Hey! I saw your post on the UU forums which led me to here. As many of you know, I am a live music freak and have been to several hundred concerts in my life. Around three months ago I bought my first ever musical instrument, a Kala KA-KCG. I have played every day and have had a great time with it. I can manage to sound reasonably decent at times. I’ve been meaning to post about it.
You’ve already found Ukulele Underground which is the best message board for the uke. The ukulele subreddit is very good as well. I have found uke players in general to be extremely friendly and willing to teach and help. Since you already play guitar, you probably already know music theory and how to read music or at least tabliture which I would highly recommend to a regular new player. It should be pretty easy to transfer your skills. Except for the E chord. That’s a bitch.
You, of course, need to check out Jake Shimabukuro, the Jimi Hendrix of the uke. I saw him live a few years back.
Almost every city has a ukulele group. I found mine to be full of very nice people but I want to concentrate on learning songs that I like rather than the cheesy ones that they play in general.
You can string your uke re-entrant or high G which is most common and traditional. The G string on top is not the lowest pitch. So it’s g C E A where G is between E and A in pitch. I just got mine restrung in low G where they are in order. This is better for more bluesy songs. Any hardcore player will have at least one each way.
To learn jazz, take a look at James Hill’s The Ukulele Way. There’s a $9/month fee for access to his video lessons but you’d probably pick it up after just a month with your previous experience. Obviously there are tons of YouTube tutorials too. Any song I have wanted to learn has been on there. Howlin’ Hobbit is great for 1920’s uke standards.
It’s such a small Internet. This is really helpful thanks. I don’t do much reddit, but I’ll check out the uke group. I saw someone on UU linked to a James Hill YouTube video which was pretty informative I’ll check out his full website. On the one hand $9 a month isn’t much money (especially compared to the cost of getting access to lessons at UU, that’s nuts expensive) . On the other hand, I’m cheap. But if it’s recommended I’ll probably actually sign up.
I do mostly want to play traditional uke songs and jazz. One of my frustrations with what I have been searching for so far is how much of what I have found is just people transcribing rock and guitar music to uke. I get that, there was an amazing version of paint it black I saw, but that doesn’t do it for me mostly.
So far I haven’t had trouble with any of the chords, but I haven’t tried E yet. I’ll have to see how that works out.
I have been really amazed at some of the cool things you can do just jamming in the key of C or D. Lots of open strings to play with. Wrapping my head around the different tuning is taking some work, but its really a lot of fun.
Oh, I’m also crazy intimidated by the prospect of changing strings. I play steel string and don’t have to tie new strings down. I want to change my strings to something a little higher end but am pretty afraid I won’t be able to tie them back correctly.
Pretty serious uke nerd here…been playing for about four years (after many, many years of guitar), playing out for a fair bit of that.
Ukester Brown is a great source for old jazz tunes. And as others have said, once you know songs you want to play, you can usually find them on YouTube, and then those same people will usually have other songs you’d also like to learn.
My best advice is to learn a bunch of songs early on. Seriously, like 20. Easy ones. You don’t have to memorize them, but be able to play them on-book. Pick two or three of those and really work them up, and then play those for people whenever you have a chance.
My favorite thing about playing the uke has been getting to know the ukulele-playing community, both semi-locally and as a whole. From the seasoned pros to the newest newbies, they’re just an incredibly warm and supportive bunch of people. Get to know them, share videos with them, get together with them when you can–even if your local group just wants to strum pop songs, chances are they’re going to LOVE what you do and if you show up with a song they’ll be eager to learn it.
Ukulele Aquisition Syndrome is real. As a guitarist you’re probably already familiar with GAS, but ukes are so cheap (at first, anyway…) that it’s just too easy to add to the family. I own six at this point. Don’t fight it too hard.
Most importantly, have fun! One of the great things about the uke is that it’s hard to take yourself too seriously while playing one.
They have uke capos, which may be functionally identical to banjo capos, but they are looked down upon. It’s super easy to barre on a uke and with only four strings you can barre any chord shape.
You should probably try installing some mechanized doo-hickey thing so it can spin around like ZZ Top’s did. (crucial trivia - way back, I knew someone who was so douchey about establishing his Canadian-ness that he’d actually say “zed-zed top”)
Or just grab a bunch and play them stacked, like Rick Nielsen did.
goddamn this is the coolest fucking thing I’ve seen in a long time:
