Ukulele Exercises For Dummies

Brett McQueen, Alistair Wood

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781118506851
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118506943
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Take your ukulele playing to the next level - fast! - with hundreds of fun exercises, drills and practice tunes

You have a ukulele, you know just enough to be dangerous, and now you're ready to do something with it. You're in luck: Ukulele Exercises For Dummies helps you become a better player. This practice-based book focuses on the skills that entry-level players often find challenging and provides tips, tricks and plenty of cool exercises that will have you creating music in no time that include:

• Creating rock-steady strumming patterns and rhythms
• Becoming a better fingerpicker with patterns, arpeggio exercises, and solo fingerpicking pieces
• Expanding your fretboard knowledge and crafting your own rock, blues and jazz riffs and solos
• Playing actual songs on the ukulele - everything from the classic ukulele tunes to the 12 bar blues!
• Downloadable audio files of the exercises found in the book, providing you with a self-contained practice package

No matter if you're a beginning ukulele player or you're wanting to stretch and improve your chops, Ukulele Exercises For Dummies puts you on your way to becoming a ukulele extraordinaire!

Part I

Getting Started with Ukulele Exercises

Go to www.dummies.com/go/ukuleleexercises to listen to audio tracks.

In this part . . .

Learn three different practice tools to make your practice sessions more productive.

Review ukulele tablature and the different sorts of diagram you’ll come across.

Pick up tips on how to warm up for practice.

Pick up your uke and get started on practice.

Go to www.dummies.com/go/ukuleleexercises to listen to audio tracks accompanying this book.

Chapter 1

Preparing to Practise

In This Chapter

Looking at three essential practice tools

Brushing up on ukulele tab and notation

Many exciting exercises lie ahead in the coming chapters. With your hard work and practice, you’re going to see amazing improvements in your ukulele playing, but before picking up your ukulele, take a moment to cover some essentials. In this chapter, you discover three helpful practice tools that enable you to get the most out of the exercises in this book, and you review how to read ukulele tab and notation, which allows you to easily follow along with the exercises I present in this book.

Equipping Yourself with the Right Practice Tools

While the following tools aren’t necessary or required to enjoy the exercises in the pages ahead, they can make your practice times more productive and effective.

Tuning up with a chromatic tuner

It’s always a good idea to tune up your ukulele every time you practise. Through playing, and through small changes in temperature and humidity, the strings of the ukulele go out of tune. An in-tune ukulele is always more inspiring to play and listen to than one that is out of tune.

In standard ukulele tuning, from the top to bottom string, a ukulele is tuned to a G note above middle C on the piano, middle C, E above middle C, and A above middle C. In this way, a ukulele is tuned: g-C-E-A (the lower case ‘g’ represents the high g-string).

The ukulele can be tuned in a variety of different ways, but the exercises in this book are created for ukuleles tuned to standard tuning. To learn more about other ukulele tunings, be sure to check out Ukulele For Dummies by Alistair Wood.

Tuning your ukulele is easy if you have a piano nearby, but more often than not, this isn’t the case. The easiest and most accurate way to tune your ukulele is to use a chromatic tuner. A chromatic tuner is a small, inexpensive, portable electronic device that listens to each string you pluck on the ukulele and tells you whether that string needs to be tuned higher or lower in pitch. I strongly recommend you purchase a chromatic tuner at your local music store, or if you have a smartphone, purchase and download a chromatic tuner app to your device.

Keeping time with a metronome

A metronome is a small device that helps strengthen your sense of timing (musically referred to as tempo) by producing a short, consistent ‘click’ sound. By lining up your ukulele playing with the ‘click’ of a metronome, you improve your timing and rhythm, which creates a more pleasing sounding performance for your listener. You can buy a metronome at any music store or you can purchase a metronome app for your smartphone. Additionally, some chromatic tuners are combined with a metronome for just a little bit more money.

Tempo is measured in beats per minute (BPM). Typically, a slow tempo is considered anywhere around 40 to 60 BPM and a fast tempo is considered 120 BPM or higher. For some of the exercises and songs in this book, I notate a suggested tempo at the beginning of the figure. In music notation, tempo is often indicated with a quarter note and a number, as shown in the following figure.

These suggested tempos throughout the book should be seen as a goal. If you set your metronome at the suggested tempo and you are unable to play the song or exercise that fast, slow down the tempo to a speed that allows you to play without mistakes. Then, gradually increase the speed in small increments to play at the suggested tempo.

While practising, don’t use a metronome all the time. Sometimes the pressure of keeping time with a metronome can create tension in your playing, which works against you. First, spend time practising the exercises and songs in this book without a metronome, and then, to tighten up your timing and rhythm, add in the use of the metronome.

Tracking your progress with a practice journal

Truthfully, this book contains a lot of exercises. To get the most out of your practice sessions, and to become a better ukulele player, it’s important you’re practising in a focused way. This means it’s best to select a few exercises to work on at a time from different sections of this book. The exercises aren’t meant to be tackled all at once.

I highly recommend using a practice journal to focus your practice sessions, and to prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed. A pen and a notebook will do the trick, or you can create an updatable text file on your personal computer.

Here are a couple of different ways to use a practice journal:

Create a practice plan for the week. For example, one day you might work on a couple of major scale patterns from Chapter 11, then, the next day, select a few rhythmic fingerpicking patterns to learn from Chapter 8, and then later on, to cap it off, practise a handful of strumming patterns from Chapter 4. You might mix these things up on the same day, but whatever you decide, write it out, so you know exactly what you’re practising throughout the week.

Identify successes and current challenges. After you practise, take a minute to list out your successes. For example, you might note in your journal, ‘Able to successfully fingerpick Carcassi’s ‘Andantino’ from Chapter 9 at a moderate te...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Getting Started with Ukulele Exercises
• Part II: Becoming a Better Strummer
• Part III: Becoming a Better Fingerpicker
• Part IV: Mastering the Ukulele Fretboard
• Part V: The Part of Tens
• About the Authors
• Cheat Sheet