The Ukulele Academy: Play Music Today! (2020 Update)

1. Welcome to The Ukulele Academy!: Welcome to the Ukulele Academy, where we use an amazing little instrument to achieve impressive musical goals. My name's Andrew, and I'm a degree holding and certified music educator that's been teaching music for over eight years. Along the way, I've been sponsored by Mitchell Guitars featured a Guitar Center magazine and toward the United States as a music performer. My passion is to see my students learn quickly and efficiently how to best express themselves through music. I designed this course for anyone who wants to learn both ukulele and music. What this means is that by the end of the course, you'll be able to play more than just the songs that I teach in the course. A Google search will get you musical information for almost any song that you can imagine. And since my students understand both ukulele and music, they're able played those songs as well. The course begins with the very basics things like how to hold and tune the ukulele. And what's the difference between a note, a scale and a chord. We then build on that foundation by exploring topics like strumming, rhythm, fingering, even confident performing. I'll walk you through the entire process with tailored course materials. Step by step and you'll learn a couple songs along the way. Feel free to check out the course description, and I am excited to have you inside the ukulele. 2. Two Helpful Tips as We Start: Congratulations on investing in the ukulele Academy. Here you are. You have your ukulele, you're ready to learn and you're in the right place. I'm excited to be joining you for this musical journey. And before we begin, I have two pointers for you that will help you as you learn. First off, I've heard it 1000 times. Andrew, I want to learn this instrument, but I just don't know if I have enough time to practice. Well, I'm here to tell you that you don't really need a whole lot of time. But what you do need is you need structured time. You need focused time. I recommend turning your cell phone on silent and flipping it upside down so it doesn't distract you and turning off all other notifications. Say, from your laptop or wherever, and setting a timer for like 10 to 15 minutes. But during those 10 to 15 minutes, focus on Lee on ukulele. You'll be surprised how much you can learn when you focus on only one thing at a time. Along the lines of practice. I also recommend keeping your ukulele in a prominent place in your home someplace where you'll run into it and be reminded to pick it up. Try to pick it up every single day, even if it's just for a couple minutes, like two or three minutes. Having it there and refreshing yourself and reminding yourself what you've been learning in the ukulele academy is going to help you learn so much faster than otherwise. Okay, so that's first off practice. You can do this. Secondly, I find that my most successful students are the ones that ask questions in the ukulele academy. We go over musical concepts that can be challenging, but they're not as challenging as you think. And they're definitely not as challenging if you reach out to me with your questions. Since you've bought this course, a button has appeared below the screen called Q and a click that button that gives you direct access toe. Ask me any question that you want, and I'll respond as soon as I can. It's usually within 24 hours. That's it. Those are the two pointers. Let's get started on our first assignment. I'm gonna ask you to identify your specific why and what? Why you want to learn to play the ukulele and what one specific goal is that you have understanding your why and you're what is going to help keep you motivated as we progress through this course. So let's get started and let's get to work. 3. What's with the BEARD?!?: as you progress to the course, you may realize that in some videos my beard is really short, and in some it's really long. And that's because I am constantly listening to student feedback and updating these videos . You see if one lesson is not performing as well as it should be. I updated. I refine it. And that's how the ukulele academy is the best ukulele course online. So as you're going through, if you ever see anything that you need more information on, if you see something that needs to be updated or refined, please reach out to me. I'm a real person over here. I'm ready to answer your questions, so let's get in there and start making some music. 4. Get a Grip on Your Ukulele: here in this video, we're gonna take a quick look into seeing how to hold the ukulele properly. Okay, It's fairly simple. Grab your ukulele right here by the neck. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna tilt it counterclockwise this way so that it's pointing to your left. Then bring the body in with your forearm. Go ahead and press that up against this top corner right here. So your forearm is gonna touch there. In this way, you can actually hold the ukulele fairly steady. Okay, um, then you want to make sure that your hand is going to be placed right in front of this sound hole. So by placing your hand right here, this is where you're gonna get the best sound out of your yoke lately as well as be able to hold the instrument in the most natural way. Now, you may notice that I have a little of ah, little oven assistance here. OK? I have a ukulele strap. I'll all attach a link so that you can get one of these as well. What this does is it comes underneath. This is not necessary, but it's very helpful. Comes underneath and actually hooks onto the sound hole right there that way, actually unable to rest it just like that makes a little bit more comfortable. I like to use these really hopes may be able to relax all in playing and not feel like I'm going to drop my ukulele. 5. You are More Like Your Ukulele than You Think (Hint: think anatomy...): If you take a look at work sheet number one, you're gonna be able to see the anatomy of your ukulele. This is gonna be really important. Later, in the course, when I say something like, I want you to put your hand by the bridge. Well, you'll need to know where that is. Okay, so today we're gonna look at the anatomy of your ukulele very quickly. First off, I want you to grab your ukulele and hold it up next to you like this because it's very simple. Just like you have a head and neck and a body. Your ukulele has ahead. A neck and a body. All of the smaller parts are placed either on the head neck or but Okay. First little piece that I want you to look at is are your tuning pegs your tuning pigs or what you're going to grab in order to tune your ukulele, which we will look more in depth that later. Okay. Secondly, you have the nut. Now the nut is the point that separates the head from the neck of the ukulele. Okay, you can find it by it's the place that the strings bend over on their way towards the tuning pegs. Okay, moving down closer to the body. Here on the neck, we have these metal pieces. These are called frets. When you place your finger in between, two frets and press down. You'll change the pitch of the strings. Definitely feel free to practice that it's totally fine. And then the frets are placed on what's called the Fret Board. It's a piece of wood on mine. It spans all the way across the neck and even goes into the body a little bit right here. Hangs over on the body front boards are placed or sorry, the friends are placed inside of the fret boards. Now, looking at the body of the instrument, we have two big pieces. The sound hole in the bridge. The sound hole is what receives the vibrations of the string. Allows those to bounce around inside of the body of the ukulele and shoot back out so that people around you can hear your instrument. And then the bridge is the other side. Okay, this is where you attach the strings. Okay. Tuning pegs. Not fret. Fret board. Uh, sound hole and bridge all on the head, neck and body of your ukulele. 6. You've NEVER Thought about Music like THIS!: I got a quick question for you. Is this music? What do you think? What about this? Do you think that's music? Did you know that if somebody tells you that those things air music there technically wrong ? You see those air Just black marks on a white sheet of paper and music is not seen. Music is heard and played. Okay? You can't see music. You can Onley Here it. No. What this means is that this is actually representing this. That's not music. This is music when we actually make a sound. Now, that being said, aren't you glad that we're able to see representations of music in the next couple of videos? We're going to be looking at how music works. But remember, music is heard and not just seen. So is this music? Yes. 7. The Written Note: when we consider written music or music notation, there's two big concepts to big terms that you need to know. First off, you have to know what a staff iss okay, and you have to know what a note is. We place the note on top of the staff to be able to tell when we should play it and what note we should play. If you place a note up high, it's going to sound something like this. Okay, if you place a note lower, it's going to sound something like this. So by placing a note up and down, we can see what pitch doesn't need to be. Doesn't need to be a high note or a low note. Now, if we place notes further left and right, we can see when we need to plan. Just like we read our language. From the left to the right, we play our music from the left. The right here's Mary had a little lamb to show you how this works with higher pitch pitches are placed higher and we play it from left to right now. One thing to keep in mind here is that every single one of these lines and every single one of the spaces in between the lines. Have a note. Okay, I'll show you an octave here or I'll show you scale. Here we have C D E F G A B C, and they keep on repeating. By the way, C d E f g A B see all the way up and down. Just know that each one of these spaces and lines have a specific name of a letter. 8. Scaling to New Heights: quick grab ukulele. I want you to learn your first song. Okay? Grab with your ring finger. I want you to find your 1st 2nd 3rd song. Oh, stream Here. And I want you to find your 1st 2nd 3rd 4th fret right here. Okay? Use your ring finger to press that. And it should be this note. Okay, Right there. Then I want you to go down. Two frets with your pointer finger like this. Okay, so now you're right here on the string. 123 Fret, too. What's your first note? On your second note on? I want you to play string three without any left hand fingers. Just open. Okay. What we're starting to use here is what's called scale a scale is how we organize notes and you'll notice with just these three notes. You can already play a song. Thank you. Know the rest. Now, when we're organizing scales, there's two ways that we can do this. First off, we can use numbers or we can use sole fish. Let's start off with explaining how numbers work. Okay, um but start with a C note. We're going to build a scale on top of see like this. 1234567 No way can we have a c up on top? It's the same note. So it's also going to be referred as referred to his one here as it is down below. They're both sees. Okay, so they're both number ones. I mean, by the way, we can continue going up if we wanted to. 12345 and keep on going up and up. And we could even go down below this, um, 1765 and keep on going down there. Okay, so the scale repeats over and over and over when we're using numbers. The same thing when we use something called Soul Fish. And if you've seen the sound of music with Julie Andrews, you know what this is? Doe a deer, a female deer ray, a drop of golden sun. Right. So the scale is organized like this re me. Eso the tea. So and it goes up in up door. Amy fossil keeps on going higher, and it will even go down below your dough dough T loss. So okay. Goes lower than that as well. Okay, So a scale just organizes our notes into usable patterns, you could say Now let's take a look at Mary. Had a little input. Were playing wear using the notes 12 and three in the scale or doh ray me. 3212333 or me Rado, Ray me, Me, me. Either one works. OK, see if you can figure out the rest of the song and even play it using the correct numbers or sole fish. 9. How to FINALLY Get Your Ukulele Tuned!: as ukulele players. We have two different ways that we organize the strings on the ukulele. One is by using numbers, and one is by using letters or note names. Let's talk about using numbers first. It's actually the more simple way of the two on the ukulele. We obviously have poor strings, and we number them. 1234 The confusing part is, which one do we call one in? Which one do we call for? Because I can start either the top or the bottom. The trick is always started at the bottom, so whatever string is closest to the ground, it's string one just like this. 123 four. Those are four strings string. 123 and four. Now notice. There's a pattern here in this four strings that gets broken by that fourth. Here's what I mean. String to a little bit thicker, then String one and string Theory three is a little bit thicker than string to, but String four is thinner than sharing. Three. So goes thicker, thicker, thicker, thicker thinker. Thicker dinner just like that. That's how we number. Strings strings one through four. Now let's talk about how we name our strings using letters when we think about naming our strings using letters were referring to the letters of the notes in the scale that that string sounds when it's in tune. So, for example, look at string number one. String number one. When I pluck, it should sound in a the a note. Look at work sheet number two. If you Teoh help clarify what I mean. Sharing one should sound the note. A. If it doesn't well, that means that it's out of tune, but we still call it the A string. No string to when it's in tune will sound an e note strength three c and then string for G . So we call those and streams God a E see G and to hesitate there for a second because when we is, you kill a lease. Ukulele players Neymar strings. According to their note names. We name them from the top down, not the bottom up. So we call it G C E. A. So if somebody were to come up to you and say, Hey, how do you two know ukulele? You'd say G c E. A. Not a C G makes sense. Let's talk about how we actually go about tuning ukulele. So if our string number one hour a string is no longer sounding a if it's too high or too low, we adjust the tension here by turning our tuning pigs one way, tightens it the other way, loosens it. Here's how you can remember which way does what if we look down on our top two tuning pegs clockwise. If we turn it clockwise, that means that it will lower the pitch of the string. So, for example, I'm gonna throw it out of tune. I lower it, I'm gonna turn it clockwise just like that Lower gonna turn it clockwise. Now look, think about your bottom to, uh, tuning pegs. Now what happens is the opposite. I'm looking down at my tuning pegs on the bottom Clockwise he's going to raise it. Makes sense. Clockwise on top lowers clockwise on bottom raises switches because the direction of the tuning pegs or the side of the tuning pigs switches as well. Those the basics of tuning and note names off the strings or the string names. Next video we're going to be talking about specifically, how do we tune these ukulele now that it's out of tune to get it back into 10. Not All Tuning is Created Equal (Are you doing it right?): when it comes to actually tuning your investment. There's a lot of options that you have as faras buying or getting a tuner that you can use to help you get that instrument in tune. There's a lot of kinds on mine that you confined as well as physical tuners that you can find one kind, actually, as a microphone in it. You know, listen to string as you pluck it and tell you where you are as faras pitch another kind of physical tuner that you can get that's very helpful in noisy situations is a kind that, actually it clamps on to the head of the ukulele and feels the vibrations of the strings vibrating. Instead of listening to it this way, they're gonna be a ton of noise in the room, and it will still be able to pick up just the vibrations from your instrument. My go to tuner is actually an app that I found on the app sort, and I'm not being paid to say this. I just find it to be a very useful app. It's called the Global Tuna wrap. It's actually just $2 on the APP store right now, and I find that it meets most of my needs most of the time, so I I highly recommend it to my students. So with that being said those different kinds of tuners, let's go ahead and put the first tune on your ukulele. I'm gonna run you through how to tune a string that's reading too low as well as a string that's reading too high. And what do we do with each one of those? Let's start off. If you remember, we talked about these top two strings. They were they were too low. I lowered them so they're now out of tune. String number four. My G should be reading right at a G, but instead it's reading at and F sharp. So if you look back at your scale, we can see that an F or an F sharp is a little bit lower than the G. This means that we need to raise the pitch of string up to that G. So I'm going to turn my tuning head counterclockwise and let's see where that put this is, By the way, the global tuna wrap that I'm using. Okay, so it's a little bit higher of enough shirt we're getting there. Hey, turn it counterclockwise again. All right? We're reading some kind of G, but it needs to go up a little bit more. Who close right on. Maybe a little bit too high. But I'm OK with that. That's totally finding. All right, so let's move on to our C string. Oh, Oh, okay. It's a B. Same idea are our string is the C string, but it's reading a B, which is just a little bit below the sea. If you're looking at the scale, it's that seventh note and it should be going up to the first note seven upto one There are right. I'm moving up a little bit and a little bit flat for low flat. You know, I'm happy with we have RG NRC in tune. It is really simple when you're when you're string is too low, you just tighten it up to the point where you're back into now. These next two strings are gonna be too high and they need to come down. The trick that a lot of people don't know about when they're tuning a guitar or ukulele both is that when you're tuning it you want to tune If it's if it's too high, you tune it below the end. Note that you're wanting and then you turn it back up. You go below the note that should be at and then raise it back up. The reason that this is is when we look at our our string. If we just loosen the string tension Ah, lot of tension will build up between here and here between the tuning peg and the nut. And over time that tension is going to bleed out onto our strings, making it go flat. So always tuned down beneath the note that we're going for and then to back up. Let me show you what I mean. We're here on string number two, which should be R e string. Instead, it's reading, Let's see a Sharpie. So in E, that's a little bit too high. So I could just do this. I could just tune it right down to me. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to go below that down to a d sharp or some sort of d and then I'm gonna to back up slightly flat fee splitting Woe e you were right to. So here's what it looks like for string number one RK strength. I'm going to do it as fast as I can. Now, another little trick. Always go back through and check your tomb to make sure that because you were adjusting other strings that that tension didn't mess with the other strings. That was a little confusing. When we say I adjust string number one and then number two, string number one, then string number two, then string number three, that string number four and I'm tightening and loosening all of these different things to get him in tune. What will happen is that tension will bow the neck a little bit up if I'm tightening it or blow it down a little bit if I'm loosening it. So what I need to do is after I go through and tune it if it boat up a little bit my other ones, they're gonna have gone a little flat. So just always go through and tune your instrument twice. Maybe enough to change It may not be, but let's look no Okay, right into So that is how you tuned a ukulele using a to a tuner. Remember, there's all those different kinds that you can use. Find what works best to you. Talk to a friend. They're pretty cheap, even at a music store. The physical kind. So go out there and start to New Year. Ukulele like a boss. Here we go. I'll see in the next video. 11. The Easiest Lecture in the Course (It's as Easy as 1,2,3...): welcome to probably the shortest video in the ukulele Academy course. It's about numbering are left hand fingers so that we know which finger we're talking about . Layer in Future Lessons is pretty easy, and it's described on worksheet number three finger turn. So it's super easy. Remember 1234 Anthem. The reason I have to bring this up is some of you who have had maybe some piano experience before. The thumb is called Finger One and then 234 and five For a guitar and ukulele, it's It's so much easier than piano, so it's just fingers one to three and four. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Let's move on to the next lesson. 12. Don't Fret over Finding Frets!: already in the ukulele academy. We've learned a lot of numbers. We've been able to number our scale numbers. 12345671 I've also learned how to number our hands are our fingers. 1234 And then I thought, And we've learned how to find a vertical positioning on the fretboard by numbering our strings strings 123 and four. Right now there's one more thing that we're going to be learning how to number, and that is our frets. So just like our strings give us a direction on the fretboard. Up and down we know where we are up and down our frets and our friend numbers tell us where we are left to right kind of acts as an X Y axis on our fretboard, so let's dive right in. It's basically pretty easy. We have well, right here is fret zero, because when we're not fretting anything, there's no need to number. It's Fred. Zero is also called open, so when I just pluck the when I just pluck a string, it's just an open string. But as soon as I fret, something will. Now we have to use a friend number to describe where my finger is pushing down. So with that being said, we have fret nothing or open we have fret. 1234 five And all the way up in this way, we can quickly find anywhere on the fretboard by knowing what string number were on and what fret number along We're on. Here's an example. Say, I said to you, find string one fret three with your ring finger String one fret three with your ring finger. Well, then you would go. Okay. Using my ring finger or finger number three, find where string one string was right here. That's open for one to three. This is String one. Fret number three. Try this one along with me. Find string three Fret too. String three Fret too. Remember, we number our strings from the bottom up and then we fret with our we start zero and then 123 Open string three. Front to use your pointer finger if you're not using that already. All right, let's check String three Front to we have string. 123 and then Fred one to right. There is string three. Fret too As an aside, just note for later, we'll get more into this. And if you've had some music experience before, you'll know what this means. But we'll get more into it later, so don't worry. Note that each a friend that we move is equal toe. 1/2 step, Um, the piano or on the on the staff each fret that we move is equal toe. 1/2 step. Let's do one more exercise with your Okay, let's try it this way With finger number four, find String four fret. Five. Oh, with finger number four, Find string for fret five. Finger for string for Fret five. Let's check it. Okay, so I'm going to be using figure number four. String. 1234 fret. 12345 Great. If you'll notice from a previous lesson. I quickly quickly mentioned that this little dot is here in order to for us to quickly mark where are frets are. So instead of having a count, Frette 12345 I could have just gone finger for string for Fred five right there, because I know that first dot is where French fighters string for Fred five 13. Notes vs. Chords - What's the Difference?: If you look at the bottom half of worksheet number four, you're gonna find a section called Notes and Chords. What is the difference between, say, a note and a court? Well, let's talk. If I were to take my ukulele and just strung one string or just pluck one string like this , that is a note. It's an a note because I clocked string number one once we get up into strumming three or more notes at the same time. Well, now we're talking about courts. Picture. This way you can have a picture of physical court. You can have three different strands that are all wound together in tow. One chord and they can have a greater pulling potential. It's the same way with music or with playing me the ukulele. You can have a single note, but once you buying three of those notes together into accord, well, now you're ableto have a stronger, more impactful musical pull on those people who are listening to your music. So, for example, I can play a C note or I could play a C chord Pretty cool, right? So picture it this way. Look at that. Look at that scale or look it Sorry. Excuse me. Look at those three notes that are listed there on the bottom of worksheet. For those three single notes, we have a C. We haven't E and G C E G. Those three notes work together when we stack them on top of each other like that to make a C chord notice. We call it a C court because that note on the bottom is the sea. Why not name it after the middle note or the top note? Here's why. The bottom note in any chord is called the route and just like a root of a tree grounds the cord. It's it's super important to that tree's life. It's the same with the court. The root of accord is the foundational note of the entire cord is named the route. Now the other two notes also have names, which you can see described there in the text box in the bottom left of the worksheet. The middle note is called the third, and the top note is called the fifth. Think of it this way since our route. Let's see for one 123454321 since our our route. Let's see or one the e is 3123 or C d. E. He is 1/3 above see Same thing with G G is 1/5 above sea. C D E f g 12345 g. It's 1/5 above C C G. C. See how that works? So the names of the notes in the cord get their names are the court Sorry? Let me rephrase this. The notes in a chord get their names by their distance away from the root because this one is rooted in C, the G is called the fifth and the E is called the third. Every court that we look at from here on out will have a root 1/3 and fifth. We'll see more about how that works in future lessons. 14. How to Play Music YOU Find on the Ukulele: now that we've learned how cords work and specifically the Sea Court, where the C major chord we can look and see how we play this court on our own instrument. This is a really exciting lesson because we're now stepping out of the realms of just playing. One note. Say String one fret three. Now we're stepping into the realm of playing a chord s so let's just get it over with with your ring finger. Find stream one fret. Three String one fret. Three. Here we go. Stream one fret 123 with my ring finger now strung all four strings. Awesome. Your first court C major. Pretty great Now think of it this way When we look at when we apply this idea to a core chart Mike found on the bottom middle ish section of worksheet for Let's See How it Applies notice. The little text box says that the number in the circle indicates which finger to use, and there's a little three inside of that circle where it's pointing, So we use finger 123 a ring finger on fret string one fret three just as indicated there. So the string numbers are listed on the bottom of that court diagram. And then at the top, we have the name of our cord. Now, right there. It just has the letter C. Whenever we have a cord with just one letter as its name, it's understood to be C major or a major court. So if we had just a capital D either then the court will be d major. But we just abbreviated by calling it Sea port de makes sense. We're gonna talk more about major and minor chords in future lessons. But for now, congratulations. You've just played your first court and now you understand how ah chord diagram works, which is huge in being able to move forward and get into playing some more cores. And eventually some songs were not that far away. Here you go, Good job. 15. "Rhythm for Dummies": Have you ever been to a concert of, say, a band or an orchestra? You've seen a guy standing in front of the group that's called the conductor, and he stands up there. He's usually known for having coattails on, and he directs his hands over and over and over again to let the entire group know where the beat is. So let's talk a little bit about this concept of a beat. A beat is that constant recurring pulse that we find in music. It's stereotypically what you know, the old guy sitting on the rocking chair. He'll tapas foot two or people at a concert, Butthead being two or nod your head or dance to. But it's that constant beat, that is, is the framework for music to live in. Look at work sheet number five. We have there an example of two different kinds of beats. The first example is called 34 Time or a 334 times signature. In the second example is a 44 time or 44 time signature notice. Underneath our besides those different time signatures, we have different beats. The 34 is counted. 123123 The conductor conducted like this 123123 and then to the right, we have a 44 time signature. 123! 1234 These different patterns occur in every single song that you'll come across. It's called the Meter or the time signature of the music. So we have beats that exist within within every single song, and those beats are organized into a time signature. If you look down at your example again, we have four things called measures. Now. Measures are the little boxes that are separated by the vertical lines called bar lines. So we have a bar line in between that, and the next bar line is called a measure, and in those measures are contained the amount of notes that are designated to re occur. So on the left we have 34 123 and then it repeats 123 Within that measure, and on the right, we have a 44 time signature. 1234 So what? We see four different notes within those vertical lines and there we know what what goes there based on the time signature, whether 34 we're four for 16. The BEST Way to Down Strum: when we consider how to strum are ukulele. There's three ways that we can do this. We can use a down strum, an up strom or a shadow strum Since the down strum is the most foundational. Out of all of these were going to start there. Now a down strum is played on the beat. What this means is that at the same time, we're counting our beat numbers. We're going to strong at that exact time like this. 123123 At the exact same time that I'm speaking the number I'm strumming. 123123 Okay, now there's three different ways that we can play our down strum. First off, we can use our thumb and this is where I want to start. Okay. I want you to grab your ukulele. We're gonna do not use our left hand for this so you can just hold the ukulele here at body . I want you to grab each string with your thumb and pluck it very, very solid. Okay, I want you to control it, but I want you to pluck it loudly. You're not gonna hurt your instrument. I promise you like this. Okay. I want you to know when you're going to play each string there shouldn't be any surprise is nothing like right. I want you to control it right now. After you've played each string and you're able to stop after you're able to do that, I want you to start to connect them more, play them faster. Theun put them all together into a solid, strong theme idea is that each string is sounding at the same volume as the other ones. There shouldn't be one string that's really loud. And one string that's really quiet. They should all be played together. After you're able to do this, put them all together into a downstream. Want really Have fun. Go out and get your pointer finger. Put it right here. And you're going to put it on your first string on your third fret and create a C chord. Great downs from there. Okay, Using your thumb, you can also use your pointer finger. Now I do grow out my fingernails because I also play finger style guitar. But this will work even if you don't have fingernails on your right hand. The trick here is that you want to make sure that your wrist is pointed down like this, Okay. You don't want the nail to be touching it perpendicular like this. You want it to be flat with the string and the same exercise applies. Okay, so tilt your risk down so that your fingernail is in line and do each string. You know the drill. Put them together into a strong your left hand for that C chord. Very good. Now, in addition to your thumb and your pointer finger, you can use a pick. Now, just make sure that you're using a ukulele pick. I would not recommend using a guitar pick. A guitar pick is made out of hard plastic. A ukulele pick is made out of soft felt. Okay? And it's going to really help you to be able to get a nice, warm sound out of your ukulele. How you hold this is you put your thumb. I like that kind of angle on it. Okay. And then you come back around just like that. Okay, So you're gonna hold it in between those two. Some people like to also use their middle finger and just kind of rested on their but find what works and is comfortable for you. Okay, um but the same thing Each string together on that is your downstream. 17. Playing Off-Beat with Up Strums: We just took a look at the downstream, okay? And the downstream is played on the beats like this. 12 Now let's take a look at the ups from which is played off the beat. Like this. 123 Did you catch that? I played the ups from in between the beats one to three. Okay, now, just like we counted the beat for the down stroke, we had numbers 123 with the up Strom, we just have the word and one and two and three end. So if I'm going to play down strums one and two and three and the up shrooms air played on the end one and two and three. See how that works now, just like the Downs Trump, we can use our thumb. We can use our pointer finger and we can use a pick. OK, the thumb is fairly straightforward. It's just the opposite. 123 We'll take a little bit of getting used to, but I always recommend new ukulele players to start with the thumb. Okay, that's how you're gonna get the best sound as fast as possible. You can also use your pointer finger just keep in mind that you do want to keep your risk, your wrist tilted so that you are not attacking it from the side. You're attacking it from up and down. Okay? You want your fingernail to be in line flat with the strings, Then you can use a pick just like we did on the down on the downstream video. I would recommend learning how to strum in the in that progression. Use your thumb first, then your pointer finger and lend. Learn how to use a pick and you'll be strong in no time. 18. SHADOW Strumming?!?: the third kind of strum that we can use is called a shadow strum and believe it or not, you've already been using it. You see a shadow Strom is happens any time that we move our hand over the strings, but we don't actually play the strings. So when you have been playing your down strums, you're not playing any up strums. Every time that you move your hand up, you're playing a shadows from the oh, you see how that works Shadows from is any time that you're moving your hands either up or down and not touching the strings. Now this is really important, especially when it comes to creating and playing strum patterns. And here's why. Here's Here's a very common ukulele. Strong goes like this. A lot of people, when they first hear that, don't want to play it like this and watch how my hands starts and stops. This is not good. We want our hand as ukulele players to constantly be moving up and down, even if they're not touching the strings like this thing, The reason is, is as you learn more strum patterns. If you keep your hand moving, you're gonna be able to play them faster like this. You, you having to start and stop and make it a little edgy. Oh, want to keep that hand moving nice and fast and smoothly over the strings, even if it uses shadow strums, By the way, included in this course is a free strum library. It's near the end of this course. You can start working on Shrum patterns immediately, or you can save it till when you naturally progress there in the course. But just know that there is a library of strum patterns that you can start using right away , using down strums up Shrum's and shadows drums. 19. How to Accent your Playing: Now that we've learned that every song has re occurring beats, Let's see how that works out on our instrument. Do you go lately? Go ahead and look at the bottom of worksheet number five and you'll see different beats there on the left side, you'll see 34 time signature, meaning 123 and on the right side of the page, you'll see 44 times immature. 1234 examples a through C and then examples. D through G notice. On the left side, we have 123 So let's go ahead and do that with your strumming choice, whether it be with your thumb. That's how I'm going to be doing it today or with your pointer finger. Just simple down strums like this 123 Now do it with me and try and make sure that that time stays really consistent. Here we go. One. They go. 123! 1231231 Very good. Now to add another layer on top of this, notice that there's little orange shapes that look like this. Those shapes are called accent marks, and they mean that the that we give more accent or more emphasis to the beat that their place over. So, for example, letter a example, a would be sounded like this one one. It gives more of a pull to that specific beat. Let's do that together. Example. One. Ready? Go three one one one more time. One thing. Great, Let's move on to example, be where the emphasis or the accent mark is placed above beat, too. Thank you. Do it. Here we go. One Ready? Go! 12312 12312 and letter C one. Ready? Go! 1231231231230 great. So we have accented each of the three notes in 34 time. But let's move over to 44 time where, instead of counting 123 were now counting 1234 Here's what letter D sounds like, and then we'll do the rest again. 123 Three more notice that each one of these different each one of these different sounds. Each one of these different accents creates it different sound or flavor to the reoccurring pattern by putting an accent on a different beat. It's almost like putting an accent or an emphasis on a different syllable in our speech. So I can say, What are you doing with really no accents? But as soon as I start toe accent a specific word, the meaning changes subtly like this. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Each one has a specific, subtle difference between the meaning of the sentence. It's the same way with music. When we accent a specific beat, we're slightly changing the field, the mood or the purpose of that musical sentence. Let's go on to do example. E where were accenting? Beat two. Ready 12 Ready? Go! 123412 412341234 Great! Let's move on toe. Letter f Where were accenting? Beat three. 12 Ready? Go! 1231231234123 and last of all energy. Ready. 12 Ready? Go! 123 34 one. Very, very good. Now you can go through and had accent notes over more than one beat. For example, I could do beats one in three in a 34 time signature like this. Gunned three months. 313 or wanted Teoh 12312 Go through and see how many different combinations you can make by putting accents over different parts are different. Beats really quick, I forgot to mention in general, the most accent note in any time Signature is going to be beat one. If you think back to that conductor example, the conductor usually has a day, and he drops his hand really hard. More times than not. That's going to be beat one. And he's really trying to bring emphasis to that beat. So sorry I forgot to mention that a little earlier, but that's something that you really should know. So I'll see in the next lesson work on creating those strumming patterns. 20. What Your Left Hand ACTUALLY Does When You Play: when learning a new instrument, it's absolutely vital that you learn not only what an instrument does but how it works. The reason is that in the long run, you're going to be able to learn the instrument much better and much quicker. If you understand how it works and you're not just picking up a few tricks here and there on how to play a core, this or that. That's why I hear the ukulele academy. It's so important that you follow through all of these different lessons because they build one on top of each other. This lesson is focused on strings and pitches and the different factors that affect the sound that a different, that different strings maker that the same string can make. If you look at work sheet number six, we have a list of four different items that affect the pitch of a string. I'm just gonna, really quickly in this lesson, explain how those different things work. Number one that we have is the material of the string, and the material of the string is basically inherent. It's how you by the string you could buy a nylon string or metal string or gut string. There is different options available generally for a ukulele, you buy nylon strings. The material of the street makes it act differently when you pluck it so you know you can have a material. Steel or nylon, depending on the material, is going to vibrate differently and therefore effect to the pitch. Number two. We have the thickness of a string, which is also an inherent property of the string. As you buy in general, thinner strings will vibrate faster, meaning that thinner strings will create. Ah, higher pitch. So in general, on our ukulele, we have pretty thin strings. When you look at the whole stringed instrument, family ukulele is have relatively pretty thin strings. If you look at a big bass guitar or even this guitar here, the strings are much thicker, which make them produce a lower pitch. Thirdly, we have the tension on the string. This we can adjust when you justify tuning it with our tuning heads. So remember lesson number one. We describe the tuning heads as you turn it one way, and it tends puts tension on the string. You put it the other way. You turn it the other way and it releases tension. This is because the amount of tension on the string directly effects how much a pitch or how high or how low the pitches. Lastly, we have the length of the string. You've probably noticed this. Just, you know, by observation. A ukulele generally sounds higher pitched than, say, a big, upright bass that somebody in a jazz band is playing in an orchestra. The reason being is that distance between one in a string and the other massively effects. What kind of pitch, or how high, or how low the pitch is that it produces when you pluck it. Also, we can. The length of the string is inherent because it's fixed between these two points, but we can functionally change the length of the string. This is where fretting comes in, but I have, you know, pluck this a string. I am using the full length of that string, but as soon as I start to pluck on a fretted note, but this front does is it cuts off the string right at that point right there, and it makes it so that the string is actually a little bit shorter every time that we move up by doing this, we're decreasing the length of the string functionally and therefore getting a higher pitch in. That is how playing the ukulele way just the length of the strings in order for the different strings to create different pitches. 21. The 3 P's of Fingering - Spotting Problems Quickly to Learn Quickly: So what is your problem? We're talking about left hand in this video. And if we can learn these three p's toe left hand fingering technique, it will solve all of the problems that you may run into with your left hand. The three p's are placement position and pressure, and they go from large ideas. Done. The very small idea. Let's start off with placement. So let's say if somebody just came to me and said, Hey, Andrea, Andrea, Andrea played a C Corp really quick, and I was like I put I played this well, notice The problem here is I actually put my ring finger on string one fret four instead of string. One fret three when really it needs to be back there. So placement has to do with which string on which fret are replacing our fingers. It's a very broad concept placement. So, for example, they could have said play see court, and I put my ring finger on string to fret three. Well, that's a better sounding chord, but it's still not a C major chord, like I was wanting incorrect placement. So first off, we need to make sure fingers are right where they need to be a Sfar, a switch string and which fret And this is gonna come more into play. All three of these air gonna come more into play in the next chapter. When we start discussing more chords, you really close. You're hanging in there, learn all this theory and all this technical stuff. Way to go. It's making you a better musician. So first off we have placement. And then secondly, we have position now. Position is a little bit more specific. Emplacement position means not only which which fret, are we in, but where inside of the threat are we supposed to be as well as a couple other things that will discuss first off, where inside of the fret are we supposed to be? We want to be right behind the fret that we're aiming for A lot of people think that you're supposed to put your finger right on top really want to be right behind the fret that we're aiming for. We don't want to be in the middle or behind it back here because when we do that, if we're if we're in the middle or for behind it, what happens is that generally effects both our pitch and the quality of the sound that the string makes. So we wanted to be pressed up right behind the fret, but not on top of it. So position includes wearing the threat. But then it also includes hand tilt now noticed. If I if I make this fist with my knuckles, I can have my knuckles all in a line, horizontally or vertically like that. There's a little a little shift there when we do our courts. We generally don't want our hands to be in a horizontal position like this. We wanted to be more vertical, such as that horizontal vertical. It's a slight shift, but this shift is going to make things a lot more comfortable for you and in the long month , run a lot more natural for you, so focus on having that shift in your hands. This is gonna be especially important, as we learn in future lessons are F chord in our G Corp. So here's our f core that we're going to learn with a flat, horizontal, incorrect hand tilt, and it makes it so much easier if we could just tilt it out like that, and it makes our hand positioning so much better. Also, we want to not only think about hand positioning, but along with that is when we position our hand right hand tilt, it will make our fingers get closer together. So here, with my horizontal hand tilt, it's going to be like this. My fingers are nice and spread here. That's not good. And when I tilt it correctly, my fingers generally tend to come and close in a little bit closer. That's a good thing. Lastly, you want to talk about our pressure, and honestly, it's a pretty self explanatory idea pressure. How hard do we use our fingers to push down on the fret? Well, I'm here. There's there's a healthy balance. We're wanting to push down hard enough to where our fingers don't dampen the strings like this. See that if I don't push down hard enough, just dampens it, and I don't want to be pushing down so hard. Number one that it's uncomfortable. Number two. It'll actually make our string go a little bit sharp because we're putting too much tension on it. So push down just hard enough right past the point where It's not dampening anymore. Getting a nice clean, not too loose, not too hard. There's a balance there, so those are the three piece of left hand, finger and technique, and when you learn these and master them, it's going to increase the speed that you learn new cords, and it's going to make your ukulele sound so much better. 22. When 3 Notes Work Together - Understanding Chord Theory: Congratulations. You have made it to this chapter, which is a huge accomplishment in this chapter. Not this video, but in this chapter, we're going to be learning to new courts, the F chord and the G chord. And once you learn these two new cords Ah, whole huge amount of opportunities open up for you. You're able to play songs with these three chords, you're able to actually start working into strumming the ukulele buildings real solid, professional sounding strumming patterns. This is a huge accomplishment. And now you've gone through a lot of technical and theoretical music knowledge to get to this point. And I am. I'm just so proud of you because it takes a lot of work to become not only a ukulele player , but a musical ukulele player, and you've put in the work you're getting there. And now in this lesson, we're going to me show. I'm gonna be showing you that jump from just playing an F and G chord toe, understanding what an F and G court is. In the next video, you're gonna get there, you're gonna be playing it, and we're gonna have three hordes under our belt and start moving to playing some riel live songs, awesome work. Let's talk about chords and then we'll move into that in the next lesson. If you remember we when we were just discussing our seek, or we were saying that there is a root of third and fifth in the court, which there always is in the courts, that we're going to be playing a route 1/3 and fifth for the C chord. The route was placed on one one in the scale. 123456717654321 The route was placed on one, which is C, which is why we name it a C court. But here's where the jump happens. Here's where a big change happens. It we That route does not have to stay on the C. Note. The root can move anywhere we want to put it. We can move the route to see or two D or T E F g A or B. Each one of those cords are. Each. One of those notes can function as the root of a chord. The most important cords that we're going to learn is our one chord four chord and are five chord see is our one court because the route was placed on. See the one. But let's move that route up toe f before we call the f chord. Or the four chord, because the route is placed on the four in the scale or the F notice by looking at work sheet Number seven that that F court still has a route. 1/3 and fifth the third. He's an a note, and we call the third not because it's 1/3 away from see the one in the scale, but because it's 1/3 away from the root f 456 There's a interval of 1/3 there. That's the distance between the route and the third. The fifth is C. See is the one who mind blowing. The sea is the one, but it is 1/5 away from that F the root of the court. Picture it this way. If we were to call that high C and eight, well, that makes it make a lot more sense. 12345678 There's 1/5 between the eight in the four who mind blowing stuff The same thing applies when we move the route up to the G. The G is the five in the scale in the C scale. 12345 or C D. E F G. It's that five. But that G five dys functioning as the root of the cord G, is the root of the five chord. The third in the five chord is B, and the fifth in the five Chord is D. Because those scales repeat who, if you can understand that you're ahead of probably 99.5 976% of the world population in understanding music theory, those air some huge steps into understanding not only how to play the ukulele, the understanding how music works less. Let's not talk about this anymore. We've done enough the done enough technical work. You know, your three piece, you know how courts work. Let's get to playing your courts 23. Let's Make it Happen: all right, You've made it. Here we go. You've learned how the one chord four chord, The Five chord, how they differ, how they're the same and that they each have a group of third and fifth. They moved all around the scale. You're here ready to play your C chord and learn your F court in your d chord. Let's hop in without any further delay. First off, we have our C chord, which we've already learned Remember three p's placement position and pressure wanting to have a nice vertical placement. Her vertical hand placement. They're not horizontal like this. Just nice and natural, good and shun that you've done it before. It's our starting point. Now follow. You're going to take your pointer figure and put it on stream to fret. One string to fret one right here and then your middle finger on stream. Four. Fret. Too proud of their time. See how it feels now You may be getting a couple dampens. Sound a little bit like that. Focus on getting your fingers straight up and down. This goes along with position. Focus on getting your finger straight up and down like that instead of coming at it from the side like that. See if you can get your fingers up and down on the ukulele perpendicular, you could say and not coming out of like at a side angle like that up and down, just like that. You always want your fingers toe Onley touch the strings that they're supposed to touch. So that's where coming in, right on the string. Coming right down on the string instead of coming in at an angle will really help you out. Try that again. You can get every string to sound without dampening like this over a nice and free and clear. Great. And lastly, for now, we're gonna learn more records in the future. But right now, that d chord Excuse me, The G chord. I take your point a finger and put it on stream three Fret too. String three Fret, too, which is right here, middle finger or finger to on string. One fret too. And your ring finger on string to fret three. This is one where having that vertical hand positioning hand tilt is going to really help you. So instead of having your hand out like this horizontal, see if you can bring it out like that. No. See if you can. You can hear that. There you go. That's your G chord. Both of these new courts are placed on worksheet, seven continued, so it's a two page worksheet. These chord diagrams are placed on the second page of worksheets seven. So you can look at them, understand them and memorize them. Because once we learned these three chords, here we go open up the world of playing songs on the ukulele, right on good work. Let's move on to the next lesson. 24. FALSE: "Practice Makes Perfect": congratulations. You've gotten to the point where we can start working on songs. This is a huge achievement. Like I said in previous videos. Congratulations. This is awesome. The first song that we're going to be learning is amazing Grace. It's a classic him that a lot of people know, and I just wanted before we jumped in just to warn you and encourage you at the same time. A lot of people say that practice makes perfect. But in all honesty, practice doesn't always make perfect practice. Makes permanent practice. Makes permit. How you practice determines how you'll perform. Look at this when I was in college, just studying music, music theory, music performance, how to teach. A lot of people will go into the practice rooms, and they would spend hours and hours and hours practicing their instrument or their voice or whatever they were trying to get good at. But here's the problem. A lot of people go into a practice room or their practice at home, and we'll just practice sloppily. They'll say, Hey, you know what? Good practice just play over and over and over again. What happens is they keep on playing it over and over and over again the wrong way, because nothing magical happens when you just practice the wrong way. There's nothing about spending time practicing that makes you perform better. Here's what I mean. Practice well means a good performance, so it's always better to practice slow and particular be really brutal on yourself, practice slow and perfect and then speed it up. In this way, you're actually going to improve much, much faster than if you just were strong really fast and try and perform really, really well. Take it, take it breath, slow it down and practice well. It will end up in a better performance for this. We have a tool that some people love and some people absolutely hate. And it's called a metre again. You can buy a physical Metrodome you've seen. It's maybe sitting on top of a piano has a hand, and it goes in order to keep the time. Kind of like a conductor keeps the time with his conducting pattern. I personally like to use an app for that as well. Again, it meets most of my needs. Most of the time. I'm not being paid to say this is just a great resource that I want to share with you. The app that I use is called mentioned, and right now, at the time of this recording, it's free. On the APP store, there's a paid version that you can update to if you want, but I've actually just stick with the free version. It works for me, just great. So, um, right now I'm going to be learning or teaching Amazing grace at 50 beats per minute. If you look, you have this little dial that you can dial up, it increases the speed up here where you can dial it down and it decreases the speed. So I like to set it when I'm practicing. Amazing grace, right at 50 beats per minute beats per minute. How many beats happen in a minute. So if we were to turn it up to 60 60 beats in a minute, that's one beat per second. So I like to turn down the tempo to 50. This just makes practicing really manageable. Hey, just starting out, you may need to turn it down the 40 or 35 or 30. It doesn't really matter. As long as you're able to practice well and not be sloppy and you're practicing, let's jump into learning Amazing Grace 25. Applying All You Have Learned to an AMAZING Song: All right, so here you are. You ready to play your first song in the first song that we're gonna be playing is amazing Grace. It's a classic him, like I said before, and words is, it uses the C cords, the F court and the G chord. If you haven't found it already, you know the drill. Go ahead and find worksheet eight. Pull it up on the screen or printed out so that you can follow along. Let's talk about how a ukulele player looks at this music and there and from it extracts the song that he wants to play here. She wants to play. If you look at this top section, we have two kinds of text. We have blue cord names and black lyrics, and we've read both of them from left to right, just like as if we were to be reading the lyrics themselves. And I've actually gone through and spaced out these cords so that they will appear above the word that were supposed to strong than that. So, for example, you'll notice the first C is right above the May in amazing grace, so it will sound like this. The will strum right over above. That May. So I'm going to do a quick demo of strumming on Lee where the cords change. I'm gonna grab my Metrodome and said it right at 50 beats per minute, you can see we're right at 50 beats per minute and show you what it would look like to practice this at this tempo Temple has to do with how fast the beats are coming and going so quick. Tempo would be slower. Temple would be something like this. Let's practice it to get 12 Hey, how's the I was? Oh, I pretty straightforward. We wait for that No, or that court toe appear above the syllable. And when it does, that's when we strum the note. Insider tip. This is always on beat one so we can count 123 Since this is this song is in a 34 time signature. See, it all connects together. This amazing grace is in a 34 time signature, meaning we have beats 123 123 And all these court changes occur on beat one. Now if you'll notice in that last time that I played it, there were some some really long gaps where we weren't playing. The next step that we can do is always play unbeaten one before, in the last version, all the court changes were on a B one, but sometimes a beat one would pass without a strumming like this. That's sweet. The that saved the Reg like me. So there were two measures that went by to beat ones that passed without us strumming. This time through, I'm going to strum every beat one, and if you look at the bottom of the page, there's kind of a cheat sheet there. It'll show you every single place where beat one ISS follow along as I play, I'm going to still hold the tempo right at 50 beats per minute. Here we go. 12 a a I I I great. So there we have strumming on every beat one as it comes and goes at 50 beats per minute. Now I'm going to up the tempo and and and give you another demo at a faster tempo with this strum with this trump at strumming on every beat one, let's do it together. First of all, I need to find a good tempo use 80 beats per minute for this faster, more realistic tempo 12 way. But I e. I was clipping, wasn't it? The idea is again start slow and then move it up faster. In the next video, I'm going to do a performance video, so taking it at a faster tempo, but without the Metro. 26. A Quick Performance from Your Instructor: like E. I want Waas Waas but now I see. 27. How YOU Can Create Unique Strum Patterns: Now that you know the three kinds of strums the down strong, the up Strom in the shadow strum you can actually start to get into creating your own Strom's for yourself. How we do this is not by thinking what do I play, but actually, what don't I play? Here's what I mean. Look at the bottom of worksheet Number nine. You'll see. They're listed four of Andrew's favorite strum patterns I have listed to there in 34 time and two in 44 time. Look at that first example in 34 time, there's an X over the and after a beat one and an X over the end after beat, too. Leaving 123 end. Where were you drawn? Those x x is is where the shadow strums go. So start off. We can start off with everything 313 Then what I did was I drew those exes over those two hands and came up with 123 again Note that my hand didn't never stop moving. Instead of strumming, I put shadows from in the in its place one way Look at the second example I've put an X over the and after the one and an X over the end after beat three, leaving us with 12 and three 12 and three, the other two that I didn't sound our shadows drums so altogether it would sound like this . 12 and 312 and three on the ukulele. It sounds like this. Go ahead and take a little bit of time to fill in your own shrimp patterns in 34 See if you complain and then come back and we'll work through the 44 time signature once. All right, great. Let's look at the 44 time signatures that 1st 1 the and after Beat one is crossed out and beat Three is crossed out, leaving us with one to end and four. And with the strum patterns sounded. It sounds 12 and three and four and 12 and three and four, and on the ukulele it sounds 1234 for three. Sounding fast. It sounds like this pretty great, Lastly, that last one there there's the and after one marked out and the and after the three marked out, leaving us with 12 and 34 and one two and three four. And with the Shadow strums, it sounds like this 12 and 34 and 12 and 34 And with the ukulele it sounds noticed each one of these. I started off with everything one and two and three and four, and then I took away some of those and put shadows crumbs in their place. Now go ahead and figure out a couple of your own. Shumpert earns there, and the other two blanks provided, and in the next video, we're going to add strum pattern to the song that we learned Amazing Grace. 28. Applying a Strum Pattern to Your Song: Now that we've learned three chords, we've learned a song, and we've learned different strum patterns. Let's throw all of those together into playing a song that has three chords and playing it with a strong pack. So since Amazing Grace is in the 34 time signature, meaning it gets three beats for every measure 123123 Let's go ahead and use a strong pattern from the left side of worksheet Number nine if you need, and I still I'm going to use it If you need to use worksheet number eight toe, look back and get those cords from what you practice. Go ahead and grab that now. So when we think about playing Amazing Grace, we need to remember again 34 time and then I'm going to use in this demo video the Metrodome again. At our practice tempo a 50 beats per minute. Let me pull that out, get it up and running the practice tempo at 50 beats per minute, and here we go. So for this one, I'm going to add the strong pattern that very first trump had one. You three and strong one to if you'll go back and listen. I actually made a mistake in that one time. I forgot to strum the end of three, but since my hand constantly kept on moving, the song continued and you might not have even noticed. So go back and listen and see if you can find my mistaken there. But remember, even if you make a mistake, it's super important that your right hand never stops moving. I could get the strum pattern all wrong, but you wouldn't know if that hand keeps on moving keeps on moving with the beat that beat never, ever stop. So never stop moving your right hand. In the next video. I'm going to do a performance video at a faster tempo without the mention. 29. My Turn to Play!: E I. 30. Using the vi (Six) Chord to Create Emotion in Your Playing: So far in the ukulele academy, you've learned about three different courts. C chord, the F court and the G core. And we said that whenever Accord is named, with just one letter name, like C four F or G, we said that it's understood to be a major court, So I know that you may not know what that means quite yet. But know that whenever one chord is named with one letter, it's understood to be a major court so we can call the C Chord a C major chord. They're one in the same. The reason that musicians do this is that Major course are so common that it just it takes less time to say, see or to write C, then toe have to write C major. So it's understood C equals C major. Let's talk about the different note degrees or the different notes that these cords of built on. We said that the C major chord is built on the one the C note and therefore it's a major court. See, e G is the C chord c major, the one court. Then we have the F court or the forecourt because it's built on before 1234 CD E before Cord F is F major or the forecourt. And then, lastly, we had the five chord, or G or G major. They're all three. The same thing. All three of these, with 145 chords, are major courts. Something interesting happens, though, when we build a chord. Not on the one before five, but we build it on the six. The six chord with the route on the A note is not a major chord. It's a minor chord. The primary difference between major chords and minor chords is in their sound. So most people, ah, here major courts as being happy or upbeat sounding and minor chords is being sadder or gloomy, depressing that kind of vibe. We'll get a little bit more in the next video into the technical differences between major and minor chords. But for now, let's look at your a minor chord on the ukulele. You'll notice that this actually looks a little bit familiar. I'm gonna wait a little bit to see if you can figure out how, but think about how this court may look a little bit familiar if you look at the top right of worksheet 10. You see the core diagram there for this? A minor court. We t take our second finger finger to our middle finger and we put it on. Fret are sorry. String. 1234 Fret too. That's our placement. Now work through the positioning with me. Where? In the fret. Right behind it. How hard do we push down? Just enough to make the sound. Then make sure that you have a good hand tilt out like this. Not in out as if you're going to be given somebody a hug. Your hands go up and down. Not like this. Up and down. Give it a couple strong. See, it sounds and you now, did you figure it out? Why does this cord look familiar? The only difference between the A minor chord and the F chord were F major chord his one finger. And that's the point. A finger or finger number one if we put our if we play our a minor through. The only difference is putting our pointer finger down way. Have an f court f court minor. Pretty easy. A nice little step away from our F major chord. So practice going in between your F court and you're a minor chord like this. You You could even use a strong pattern that we we discussed like 12312 to 123 Let's move on to the next video to see what is really the difference. Technically, between the A minor chord and an a major chord, let's find out. 31. Major Chords vs. Minor Chords: all right, we just learned are a minor chord. Now let's talk a little bit about between about the difference between the A, my record and the A major court. The only difference between a major chord an a minor chord has to do with the middle note or the third you see. The third is what controls the mood in general, the mood of the court. So look at the bottom of worksheet Number 10 we have. They're listed in a chord, meaning an a major chord. They're still built on the same notes a, C and E. But now our C is a c sharp. When we were talking about fret numbers, we said That way we number our friends just 12345 Each one of these frets signifies 1/2 step. You're looking at a piano. It's is if you were to play all of the notes the seas er dee dee sharp e f sharp, the white and black notes you play them all. The distance between all those notes is 1/2 step. So if we raise the middle note the third oh, a half step, we can create a minor chord into a major chord. How does this look on the ukulele? Well, this is where things get fun. Our string 3123 What string note is that? It's the see strength. See? So this note is a C. When we pluck the C street make set in order to raise that that see up to a C sharp. All we have to do is raise it by one fret thistles, Now a c sharp. So look back at our cord are a minor. And then we can raise that third the C A B to a c sharp. And now we have in a major chord or on a cord. This is the primary difference between a minor chord and a major court. So all we have to do is raise that one, fret up. Turning are a minor between a major, uh 32. When You Substitute One Chord for Another: one of the interesting things about the six court. Or, in our case, the a minor chord is that it can sometimes take the place in a song of the one chord it's called Substitute Court or a substitution eri cord. Sometimes in the place of a one chord, we can put Weaken, substitute a six chord, and you will give the song a different flavor, a different vibe. So let's look at work, she tend continued its the second page of the worksheet. And there we see an old song, Amazing Grace, that we've already learned, and we've put a strong pattern to. But now notice on the 123 the third line down I once was lost. There's no longer a Sikh or there it's been substituted with an a minor chord. Let's go through and hear what this song sounds like with the new Substitute six Court. Here's what it sounds like a thing it is I Did you see how everything was the same in that song. Except for that one court, it substituted the place off R C chord. So as we learn more songs, you can go through and see if there's any places that we can substitute the one chord with the six chord. In the next video, I'm going to be doing a performance video of the of Amazing Grace with the strum pattern and this new six chord in the place of the one court. And by the way, these these performance videos are here, so you can follow along and understand what it looks like. Toe actually perform the songs for yourself. 33. Time To Sing with the Sixes: way, way. 34. Spicy Sevenths!: cords, cords and more quarters. We're just learning about a ton of different sounding course. We've learned about the major chords, that minor chords, and today we're going to be learning about seven chords. Now. We said that we can change the sound of a minor chord by raising that third. When we raise that 3rd 1/2 step or one fret distance on our ukulele, we're now we now have a major court. We've changed the court by changing one of the notes within the court. When we talk about this new kind of chord, the seventh chord we're not talking about changing one of the notes within Accord were actually talking about adding a whole new note. All together we had three notes in 1/4 before. Now we have 4 1/7 chord has four notes in it. Go ahead and take out worksheet number 11 entitled Seventh Chords so that you can follow along with the examples here. Here we have listed a C seven chord, so we have our R C chord playing. James, you know, way learned near the beginning of the course, but now we're going to turn that see horde into a C seven court and this court will contain a C and E G and now a B flat or the seventh in the court. We're sticking it up on top. So here's how we're going to do it. Notice if you look at my ukulele. We have the sequel by using our ring finger right here. What we've done is we've changed our a string to sound a c So we have a just open a B flat , be See. So this note is now a C. We could check. It sounds like our string three, which is also a sea. So what we can do is we can change this C note into a B flat. That way we'll have all of the notes we need in order to make a C seven court. So we have a c be B flat. This is our C seven court. Go ahead and give it a couple strums to here Transition between that C chord on your C seven just for fun. This is how it's used. Go from the c c seven. No, go to your f notice how much smoother it makes that transition. We could just go right from R C A F. But when we put a C seven chord in between those two, it just makes it a smoother transition. It's almost like it steps into instead of jumping into it. So now that we've seen how seventh court works, let's look at a song that we can use 1/7 chord in. 35. Danny Boy - Using ALL the Chord Types!: go ahead and grab work, she 11 continued. In It are on it, I should say, is the song Danny Boy. It's a classic song loved by many, and it uses quite a variety of courts. It uses major courts minor chords, and 1/7 chord is, well, notice. At the top. There's two new chords that you'll need to learn before you're able to play this song, but you know exactly how to figure that out. Now you have the chord diagrams. There you have the numbers of which fingers to use, and you have your string numbers there in case you need some help. Let me show you how these two chords are fingered quickly, and then we'll work through how to play Danny Boy. So we have the D minor chord, and it is fingered with using one finger are one finger on string to fret one and then using our middle finger or her finger to on string four. Fret, too. And then I ring finger or finger three on string three. Fret, too. Do you minor chord. Great. Now let's look at that second court, the G seven court. We have our finger one on string to Fred one. Just like our F chord are pointed fingers in the same place, and then our finger to is on strength. Three. Fret, too, and finger three is on string. One fret, too. This is one where it's really important to remember your position, so have your fingers right up against that threat as much as possible and then make sure you're not letting your hand slipped into this horizontal position. But keep it, Aziz. Vertical as you comfortably can. So you're not one of the jam it way out here like this, which is nice and easy. The thumb is resting on the back of the fretboard. The back of the neck. Excuse me, and there's RG seven Chord. Now let's look through and figure out together what the time signature is for Oh, Danny Boy. The first line goes, 0 10 he boy. The pipes, the pipes cycle the from Glen to man, right? So where is the biggest poll in the music? That's the question, and this may take some time to develop. But in order to figure out what our time symmetries will need to figure out where is the biggest poll when We were talking about accents. We mentioned that beat one in general gets the biggest poll but it's the most accent and no So let me show you When we sing this song we generally lean into boy Who, Danny boy, The pipes. The pipes are called the I'm Glenn to glad. Right on those notes, those notes. Or you can look at your at your music Where those cords are listed are where beat ones are . Oh, Danny boy, the pipes The pipes are called the from Glen to command So there you can see that we have in this song 44 time signature Amazing Grace was 34 This one is for for I'm gonna go through and show you just with strumming on Lee The cords, The different chord structures of the different fingering is that we use for this song So just kind of has a little dent. Oh, Danny boy, the pipes The pipes are cool from Glen Teoh on down the mountains Farmers on the roses Is you Teoh. So that's the first part. Did you notice something interesting on the second mine on Mountainside? There we had a core change on beat one the D minor there and on beat three, the G seven there down the mountains down the mountain. 12304 So, on both of those, we had a court change. Let's move on to that second paragraph. But when summers in or when the valley's hushed and white so shine orange. Oh, Danny Kenny, boy, I love you. So there were a couple parts in that one, too, where we didn't only change on beat one, but also on Beat three. In the next video, I'm going to be doing a performance video of the song with a strong pattern so that you can see what the final product that you can work toward is for Danny Boy. Really excited. This song includes major minor seventh chords. You're really well on your way to becoming a very proficient ukulele player. Great job. 36. Singing Danny Boy - an Example for You to Follow: Rothe Go! Come summer, the's Wythe boy, I use. 37. Finally Understanding "Keys": Thus far in the ukulele academy, we've learned different courts are one chord. Four Chord, five Chord are six Chord and then Our seventh Chords. How those work and all of these things we've seen how the root of the cord can move around in the scale are one chord has the root placed on the one are four chord or F. Court has the root place on the 45 g six A. We've seen how those things work. When we start to think about key changes, it's not moving a court around. It's actually moving where dough is. So you've probably heard of people say this before. They say, Oh, you know what? This this song is really low. So let's let's do a key change up. Let's let's change keys. Or maybe, you know, you've seen some musicians filling around and they say, Hey, what key are you in? Look here, you playing in? This is what it means. It means that we've changed where dough is. Go ahead and look at work sheet number 12 at the first box of the example there in the first box, we see the scale as we've seen it before, the dough is placed on one or on sea, so it's exactly what we've seen before. C D E f g A B C or 12345671 exactly as we've seen it before. But dough or one doesn't need to stay on. See, here's what I mean. Look down at the second box, you can see that dough has moved up to a G note. G is now our new dough or are one because of this. Not only does that change but all of our cords changes well, so G, which used to be the five chord in our first scale. He is now the one chord because the G is now dough. It's now one, and whenever Accords route is built on the one or Ondo, it is now the one court for So also, look, what do you think our forecourt in this new key is going to be? 1234 g A B. C. It's now see our four chord C. So whereas four, whereas C used to be our one chord Now that chord is now are four chord and D. He's our five chord. What do you think are minor? Six court is gonna be Well, it's working up. We have G, said his dough g a b c d e. It's an e chord, right? Wrong Accord is built on the six scale degree it is, and a minor chord. So are six. Chord is now e minor. When this happens, when we change keys like this, we can see that something happens there in the second box. It's a green arrow is pointing right at it when we change keys away from the key of C, our first key where Doe was set on C. Now we're in the key of G. Where does set on G when we move away from the key of C? What happens is something called accidental because of accidental. There's a sharp or a flat placed by some of the notes. So, for example, in the key of G R second key here, in example, two, we have a sharp placed by the F, making it f sharp. So when we look at our ukulele, if this is the note F, this is now f sharp half step. Instead of always having toe. Look at these accidental musicians have developed something called key signatures. Look, at example, Number three. We can see that that Sharp has now moved over to the beginning of the staff, or at least near the beginning of the staff, right by the treble clef. Because of this, we don't have to write that sharp any more. In the music itself, it's almost like that key signature applies to everything on that line, since the key signature has a sharp on the F line. Now all the EFS in the entire music don't have toe. Have a sharp next to them. Look, at example, for Let's Keep on Working through this here. We've moved O T d. So, whereas in our second example, does on G and a first example does on see now D is dough. 1234567111 is D. Now dough is deep. So are one court would be D major are four chord would be G major, and our five chord would be a major. Our six chord B minor. It all works together, so any song that we learn can be literally can be played or performed in any key. Here's what I mean, go ahead and grab Amazing Grace back out. We learned Amazing Grace in the key of C a Z Grace. How sweet. But let's say that I didn't want to play in that key anymore. Honestly, it actually is a little bit low for me. So what I can do as a musician is change the key so that dough is a little bit higher. I'm singing really low, and it's kind of uncomfortably low, and I want to sing it a little bit higher so that it's a little bit more comfortable in my voice. I can change the key. So whereas I was playing C C C C F C's now I can play, it's a key change. I moved dough from from Sea Up to D and now is a little bit more comfortable in my voice. This is how key signatures work. Once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to play any song in any key. If you look at ultimate guitar tabs dot com or just ultimate guitar and Google it, you'll find that in any song that you look up, there's going to be a little transposed button off to the left hand side of the screen. By clicking this transposed button up or down, you'll be able to change the keys. That's what it means. That's what transposed means, by the way, Transposed means to change when a song is in a certain key and you want to change the key. That's action is called Transposing. I am going to transpose this song from C Up to the key of D. So they're on ultimate guitar. You're gonna be able to transpose songs, maybe to find chords that you like to play that are easier to play or maybe to find in a range that is easier for you to sing. So with this being said, let's do a example. Uh, let's in the next video learn how to play Amazing Grace in two different keys. 38. Key Changing Within a Song - This Sounds Amazing!: look at work. She number 12. We have their song Amazing Grace listed in two different creek keys. The first key is what we've already learned The key of C where C is our dough. But then the second listing of Amazing Grace is amazing Grace In the key of D we have raised the key up from C two d. We've raised oh, up from C two d So I'm not gonna play much of the first paragraph just because you've already heard it. But it's just our normal amazing grace Using grace How sweet this seemed like the I was was like those blind But now I see. So now let's transpose it up into D um hazing Grace How sweet. The suit that saved a wretch like me I will swap lost now I was blind But now I see you see how that happened My voice, The whole song actually moved up in pitch because we have moved our key up in pitch. In the next video, I'm going to do a, um, a performance video of amazing grace with a key change. But first, let's talk about how how does this effect the feel of the song When we do this key change Musicians use the key change in the middle of songs in order to bring more powerful emotion into the song itself. Just by raising the key by raising the pitch of the entire song, it does something to raise the entire energy of the song, too. So if you're writing a song and you have one verse that maybe it goes from sad toe happy or goes from, you know reclusive to out there and you're really trying to just have that open like come at me kind of feel boom, big and broad feeling that's where a musician could implement, make good use of a key change because it key chain just It's almost like it's like a waking up. You just you're in the song and then all the sounds like whoa, key change. Let's see how that sounds in the next video of a performance of Amazing Grace, with a key change 39. Amazing Grace with Key Change - Performance Video: way, way I want swat way. 40. Easy-to-Use Chord Chart!: Wow, We're already getting near the end of the course. You've made so much progress. Just look back on all that you've learned. We've learned a lesson. Number one. What is a note? You've learned what music is. You've learned your scales. You've learned how different chords sound, how they're played. Major chords, minor chords, seventh chords. Key changes. Strum ings from patterns. Trump types. You have learned a whole lot. This is us. It's not an easy thing to do to get this involved. Not only ukulele, but music. You've really done a great job. If you've gotten to this point, that's fantastic. In this lesson. Go ahead and turn toe work, she 13. There you'll see a court tart courtyard, and it's what I've called the extended court chart on. There are a lot of courts that you've already learned, but there are some that you haven't learned. What I've done is I've put together a chart of the most common core's that will fit on this page. What you can do is take these chords and go learn more songs. You have the tools how to do it. Figure out what time signature it's in. Figure out from there what strum pattern you'd like to use and then from there, if there's some chords you haven't learned, look at this courtship. You can. You can use this all you want. No, no strings attached. Go for I want you to continue growing and learning this amazing instrument called the ukulele if you go. I mentioned it quickly before ultimate guitar. Just Google it. There's a whole whole bank of songs that you can use their It's crowd sourced, meaning that anybody can upload lyrics and chords. So be sure to click on ones that have high ratings, because there's some where, say, the cords don't match up with the words or the courts or just incorrect. But that is a really valuable resource that you can use for for finding any song. Also, you can use Google Google. You just Google any song. You know Mary had a little lamb cords, Mary had a little lamb bubble butt or any song that you would want to learn and Google honestly, it will probably bring you to ultimate guitar, but say ultimate guitar doesn't have it. It will bring you to somewhere that has those chords. That's why it's so important. Not just to to have not just to learn how to play one song, but now you're you have the ability and the tools to go and find any song and teach yourself how to play it because you know how music works. Super proud. So excited. Thank you for taking this course and go and start memorizing these new cords. Each one is valuable, and each one will do you get. 41. Why "Being Nervous" is NOT a Bad Thing - The Performance Mindset: for this video. I'm just gonna sit down the ukulele and talk about something that people ask me about all the time when I'm out touring or performing here at home. And that is do you get nervous and this, really? It comes down to your performance mindset. You see it because whether you're performing for a small group of friends, you know, four or five people were you performing for a crowd of thousands? The idea is still the same. The mental, the performance mindset is still the same. So I just took a quick moment to write down a couple things that helped me get into the correct performance mindset. Teoh, ease my nerves but to focus me at the same time. So the 1st 1 the question is, do I get nervous? I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes I do. But what the crucial thing to do is to change that nervous energy into a an energized, excited energy. Think of it this way. What happens physically to your body when you get nervous? Well, you start to feel warm. You start to get a little bit sweaty. Your mind starts to race. What happens to your body When you get really excited, well, you start to get warm, you might get a little bit sweaty and your mind starts to race is the same thing, but our minds interpret them in different ways. So you can. You can very easily. What I do is when I get when I'm about to start performing and if I start to feel nervous, I just channel that nervous energy and say, You know what? What I'm feeling right now can be called nervousness, but I'm going to consider it to be energy, to be focus, to be excitement. It's the same exact feeling, just giving myself that mental push, that mental realization that that nervousness is the same thing as excitement that hopes me focus in on what I need to do and to actually enjoy myself at the same time. Performing music shouldn't be a dread. It shouldn't be something that you hate. Maybe you've had a bad, you know, public speaking engagement or a bad music performance and other instruments before, and now you just dread playing or speaking in front of people speaking and playing our it's they're both public performance change, that nervous energy that nervous feeling into a conscious, excited energy. So that's the difference between fear and energy. Fearful it focuses in but energy and excitement. It focuses outward. Think of it this way. Say you have a really good friend who is coming in from the airport and you haven't seen them in 15 years. 10 15 years. You can say that. You get, you're gonna You're gonna be nervous while seeing them. You're nervous before seeing them. What are they gonna think about me? I've gotten fat. Oh, you know, my hair's changed. I'm not as good looking as I used to be. I'm not a successful in my career. All these different things. But blonde, your your nerves, they start to focus inward. And they say, Oh, what will that person think about me? Or you could get excited. Excitement is the opposite way. Excitement focuses outward, and it says, Oh, man, what we gonna talk about? I make so excited that they're here. Haven't seen them in so long. I heard that they just got a new dog. I love dogs. You These are just random. They're going to my mind. But it's the same exact principle. How How do you channel nervousness into excitement. Fear into excitement is the same person. It's the same interaction. It's the same meeting. But you can have a completely different mindset going into it, knowing what's happening because of that mental shift. So let me look through the notes, see if there's anything else. Okay, this one seems kind of stupid. And I thought it was stupid, too, until I tried it. It's called Power posing. It's basically the idea that your brain is wired to not be fearful when it's wide open. So think about what happens when you get scared. You shrink up, you curl in, you become reclusive. Just like that. What happens when you're confident? Well, just goes out, your hand goes up. You're not afraid. Opening yourself up to potential threats because you're confident. Sure, I got this is good. This is not gonna be a problem at all. So how opposing is? Actually, it is kind of chicken your brain into into understanding that everything's gonna be okay, that there's really no need to be afraid so right before performance. If I'm starting to feel nervous along with the mental preparation of changing, you know, nervous energy into focused, excited energy. I will power pose, which means, you know, you extend your body out as far as you can. Spread your legs. Hold your chest out. Put your chin up. Hands out. It may seem really stupid and I thought it was super stupid, but it works. So that's why I'm telling you about it. I haven't really told much people, many people about this before. Honestly, it's just kind of something that I've done by myself, but it really does work and look into the research is actually really, really interesting. Um so power posing, breathing slow, purposely slow down your breathing, you know? So you get all tense. Just slow it down. Focus that energy. Tell yourself you're OK. Also rehearsed truth to yourself. The truth is that the people in your audience don't want to see you fail. The truth is, is that they actually like you. They're they're listening to you there. They're wanting to hear you perform those people. Your audience more times than not. 99% of the time is for you. They actually want to see you succeed. They're excited. They're focusing outward on you so you can return the favor by being excited and focusing outward on them. It's actually a great compliment that you can give them as well as focusing on your audience. Um, sometimes that's a little bit scary. You know, you look up and you see all the different people. But what you can dio and this is this is the primary place where I focus my energy, and my excitement is I focus it into the music. So music is at its core communication. You know, it's been said. You can say with music what you can't say with words. I focusing on the music. I focus in on making that music as beautiful as I can. I'm making it professor and making it as communicative as I can make it communicate what I wanted to communicate in the best way that I can. That to me that's that's my passion. I want to see people learn how to do that, learn how to take an instrument and express themselves in a way that they aren't able to express themselves in any other way. And I find that the ukulele is a wonderful, wonderful tool that you can use to express that generally the feelings that the ukulele expresses are upbeat, happy, laid back chill just awesome. And I I want to see other people to that. That's why I created the course that you just finished. So all those things come together into creating a stress free. Maybe not. Maybe not stress free anxiety, fear filled dread experience, dreadful experience of performing turns that it's actually something that you can look forward to. I look forward my performances, because I get to do what I love. I get to communicate through music to people who want to hear amazing music and want to see me succeed. Um, and then talking with them as afterwards is awesome, and I just I just love the whole experience. That's why I want to share with you. So that being said, that's the performance mindset. That's how I think through forming. And I've done a lot of research into it, and I think you'll find that other people will say the same. Other professionals will say the same that you may not always be able to conquer nerves, but you can change those nerves into something really productive and fun. So with that, go start playing for people you're able to let's see it 42. Concluding Remarks - You Did It!: Well, you've done it. You've completed the course you've gone through. You've learned so much. You've You've seen not only how the ukulele works but how music works. You've put in the time and the effort. And honestly, I just can't wait to see how you go on and use this music. Whatever that that looks like for you, whether that be you're going and touring, you know you're becoming a professional music performer using this instrument. Or maybe this instrument is a platform to learning how to play guitar. Or maybe it's your wanting to just you wanting to go on YouTube and make covers that is so cool. And actually that's an exploding, exploding thing right now, going making YouTube covers. Or maybe you're wanting to use this instrument to communicate with your family, communicate with your friends or even just for your personal enjoyment. Whatever the case is. Congratulations on finishing the ukulele academy. It's not. It's not an easy course. It takes work toe, learn how to do this stuff. And I'm just so excited that you've gotten to this point of finishing up. I have a question for you. Was it a good in return? on your investment. Do you feel like you got a good education for the amount of time, effort and money that you put into this course? You know, one thing that I love to do is spread how to play, how to play music, toe others, right? It's it's what the intro video says. You know, I want to see people experience playing an instrument for themselves. If that's the case, I would be so grateful. If you could go onto Facebook, find our Facebook page. The ukulele academy like it comment you can. You can find people there who have taken the course to and are wanting to connect. I don't know. Maybe this is going to grow into a huge ukulele community online. Whatever the case is, if you could find that page and like it, that would mean the world. To me, social media is the way that we can communicate quickly and easy easily with a ton of people. And hey, if there's somebody that you know that wants to learn how to play a musical instrument, I would be honored if you would tell them about the Ukulele academy. It's a place where I've hoped I hope that it's not only a place where you can learn the ukulele, but a place where you've learned music as well. And now I guess this is goodbye because this is the last video and you've completed the corpse. I'm so excited to see where you're gonna go from here. And I wish you the best in your musical endeavors. And with that, I'll see you around and maybe even see you on the Facebook page. See you. 43. Want More?: Well, you've done it. You've completed the course you've gone through. You've learned so much. You've You've seen not only how the ukulele works but how music works. You've put in the time and the effort. And honestly, I just can't wait to see how you go on and use this music. Whatever that that looks like for you, whether that be you're going and touring, you know you're becoming a professional music performer using this instrument. Or maybe this instrument is a platform to learning how to play guitar. Or maybe it's your wanting to just you wanting to go on YouTube and make covers that is so cool. And actually that's an exploding, exploding thing right now, going making YouTube covers. Or maybe you're wanting to use this instrument to communicate with your family, communicate with your friends or even just for your personal enjoyment. Whatever the case is. Congratulations on finishing the ukulele academy. It's not. It's not an easy course. It takes work toe, learn how to do this stuff. And I'm just so excited that you've gotten to this point of finishing up. I have a question for you. Was it a good in return? on your investment. Do you feel like you got a good education for the amount of time, effort and money that you put into this course? You know, one thing that I love to do is spread how to play, how to play music, toe others, right? It's it's what the intro video says. You know, I want to see people experience playing an instrument for themselves. If that's the case, I would be so grateful. If you could go onto Facebook, find our Facebook page. The ukulele academy like it comment you can. You can find people there who have taken the course to and are wanting to connect. I don't know. Maybe this is going to grow into a huge ukulele community online. Whatever the case is, if you could find that page and like it, that would mean the world. To me, social media is the way that we can communicate quickly and easy easily with a ton of people. And hey, if there's somebody that you know that wants to learn how to play a musical instrument, I would be honored if you would tell them about the Ukulele academy. It's a place where I've hoped I hope that it's not only a place where you can learn the ukulele, but a place where you've learned music as well. And now I guess this is goodbye because this is the last video and you've completed the corpse. I'm so excited to see where you're gonna go from here. And I wish you the best in your musical endeavors. And with that, I'll see you around and maybe even see you on the Facebook page. See you. 44. EASY: Simple but Effective Strum: This is a simple but effective strong pattern. You play it by simply playing all of the down strums in all of the ups. Trump's. You can do this in either 34 time or 44 time. It doesn't really matter. It works in both. Here's how you played. Let's say that we have. Let's just use a C Court one end 2312 and 3123 Mary had a way squeeze waas wide. 45. EASY: The Off-Beat Strum: in this video, we're gonna be taking a look at the off beat. Strong is very straightforward. Basically, you're on Lee going to be playing your up strums or you're off beat rhythms. Okay, now, this kind of sound is used extensively in folk and country music, and I think you're really gonna enjoy It's really, really fun. Really a peppy sound. And so let's jump into it. Okay, um, the down Shrum when we play on the beat or 12341234 Right now on this offbeat rhythm, we're going to be playing all of the ends one into three for and three for See what I'm saying. So you're gonna be playing off the beat. What? This sounds like in Mary had a little lamb. Is this 46. MEDIUM: The Basic 4 Strum: this trump pattern. I like to call the basic four. It's played by going down, down, up, down, down, up, over and over again. That's the pattern. Down, down, up, down, down. You can use this one in a 44 time signature Doesn't work too well. In 34 let's take a look every way them squeeze Watts y esto. 47. MEDIUM: Fun Upbeat Strum: All right. This one is one of my favorites. It's best when you can learn to play this one fast. I think it is a ton. A ton of fun. All right, so I'm gonna call this one the fun up beat, Shrunk. Basically, how it works is you have a down, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. There's a little bit of a pause there. Okay, so you have 12 in 4123 and 4123 Okay, so you're got a lot of shadows in here. Okay, You got 1234 Only playing 12 and four. And now playing the slow is kind of boring. When you're able to play fast, have fun with it. 48. ADVANCED: The Island Strum: all right. In this video, I'm gonna be teaching you the island strum. It's a very common, very popular strum for ukulele players to use its probably most well known in Israel. Comical. We will always version of somewhere over the rainbow. I think the whole thing. But that's the strong pattern that we're gonna be using here. Okay, now the island's trump is played. Down, Down, up, up, down, up. I think once again, down, down, up, up, down, up. Okay, 12 and and four, end. Down. Down. Up, up, down, up. Okay, let's try it together. Let's just use an open shrum for this one as we learned. Okay? So no core. Let's just learn the strong pattern by itself. Okay, so let's break it down into two parts. I want you to do the down, Down, up. Here we go. Down, down, up again. Down, down, down, down, up again. Down, down. Okay. And then we're gonna have a new up, down, up. Let's try just that part down again. One more time. Okay? Now, when we put them together, it's gonna sound like this. Down, down, up, down, down, Down, up, up, down, up, down up. Down, up, down, up, Down, down, Down! Okay, That's the island's trump. Let's go ahead and try it with a C chord in our left hand. 12 Ready? Go down, down, up, down, up, down, Down, Up, up, down, down, Down, up, up, down, up, down, up, down. Great. So that is gonna be a really good song for you to use. Get to it, Practice it. And this is a really fun one. 49. ADVANCED: The Triple Strum: This trump pattern is a little bit more advanced, but it's a ton of fun when you can learn how to use it. Let me explain how it works. Typically, when we strum, we break our beats down into two parts one and or two and or three and there's two parts to the beat. But here in this triple strong, we're going to be breaking our beats down into groups of three. One lolly to Bali. Three lolly In this way, we're actually gonna be playing a triple strong. Okay, so here's how it works. Instead of going one can two and three and we're gonna be playing one. Molly to Holly three. Okay, let's use it in four for it Works much better in 44 time. Okay, one long only to Mali. Three, Lolly four. Okay, you'll notice that when you hit beat one, you're gonna be doing a down strum one lovely. And when you hit two, it's gonna be an upstream three is a downstream again three on four. Or is an up Strom put together one long only 234 Play this with Mary. Had a little lamb. It sound like this waas wide as no, they haven't 50. ADVANCED: The Triple Shadow Strum (Advanced Triple): By the time that you're watching this video, you should have already learned and mastered the normal triple strung. OK, in this video, we're going to take that strong to the next level, make it a little bit more advanced by adding in some shadow strums to our triples, Trump. Okay, so our normal triple Shrum sounded like this. This isn't a normal one. One, Miley to three monthly, 41 Bali to Lally, three lonely floor. Now we're going to add in some shadows Strom's We're gonna take out some of the sound and play it like this. 1234 But another way, we're just gonna take out all of the laws. One Lee to Lee. Three Lee for Lee. How we're gonna play This is a down, down, up, up, down, down, down, Up, up, Down, down. This one will take a little bit more practice. But when you get it, it's a ton of fun away from practicing