The main advantage of a tab over a piece of standard music notation is that there is very little learning curve. If you can count you can play from a tab. UPDATE: A few people have had trouble seeing these images. If that’s you, here’s a zip file with all the exercises.

|Independent artists are also publishing some of their work. Daniel Ho has a couple books of tablature and Daniel Ward has Arpeggio Meditations For Ukulele. Other Tab Articles/Resources Fingerstyle “ solo arrangement” tabs shown below include the melody interlaced with the chords, intended to be played by a single player and imply harmony and lead simultaneously. As well as practising each day, try and make sure it’s the same time every day. It will become part of your routine. Of course both of these things are much more likely to happen if your ukulele is handy. If you hide it away in its case, it is more effort to get it out. Having it somewhere you can see it is a constant reminder to practise. Practice tip: In these exercises, you switch between just a C and G7 chord. For more practice, write out your own chord progressions and practice these arpeggios while switching between other different chords. Dionisio Aguado’s “25 Pieces Pour Guitare, no. 17”

Beginner Ukulele Workshop

We then do the same again but this time switching to hammering on at the 4th fret with our pinkie finger. Just like the 1234, once we’ve done all 4 frets we move down to the C string, then down to the E string, then A string. After this we simply slide up a fret and do it all over again. The Pull Down Much like our reversed 1234, the reversed spider (or should that be The Redips?) again starts with our pinkie at fret 4. The pattern is essentially the same as the spider but we’re moving down the notes rather than up them. The Hammer Up

It’s time to bring the hammer ons into play. The hammer up takes the same form as the 1234 but introduces a hammer on into proceedings. Tablature (or “tab” for short) is a simple system of notating music. It uses numbers on lines to represent the frets and strings of an ukulele. Use the standard notation version for relating notes on the fretboard to their pitches as they appear on the staff. Great for notating fingers on tab and note duration on the staff. Hold one of your arms straight out in front of you with your fingers pointing to the sky, 90 degrees to your arm, in a “stop” position. Take your other hand and pull the tips of the fingers towards you so that you feel a stretch.To challenge yourself, Practise the strumming patterns with a harder chord like the G. This way you can hit two birds with one stone. Each ukulele strumming pattern explained How to Read Ukulele Tabs– Ukulele tabs aren’t hard to figure out, but you need to know what you’re looking at to make sense of them. Blank Tab Sheets I’ve written the song out in this simplified format: Riptide PDF (Easy) Universal Strumming Pattern (with a swing feel) Triplets Now add in the use of your ring finger (represented by an a). These exercises are a bit more difficult because the ring finger isn’t known to be the strongest finger in your hand. Use these exercises to build up strength and to free up movement in your ring finger. If you don’t know what Campanella is this is a great book to get you started. Jonathan Lewis’s free book teaches you what campanella means, techniques to help you play it and gives you some easy tunes to get started with.

If you’re having trouble singing the lyrics of a particular song with strumming pattern (#4 or #5), then try working through the song using pattern #1. I’ve already mentioned that this book is a little different to any other ukulele book that I’ve previously bought or read. It’s almost entirely constructed of exercises and the whole book is presented in a weekly format. There are 40 weeks in total so you should be kept busy enough. You’re then given exercises to do each day that you play. This format might be a little dry for some players – I wouldn’t say it’s the most fun way to teach people to play but I’m ok with that. I’m the kind of person that likes a challenge. When we arrive at the A string, we then slide up and start with our index finger on the second fret. This means that your second finger gets the third fret, ring finger getting the fourth fret and pinkie on the fifth. Start with a snippet of the almost-chromatic warmup on the G-string, then fret the second shape of the chord relay and arpeggiate down the strings. Once at the bottom, walk chromatically up to the 4th fret and then descend toward the ceiling with the first chord shape. A |--------------1-2-3-4-------- Samantha Muir’s free ebook features 20 exercises that work on your right hand development. It aims to help you improve your tone, control, fluency, rhythm and projection. Samantha has also created videos showing each of the exercises from the book.

Other Warm-ups

With a Swing feel (triplet subdivision), it looks like this. Swinging the universal strumming pattern With this one, the rule is: one finger per fret. Your 1st finger plays the first fret, 2nd finger plays the second fret, 3rd finger plays the third fret, and 4th finger plays the fourth fret. Then you switch strings and start over. Start on the G or A strings and work your way across the fretboard. You can either start on an open string or start on the 1st fret. A |--------------------------1-2-3-4--|--1-2-3-4-------------------------- These ukulele tabs are in PDF format created with Guitar Pro, Powertab, or good ol’ Microsoft Word. Aguado’s 25 Pieces Pour Guitare (MP3) http://ukulelehunt.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/aguado-25-pieces-pour-guitare.mp3 If you’re having difficulty playing this pattern, work on beats 1 and 2 only. After this is comfortable, try playing beats 3 and 4 only. Then, see if you can bring the two together again. Strumming Pattern for Rip tide (Vance Joy)

Chad has actually written a version of this book for baritone too so if you’re a fan of the baritone, you can get involved. Who Is It For? We then continue this with our other fingers so we’re pulling off from the third to the first fret, and the fourth to the first fret. Hopefully you’ve got the idea, all of these following the same pattern.Another book that’s great for the beginners out there. This book from Play Music Company looks at the anatomy of a ukulele, tuning, strumming, chords and even gives you a few songs to go at. Best TAB creation software– What I’ve used and recommend for transcribing and engraving ukulele tablature. |Keeping all previous fingers down on the fretboard – for instance, once you put your 1st finger down, leave it in place as the 2nd finger plays. If you are only going to do one exercise to prepare for playing ukulele, I would recommend stretching. It loosens up your hands and tells the muscles, “Hey, physical exertion coming up!” This will help you avoid becoming sore and hopefully reduce your chances of developing carpal tunnel syndrome. Hand Pull