Ukulele players of any level can improve their playing with Yousician. Whether you’re a beginner hoping to pick up the basics or you’re already advanced, our lessons and exercises are perfect for building a wide range of skills, learning great songs, having fun, and staying motivated. Learn ukulele chords, strumming, plucking, melodies, fingerpicking, slides, hammer-ons & pull-offs, and so much more!
Our uke players are motivated by a huge inventory of videos and lessons, tons of popular songs to play, Weekly Challenges to push your skills, and comprehensive progress-tracking as you learn. You don’t need any additional cords or cables for your ukulele, just a desire to play!
The ukulele is a pocket-sized bundle of joy – if you play or hear one, you can’t help but smile. Ukuleles have a beautiful sound, they’re portable enough to take anywhere, and you can learn to play beautiful music on them before you know it. At Yousician we love teaching and playing uke, and we hope you do too!
An essential first step is to get your ukulele in tune, so it sounds great. Yousician has a built-in tuner that will guide you through step-by-step – it listens to you play a string, and tells you whether it’s too low or too high. It’s designed to be as simple and straightforward as possible, and even gives you a nice little “ping” to let you know when you’ve got a string in tune.
In the picture you may notice that each string has a name: from top to bottom as you hold the uke, they are G C E A. To remember this, try using the phrase “Goats Can Eat Anything” – it’s not only disturbingly true, but the first letter of each word spells out G C E A. Now you know the names of your strings!
Music for ukulele can be written down in an easy-to-read system called tablature, or tab for short. There are four lines, one for each string – it’s like looking down at your uke, with the G-string closest to you, and the A-string furthest away. Notes are written on the string you’re meant to play, with the number telling you which fret to use: 0 (open), 1, 2, 3, and so on.
In Yousician, you’ll learn step-by-step how to read tablature and play lots of fun songs, from custom-written originals to help you build skills, to must-know traditional tunes and popular songs in all styles. As you go, we’ll cover everything you need to know, including using different fingers, playing notes on the higher frets, building speed, playing scales, and using more advanced techniques like slides and hammer-ons.
When you play one note at a time, it sounds nice. When you play a few notes at the same time, it’s called a chord, and it sounds awesome! Chords are the building blocks of most popular songs, and learning a good vocabulary of chords is essential for any uke player.
Chords are written down in chord diagrams. These are basically pictures of the uke fretboard, showing you where to put your fingers. The dots tell you which notes to hold, and the color tells you which finger to use. Check out this C chord – the diagram tells you to hold the A-string on fret 3 with your index finger, and strum the other strings open.
It can be tricky to learn new chords, but in Yousician we’ll take you through step-by-step with video lessons, workouts, and fun songs to put them into practice straight away. We’ll also show exactly how to strum, like using the handy down-down-up-up pattern in the picture.
You’ve got a lot to take in when learning a new song – which notes to play, when to play them, and getting your fingers to do what you want. That’s where Yousician’s “practice mode” comes in! You can slow songs down as much as you need, repeat small sections until you’ve got them under your fingers, and build speed gradually until you’re ready to nail it at full speed. If you’re so inclined, you can even push yourself to achieve gold stars for 100% accuracy, and climb the leaderboards! In Yousician, you’re in charge, and you set your own pace to learn at the speed that works for you.
With Yousician’s song library, you have access to a wide range of popular songs to play. As you’ll see, all songs are carefully graded from level 0 (complete newbie), all the way up to level 15 (Jake Shimabukuro-style wizardry), so there’s always something just right for you to play. We even have multiple arrangements for each song, focusing on different elements of the music, and suitable for different ability levels.
One very well-known ukulele song is I’m Yours by Jason Mraz – it’s a great one to have in your repertoire. In Yousician, you can choose whether you want to focus on playing the chords or melody, or learn both. This is an excellent way to build your musical understanding, and get a feel for the various elements that come together to make a song.
Or, you could try the modern folk classic Hurt by Johnny Cash. As you may know, this song was originally played on acoustic guitar, but you’ll find that lots of songs like this work beautifully on uke as well – there’s a whole world of music to explore!
If you’re ready to build your musical skills on ukulele, Yousician is here to help. We’ll take you through step-by-step, helping you learn and master a huge range of skills and songs, keeping things fun and motivating along the way.
Grab that ukulele, and let’s play! Our free trial for the premium plan will give you a perfect kickstart. This will be an exciting and motivating learning journey. Have fun with Yousician, and we’ll see you at the next beach party!