Below is the lesson for “Aura Lee”.

Helpful Tips

A beautiful melody that serves as a wonderful intro into fingerstyle playing. This song is an excellent piece for beginners as it uses chords that you are familiar with (for example: F and G) and is set at a slow and steady tempo. The rhythm’s used in the song comprise of eighth, quarter, half, and whole notes. As such, this is a great song to begin counting and tapping your foot along with while you play. If you are new to counting, check out this lesson on understanding rhythmic notation.

In regards to our right hand, most of this song will use a 3 finger approach for fingerpicking: where the thumb plays 2 strings: G and C. Middle plays string E and ring plays string A. Although, we will break out of this approach for different parts of the song (as mentioned in the lesson video). One of the positives of playing ukulele, over piano, is that there are no “set” rules for fingerpicking. But, there are times in which certain approaches (thumb, 3 finger, 4 finger) will work better. As such, this piece is part of our fingerpicking course. The course explains when and why to use each approach and contains many exercises and performance pieces.

* Fun Fact: The melody and chords were used for Elvis Presley’s hit song “Love Me Tender”.

Part 1 – Performance & Free Lesson

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