Tuning a Uke

Having to retune my uke everyday started out as a pain. I don't have the most developed ear for notes and the tuner I have is not great for the uke.  Apparently those 2 years playing the trumpet from 6th to 7th grade did nothing for me. I found the greatest tool that has helped me figure out this problem. This online uke tuner is simple and quick for tuning a ukulele.

Online Ukulele Tuner

Learning Chords

Learning the uke has been a lot easier than when I tried to learn guitar. I never really understood how chords work and my hands are a bit to small to handle all six strings at once. I was able to learn the strum from my last post, and after realizing I was playing it without the final thumb strum, I fixed the pattern and now have it down. 

The chords I have learned so far: 

A7

Am

C

Cmaj7

D7

F

G

All of these chords use 3 or less fingers and are rather simple. This means I have learned 7 of the 32 major chords. It's a start. I also find that I have to retune my uke every time I play because the nylon strings stretch like crazy. I am thinking about restringing with Aquila strings that have high reviews and seem very popular for ukuleles. Maybe I should just invest in a electric ukulele, since that is what my ultimate goal is. Definitely things to consider.

New Stum

This is the strum I have been working on today. I think it sounds amazing.

Videos of the day

This little guy is so awesome! 



This was one of the first videos I came across that made me choose ukulele

Here I am Again

New blog time, here we go.

Forget about what I said my blog was going to be, obviously I wasn't that interested in it, so now I am changing direction. For a while I have wanted to play an instrument and I decided to play something that was unique and would be fun to play my favorite kinds of music. Well, I settled on the ukulele. Eventually I want to play ukethrash...which is my word for ukulele metal. But for now I am a beginner.

So I am going to talk about my adventures in ukulele and, lets face it, I am self indulgent so I will probably talk about my life somewhat and the things going on in said life. My crazy, whirlwind world that is being turned on its head because I am moving out of my parents house and into a house an entire valley away with my boyfriend, trying to make it in school, and working. Amongst all of these changes I really want to learn how to play the ukulele, so hopefully trying to document it will help me.

Today I worked on Ingrid Michaelson's "You and I" as well as Regina Spektor's "Folding Chair". I love both these songs and they are fairly simple.