How Hard is it to Learn to Play the Ukulele?

Jamming out in Seattle just a few days after getting my first Ukulele.

I tried and failed to learn the guitar.

Why?

That was mainly because, to learn the guitar, it takes a lot of work and a good teacher. I found many teachers, but none of them seemed to have the patience to start from scratch with me. They went too far ahead in providing their expertise without breaking down the processes, so we ended up having a lack of communication.

One time I took a group class, but that was too slow for me. The other guitar students asked too many questions and didn’t pick the skill up fast enough.

So I was in a dilemma.

1. I couldn’t do it on my own.
2. I couldn’t find a good teacher.
3. I couldn’t join a group.

I was stuck so I put the guitar down for good.

Years later, I was given a Ukulele by my parents for my birthday. I never asked for it. It was just an unexpected gift. With that ukulele came a book book titled Ukulele for Dummies.

I blasted through the book and found that I was able to learn a bunch of chords quite easily. The basic chords of the uke are very simple to learn and they sound awesome. Within a week of learning how to play. I was practicing in a park and people were stopping around me to listen. After a few months of practice, a guy at the park offered me money. The uke just makes such beautiful music.

It has been about 9 months since my I first got the uke for my birthday and I have learned to play a bunch of songs. I sing along to them pretty well; however, my singing isn’t that great. Having a little bit of a sense for rhythm and some knowledge of music and theory has helped me a lot, but you can pick that up easily and it may just come naturally to you.

When first learning the uke, the first things you will want to learn are:

1. Basic chords.
2. How to switch chords without stopping.
3. Chord families.

You will want to learn these so you can play chords that sound good together.

There are many great online resources that make learning easy. A great place to start is Uncle Rod’s Ukulele Boot Camp. It is just a set of ‘chord worksheets’ that force you to play so you are able to learn different chords in different keys. As time goes by, you gradually get better and are able to change chords easily.

Then there are some great books that will help you out as well. Ukulele For Dummies is a great one to go through that will teach you the basics, but also give you an in depth understanding of what you are learning and doing. Then, you can move onto song books like the The Daily Ukulele to apply what you’ve learned to actual songs. All these song books give you are the chords, lyrics, and time signatures, so you will have to invent strumming patterns on your own or try to match the pattern of the song from the actual artist.

Another amazing internet resource I’ve used to learn more advanced songs is Aldrin Guerrero’s ukuleleunderground.com. I learned how to play Jack Johnson’s ‘Banana Pancakes’ and Sublime’s ‘What I Got’ from that site. It also has more basic instructional stuff, but I like using it for songs. Aldrin teaches you strumming patterns, picking patterns, and solos for the songs, so it feels like you are playing it for real. I transcribe the videos to paper so I can see what I’m doing without having to pause the videos all the time to catch up to what Aldrin is doing.

Most importantly, there are lots of really awesome people who play the ukulele. You will have a lot of fun and get better by playing with them. There is a ukulele meet up group in San Diego that meets once a week. About 20–30 people get together and strum chords and sing the same song in time while one guy leads the group. It’s simple but its a blast.

My boss plays the uke and I was lucky enough to team up with her and a few other co-workers to put on a ukulele concert to about 500 of our organization’s volunteers at a volunteer dinner. The songs were simple, but it was fun and everybody said we were great. I learned a lot from playing with the group because they were more experienced than I was. Most of them were guitar players who just played the uke for fun.

If I were somebody that wants to play some good music and have fun in the process, I would pick up a uke, especially if things didn’t work out too well with the guitar.

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