On somewhat of a whim, I decided to buy myself a ukulele. The impulse was so strong that – afraid I wouldn’t get to the store in time – I asked a friend to go and buy it for me to make sure I got it as soon as possible. So from Italmelodie on Jean-Talon I got a Mahalo Concert electro-acoustic Ukulele.
The same night I got the beast, I started looking online to see what’s available and how to start. I was very surprised at the quantity of quality material on the web. Lots of basic lessons, tutorial videos, reviews, techniques, songs tutorial and songbooks. It’s amazing!
I have very little experience with stringed instruments: a few weeks of bass guitar last year and a few hours of ukulele from my 4th grade or so. Just enough to know what I’m tackling. I have a good base of music theory but there’s not much from my four years of tuba in high-school that can be transposed to the Ukulele. So I really needed help to get started.
I am still practicing the basics, I won’t be posting my own stuff yet… but I should start linking to and posting ukulele stuff once in a while. For now let’s start with my basic bookmarks (if you’re in the least interested in learning to play the uke, be sure to visit ukuleleunderground.com):
- Ukulele Online Tuner
- Basic Ukulele Chords
- Aldrine’s Guerrero’s Ukulele Underground
- Aldrine Guerrero’s Viddler videos
- Ukulele Chord Finder
- ukulelesongs.com – a good list of ukulele songs
- Ukulele Boogaloo Songbook
- Richard G’s Ukulele Songbook
- Hawaii Music Supply’s Online lessons
- The Ukulizer english songs
- Chordie.com – a huge catalog of song chords
That’s it for now, I have to go back and work on my G chord family transitions.