Hone your playing, technique, and music theory skills with step-by-step courses.
Classical Technique & Style
In this course, you’ll learn to play classical music in a way that faithfully recreates the original works. Classical pieces are often arranged and taught using a ukulele style of playing. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach, it lacks the authenticity that comes from performing with classical guitar techniques.
This course teaches the fundamentals every classical guitarist uses. You’ll start by learning proper right-hand form before embarking on picking techniques.
Next, we’ll move beyond playing techniques by studying stylistic approaches. Part of what makes classical music so appealing is the way it’s performed. It’s a highly expressive style of music and we’ll show you three ways to amplify emotion in your performances.
At the end of this course, you’ll combine everything you’ve learned to perform a challenging piece by Francisco Tárrega (a.k.a. “the father of classical guitar”).
Fingerpicking Concepts: An Intro to Fingerstyle
In this course, we will demystify the magic of fingerstyle ukulele. Starting from the beginning, you will learn 3 approaches for fingerpicking designed to develop your right hand technique and dexterity. These approaches will then be applied to performance pieces intended to help you master the art of solo ukulele.
Upon completing this course, you will be able to:
1) Break out of the 1 finger rut! A.k.a: only using your index finger (or thumb) for fingerpicking and strumming.
2) Determine (on your own) which of the 3 approaches to use depending on the context of the material you are playing.
3) Begin to develop your own style for fingerpicking.
An Introduction to Music Theory & Jamming
This course will provide a fundamental understanding of the basics of Music Theory and a thorough introduction to Harmony. Furthermore, this course sets out to bridge the gap between understanding Music Theory and applying it. Below, we will detail how this will be accomplished.
A goal for many of us is to have the ability to sit in with other musicians and be able to play without limits. But, often times in Jams, we find ourselves playing the same parts as others (i.e. strumming basic chords).
This course deep dives into teaching you how to add to the music. We’re going to examine two playing approaches in this course: Rhythm and Lead. The rhythm section will teach you methods for creating harmony. You will learn how to play chords in different positions and how to alter them to create a colorful sound. The lead section will teach you two approaches for soloing over rhythm. Approach one will be scale based, while approach two will cover playing changes.
This course uses lessons from our Concept Series and breaks down How and Why they work. What this means, is that you will not only be learning the concepts to advance your rhythm and solo playing, but you will also be applying the concepts in performance pieces.
Next Level Strumming Techniques
Are you ready to move beyond simple strum patterns? Do you tire of strumming down and up for EVERY song? Has anyone told you that high G ukuleles are hiding a strumming secret?
If you answered yes to the first two and want to unravel the secret, then this course is for you! You’ll learn four amazing techniques that will add percussive depth to your strumming. These techniques are the very same ones used by many of the top ukulele performers!
Upon completing this course, you’ll walk away with a newfound appreciation for strumming and the ability to change the tonal landscape of simple strum patterns into colorful ones.
Strumming Techniques: Beyond the Island Strum
For most of us, our ukulele journey begins by learning to strum a few chords. We dive into strumming patterns, such as the ever-popular “Island Strum” (D DU UDU), before progressing to “Chucking”; which is a percussive technique that creates a backbeat on beats 2 and 4. But then something happens, we hit a wall, we plateau.
This course will help you break through that wall by introducing you to four strumming techniques that will make your rhythm playing POP! These techniques not only add pizzazz to your right hand, but will change the tonal landscape, as you learn how to:
1) Accent beats to create a more dynamic feel to your playing.
2) Alter rhythms – say goodbye to only strumming quarter and eighth note rhythms.
Upon completing this course, you’ll walk away with the ability to spice up any simple strum pattern; creating a rhythmic sound that is unique to you!
Triplet Strum Magic
The triplet strum is one of the most popular techniques in ukulele playing. Typically, this strumming technique is applied to triplet rhythms. And that’s where the technique begins and ends… until now! In this course, you’ll learn how to repurpose this right hand motion to create a highly rhythmic, yet effortlessly fluid way for playing chord melody.
We’ll split this course into three parts. In module 1, you’ll learn the triplet strum technique in its most commonly used application. This will set the foundation for the next two modules, which will transform the triplet technique into a complete, self-contained right hand playing style.
How to Write a Song on the Ukulele: A Beginner’s Guide to Chord Melody
This course is intended to introduce you to the steps required to write your own chord melodies. Chord Melody allows one to play the melody and the chord simultaneously. Rather you wish to write an original song or an arrangement of a song, these steps can be applied to either.
When we think of music at its simplest form we have three parts: Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm. Each of these parts is vital to chord melody. Throughout this guide we will be referencing “DayDreaming” (demo song) and deconstructing the three parts to explain how the song was written.