Playing the Ukulele Comfortably

Series Summary

The ukulele is a Hawaiian instrument that was developed in the 19th century and modeled after a smaller version of the guitar brought over by the Portuguese. After the ukulele's journey across the Pacific to mainland America it's worldwide familiarity began to grow. Today many popular bands and artists of every genre use ukulele's for live music performances and in recording studios. It's distinct sound is unmistakable and innocent sounding. Unlike a guitar, a ukulele has only four strings and is about 1/3 the size of a normal acoustic guitar. Some are made of wood, others plastic but they still sound very similar. This free video series will show you everything about the basics of playing the ukulele. You will learn about left and right hand position for playing ukulele, several strumming techniques and picking techniques. You will also learn some tips for breathing, dressing and posture when playing the ukulele. If you are interested in playing the ukulele let our professional music instructor show you everything you need to know to get started playing this fun and interesting instrument.

Video Transcript

"In this series, I'll be discussing the basis of playing the ukulele. Now, the primary things that you want to get under control before you actually play the instrument, are very physical things. First is breathing. You want to make sure that when you're playing the instrument that you are calm and that you're breathing evenly. You don't want to get tensed up when you're playing any instrument. You want to make sure you're very relaxed. The idea behind it is you want it to be somewhat therapeutic, you don't want to think about this as a chore or something that you have to do, you want to be enjoying it. And that also has to do with your attire. So you don't want to come in with work still with your tie on or whatnot. And you want to change your clothes, make sure you're comfortable. So we'll talk a bit about those things. We'll talk about the hand position for both the left hand and the right hand, and how your fingers should lay onto the neck of the ukulele. We'll talk about how to hold the pick, and we'll talk about different ways of strumming and picking the strings."