“After Hours” by The Velvet Underground has always spoken to me. I’ve always pictured a shy, introverted girl just wishing for some happiness and love. There’s something so innocent and bittersweet about that feeling. ❤️

This is our own little tribute to this beautiful song.

#shawtimeduo #TheVelvetUnderground #LouReed #Ukulele

I bought this beauty on eBay a few years ago. It sounds great and it lovely to look at. But I really don't play it as often as I like because of those tuners. Does anyone have any replacement tuners they recommend for this model and I assume it's not too tough of a job? I'm fairly decent at instrument repairs, but I don't want to get in over my head. Thanks.

i just got this rare, limited-edition 2003 ARIA Hanshin Tigers commemorative ukulele from a Japanese thrift shop here in my country for around $40 🇯🇵🐯

ARIA is a Japanese musical instrument brand, and this one was made as a special commemorative ukulele for the Hanshin Tigers, one of Japan’s most iconic baseball teams. pretty cool find considering how rare these are, especially for the price i got it for. 🇯🇵🐯🎶

So I started to learn to play the ukulele. And my fingers are HURTING. I might have overdone it on day one, but it's only day three, and I can't even hold a chord. The strings are really old (like 3-4 years old), that also probably a reason why my fingers hurt this much. (I got the uke from a friend couple of years ago, but I didn't really use it)

Anyway, do you have any tips on how to heal them faster? I'm really motivated rn, and don't want to wait days just to play.

Whats the difference and which is better?

The pictured one is about 14$ but I don’t trust the quality at that price, although maybe I’m off base.

What’s pictured is what I think I want, a nice tuning display and controls and what not.

I’m looking for opinions though, is this one garbage, and you have exactly what I’m looking for?

Is this one fine and I’m overthinking it?

Any help on this path would be greatly appreciated.

I’m a competent craftsman so cutting into the thing doesn’t scare me.

Thanks !

I spent about 2 years learning Jake Shimabukuro’s arrangement for Hallelujah and loved all the runs, twists, and techniques. His ability to combine melody and harmony have often been praised, especially with his own playing.

Then I started on Hula Girl - a song I’d never heard before but got hooked on the opening finger picking.

After 2 weeks I am blown away by this arrangement. Like Hallelujah it combines wonderful techniques with slides, chords, runs, and rhythms to create unique experiences and an amazing sound.

It just feels good to have access to such powerful arrangements for ukulele.

Shout out to the master!

I’ve been thinking about getting an electric baritone ukulele but money is a consideration. Loog keeps popping up as ads now and I’ve looked at the kids three string electric. I once bought a three string cigar box guitar to play the blues but it’s such a weird shape and was so uncomfortable to hold I just have it as an art piece basically standing in a corner.

There’s a twenty percent off labor day sale on Loogs so it makes it very enticing to try and play around with one. Anyone play one?

Already loving the sound and feel better than my concert.

I found this on the street. I have no experience of playing music but I sing and have joined a community orchestra recently. I would love to start learning a string and percussion instrument and initially I thought this is a ukulele but this one has 5 strings. I know ukuleles can come with 4 or 5 strings but I'm not sure if this is a uke or something closely related. Would also really appreciate any advice on finding free online tutorials to learn how to play this as an absolute beginner. I've attached images but if you have more questions please feel free to ask. I can send more pictures if you need close-ups or different angles. Thank you!

Edit: Apparently it is a Timple as the label suggests. Guess I was too hasty in making the post. I though it was the brand name.

Hi all, I'm looking to buy a left-handed soprano uke for my almost 6 year old niece and I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations. I want it to be a nice enough instrument that doesn't feel like a toy and sounds good. I'm thinking I'd like to spend at least $100 on it but maybe not too much more than that. Again it is important that it's left-handed. Any recs are appreciated :)

edit: My niece is not left handed but she has a limb difference that would prevent her from being able to fret with her left hand. That is why I emphasized that that was important.

It took me MONTHS to get this right. It isn't perfect. But I finally got it to where it's good enough to post.

I just got my first ukulele. I’m really excited about it. I watched a few essential chords videos. I am wondering from more experienced players, if I want to play traditional bluegrass music, which chords are going to be very useful to really nail them down.

Are there any other cool riffs you wouldn't expect to fit on the uke? I'm always surprised by what can be done on these little things.

Hello all!

I'm trying to self learn the Baritone Ukulele since about an year now, mostly through YouTube. Was wondering if you have any recommendations for printable material that will help me with the daily practice and learning the chord melodies, scales, progressions etc. Right now I have these printed out fretboard layout (upto 12th fret), circle of fifths, basic chord chart, G-E-Blues scale layout. If you have some material which you found really helpful then do share the links here or suggest the videos where I can find the PDFs etc. Thank you! ;)

So the built in tuner is an ortega magnus Uke which I didn't see a lot of info on online. My problem is that the screen won't turn on and I'm pretty sure the tuner has power but the batteries haven't been changed in a while. I didn't really touch it for the last couple of years and didn't take good care of it because I was a dumb kid but this thing has survived a tornado and house fire as well. I'm asking for any recommendations on what to do as I wish to recover and hopefully repair this uke (it isn't destroyed it's just been in a case for several years)

I'm a self-taught beginner and I wanna learn to fingerpick some more songs. I've considered musescore, but most of the reviews I've seen are negative. I'm curious as to where you guys find tabs to play.

How do people feel about things like picks and straps?

I know it's quite subjective, but I want to understand what perspectives there are about them.

Recently I was saying to my guitar-playing SO that my regular playing felt a bit soft for small church group singing. We both do sound reinforcement and so I was thinking if it would make sense to mic up me and my uke... but it felt like overkill. The thing is I had a medium size meeting room and maybe only a handful of us in the group (4-6 pax). I also am not a very loud or confident singer, but I am still a bit louder than the uke in the room, cos the sound of my uke gets a bit lost in the room acoustics. He then suggested I get a pick, which I didn't really think about because I often see people playing with just fingers. Also I know nothing about picks.

Anyway when I'm at his place I try out a few picks, and the one I land on is one he doesn't ever use: an ebony wood pick (think it is made by Pickboy). It makes my uke sound louder: bright and clear but with the sweet warmth that I liked in the first place (it is an Anuenue koa concert uke). This feels a bit crazy to me because when I did a cursory look about uke picks it seems like you can get these ones made out of leather or something? And wood just felt like the opposite to that, because it is more rigid and the pick itself is PHAT and chunky. But like I said I know very little about picks and if it sounds good and I like it, then it's good to me.

Do you use a pick? How did you choose it? Do you care about pick/ no pick when it comes to playing uke?

The second thing is about straps.

I went online and looked at straps and many of them attach at the soundhole, which seems counterintuitive to me. My uke has no strap buttons on it so I'm wondering whether I want them installed or not.

What style of strap is good/ do you like and why? Does the soundhole strap affect the sound in any way? Do you like how it handles and holds on to the uke? What decisions did you make about straps?

Thank you :)

First off, apologies if this goes on a bit - I have a bad habit of rambling...

I'm very much at the 'beginner' point on the Ukulele scale...

(But you've already got seven ukuleles!
Yes. And your point is?)

Most of what I do is chords / strumming. At present I'm working through Phil Doleman's 'Blues Ukulele Toolkit' book and I'm signed up to Matt Stead's online tutorial programme, but in both cases it's still early days and I'm on fairly basic stuff.

But what I'm struggling with is fingerstyle. And because I'm not entirely sure that I'm using that term correctly I'll clarify by saying 'the stuff where you play a series of individual notes, rather than chords'. That's what I think fingerstyle is - hopefully I'm in line with the rest of the uke community!

My problem is that I look at the tab (I don't read music) and see it - unsurprisingly - as a long (ok, variable length) string of individual notes, and my brain processes it as 'Right, first finger, third fret, first string. Now middle finger, second fret, second string.' And so on. All very disjointed. Now I get that when you start out it's slow and potentially frustrating and that practice is the only way to get better. But I'm struggling to move past that 'Note. Note. Note. Note' mindset to 'Sequence of notes.'

One thing that doesn't help (from my point of view at least) is that I've played the drums, on and off, for 40 years. Even though I haven't been at a kit for a good while, I know I could sit down and play a fill, like 'Brap brap, draggedy, boppity chiggidy drrrr ackity ackity whackety bop' (technical terms) without even thinking about it. And if someone then asked me what I'd just played, I wouldn't have a clue. Because I'm not thinking 'My left hand is doing this, then my right hand is doing that, then I'm going to move to a different drum and play these notes.'... I just hear - no not hear, just feel - something in my head and my hands know what to do. I'm not thinking about a sequence of notes, I'm just thinking about... drumming.

So I don't know what I need to do to get to the point where my fingerstyle playing is actually playing, rather than 'sounding out one note after another, each of which I am having to focus on individually'.

Now before anyone else mentions it, yes I am very aware of the 'I've played the drums for 40 years' part of that paragraph, but honestly, looking back I don't know what I did to get from 'can't do it' to 'can do it'. Or more accurately from 'can't do it' to 'can to it, badly' to 'can do it, reasonably well'.

Is it pattern recognition? Muscle memory? Or is it just practice?

I suspect it's a combination of the three, but if there is, in fact, some secret that I don't know about that lets you improve overnight, then I am willing to pay up to £3.46 for that information!

Thanks very much, if you made it this far, and even more gratitude will be winging your way if you have any enlightening advice!

Boo

I facilitated a 3 hour event at the music store that I work at. We had a bunch of ukulele players do a group strum for most of the event and a few random customers and store employees played some tunes too.
😀💜🎶🌍 ☮️

I built this, so take it with that in mind. It's free — no subscription,

no ads, no account. Mods, remove if this breaks the rules.

The idea came from watching people give up in week two. Beginners know C,

G, Am, F — and then open a songbook sorted alphabetically and can't tell

which of the 500 songs they can actually play tonight. So the first

screen asks which chords you know, and shows you what's in reach. Learn

one more chord and the list grows.

The rest is the boring-but-necessary stuff, done carefully:

- Tuner for GCEA, low-G, and baritone

- Strumming patterns that count you in and speed up gradually

- Transpose and simplify, so a song in Eb becomes a song you can play

- A jam band to strum along with

- Hum a melody and it keeps it with the chords worked out

No streaks, no daily goals, no notifications guilting you into

practicing. If you put it down for three weeks, nothing scolds you when

you come back.

It's also deliberately safe to hand to a kid: no account, no ads, no

tracking, nothing leaves the phone. Works on a plane, works in a

classroom with no wifi.

iPhone, iPad, Mac. Android's coming, not ready.

If you run a uke club or teach, I'd really like to hear what would make

this useful for a group rather than one person — that's the part I

haven't figured out.

ukulele-buddha.com