Ukuleles: Automatic Happiness!

Someone I follow on Twitter, possibly Ukulele_Ike or UkeHunt, recently linked something intriguing: Danno's Ukulele Three-Day Video Micro-Course (free, with video). The first video is about 20 minutes long, covering a lot of basics by way of teaching "Tonight You Belong to Me."

Video 2 "covers a ton of ideas, including movable chords, how to simplify difficult chords, and dealing with odd, old-fashioned tuning." It's 33 minutes.

Video 3 is another 20 minutes. All seem to cover techniques and tricks that I can't quite seem to get a handle on, so these could be useful for any of us.

There are also more helpful-looking posts on the main site, including hand and wrist health exercises, untrickifying tricky chords and TV theme songs on ukulele.

Hi all! Brett over at the fantastic Ukulele Tricks is offering a really cool deal: his 180-minute series of video courses on learning better strumming is on sale. There's a regular $10 off thing going on, so access to the videos is $37 this weekend -- BUT! You can get 40% off if you enter the code "THANKSGIVING" (sans quotes) at checkout, so it's only $20.20.

You get personal access to Brett for Q&A with membership too, and he's a really nice guy whose lessons are clear and easy to follow for all levels. (You can preview a few at his website.) This lasts through Monday, and you pay through PayPal. Strumming and changing chords is still hard for me, so I'm looking forward to seeing what these can do.

Hey folks! This is me coming to you from the other side of the Festival of Aloha World Record attempt. We didn't quite break the bank, but it was a really great hour or so of ukulele awesomeness -- if you ever get a chance to fill up a public space with ukulele players, it's a blast! This is the song we were taught, and Lanialoha Lee was a great, great teacher. Here's the sheet music, but try it just from the video; it was a new experience for me, and certainly the first time I'd really managed singing and playing at the same time.

For the interested, some pictures from the event!

( 14 photos )

ukulelesecrets seems to have sporadic updates, but the ones that are there seem useful. I've been really into figuring out fingerpicking, and this quick tutorial on a really pleasant-sounding pattern seems to have wide implications -- Tim uses it to play Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire"!

Go here for text and visuals; the video's below.

To prove that it really works, here's me tooling around on my couch with it!

(And a quick note: this is the first use of the video: me! tag. Just to be clear, this isn't reserved for just videos of me, newredshoes -- it's for anyone who wants to post video [or sound only, or pictures!] of themselves playing. So, yes! That's there. Happy Thursday, all. ♥)