first position with open strings. There are multiple goals you can work toward with this example, including proficiency in playing the scale, memorization of notes in the scale, and playing with legato (smooth and connected) and/or staccato (short and detached). Try having students practice picking with the thumb, then index and alternating fingers to work on picking proficiency. You can also assign dynamics work within the scale, stressing that it must be purposeful and not accidental.

Example 4 adds the high G string between each scale note. This exercise focuses on proficiency in picking with alternating fingers, keeping one finger (thumb) on the G string. It also allows students to use a drone note to enhance their scale and gets them accustomed to the high-G sound and one of its many uses.

You can also use the C major scale and have students put four notes on each string to have them practice working up the neck to fret 12 (Example 5). Not only does this help students learn the scale on higher frets but it also gets them to practice shifting into different positions on the instrument as they move up the neck. Keep in mind that this scale does not go from root to root, so it might sound incomplete at first. If you want to complete the scale, you can end on fret 15, but it doesn’t flow quite as nicely, in my opinion. I must give credit for this exercise to Abe Lagrimas Jr., a fellow ukulele instructor and amazing performer, who gave me this idea for scale work. 

Taking a Solo

If a student’s goal is to solo, don’t just tell them to practice scales—give them ideas to try. This will encourage them to keep working at it. For this, I will utilize something Craig does for his students that gives them a framework to start trying ideas. 

Using the chord progression C–G–Am–F, write in notes from the C scale in each blank space (Figure 1). This can be done randomly. These notes are played as quarter notes, with the phrase ended by playing the chord listed for four beats. 

Note that this exercise doesn’t have much of a musical flow, as it is created from random notes in the scale. Follow it up by replacing the fourth note of each measure with the root note of the chord (Figure 2).

This may still sound a little random, but the student may start to hear how it resolves to the root of the chord. Next, choose a three-note phrase that will be used for each measure, while still keeping the root note for the chord, as shown in Figure 3.

Doing these kinds of exercises helps guide the student and gets them to think more about the notes they choose for a solo and why. Eventually, they can break things down into sixteenth notes, or even start adding in rests, etc. It’s a great way to get started with soloing that doesn’t take too much prep on your part, as the teacher. 

Know Your Student’s Foundation

Early in my teaching I had new students come to me who wanted to get to playing songs right away. I made the mistake of going right into the song they wanted without really ensuring they had a good foundation, because I wanted to please the student immediately. But this is not always what is best for the student. You can certainly work on parts of songs that they want to learn, but if they have trouble with simple chord changes due to how they hold the instrument, or their strumming is too chaotic, they won’t be able to make it through those songs and will eventually give up.

The ukulele is kind of the Wild West of instruments in that there is no set way it must be held. Still, you should be mindful of ergonomics and find what will work best for the student, especially early on.

Craig and I have our own way to teach how to hold the instrument, which we’ve found works well for a variety of hand/finger sizes, is better for arthritic hands, and is overall more ergonomic than other methods we have seen. That being said, we would never say our way is the only way, or that someone else is doing it wrong—this is just what works well for us and our students. And still, we take it on a case-by-case basis with our students because we feel it is important to keep an open mind as a teacher. 

Be Humble

As a teacher, you should be prepared to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll look it up.” I’ve had multiple students stump me with questions, and that is OK. I always take the time to go back and look for the answers so I can respond to that student later. As tempting as it may be to save face, don’t just make up an answer. Students will respect you more if you are willing to admit when you do not know something and show willingness to find the answers. One of the joys of being a teacher is continuing your own learning journey, and students are your biggest inspiration. 

Something that goes hand in hand with this idea is giving credit to where you learned something. By doing this, you are also showing some of your credentials and giving the students the opportunity to learn about other teachers, past and present. There are no secrets in music, but because we all learn differently it’s good to give many perspectives to your students to help them reach their goals.

One-On-One Lessons

Why work with a teacher when there is so much great information already available online? This is not an uncommon question. But while students can definitely do a lot of work on their own using online resources, nothing beats a good one-on-one lesson with a teacher. Teachers can check a student’s foundation and give personalized suggestions, make assignments specific to their goals and needs, and keep them accountable. If a student knows they have a weekly or monthly meeting time with someone, they will likely work harder in their practice than if they’re just working on their own. Teachers can also help a student stay focused, which is not easy when going down the YouTube rabbit hole.

I hope that these tips are helpful for teachers and students alike. There is no one way to teach, and not all learning will come from one teacher alone. When students take the time to find the right fit, they may find different teachers work better for different parts of their ukulele journey. The main things to remember are to be kind, keep an open mind, and always continue learning.

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Craig Chee’s Teaching Tips

Try to lead students to those lightbulb moments, rather than forcing them. Make them feel they are part of the journey rather than just sightseeing. 

For workshops, teach what you love! People are attending these events to learn what inspires you and how you use these tools on your ukulele journey.

It’s OK to say “I don’t know.” It’s not a weakness to be honest about something you don’t know. I love researching things that my students are curious about and I benefit from these questions.

It’s OK to reevaluate goals. Island style? Jazzy chords? Group concert next month? A cool song on YouTube? Inspiration and goals come in all forms, just try to lead it back to building that foundation to set your students up for success! 

Everyone has different goals. Keep those in mind when introducing new elements and refer back to them so students can see how you are getting them to where they want to be. 

Learning isn’t linear. Some days it’s about review and reinforcement. During the brief time when Jake Shimabukuro had his ukulele studio, I was lucky enough to join him and quickly got overwhelmed with all the material we were going over. I struggled to perfect everything we went over week after week. When I brought this up, Jake laughed and said, “if you were able to master all of this each week, we should trade places!” 

Sometimes you are helping even if you don’t know it. This includes talking a student through a bad day, showcasing how far they’ve progressed, highlighting small but mighty milestones, and more. Positive encouragement goes a long way. Not every day needs to be a big lightbulb day. 

Technology is a very useful tool. Working with our online ukulele school through ArtistWorks for almost a decade has helped us think of some great uses for technology in teaching. This includes the ability to teach students around the world; recording lessons or snippets for review; getting close-up, detailed video to demonstrate a concept; quickly creating backing tracks for students to use for practice; creating video lessons while traveling or touring; and much more! 

—Craig Chee