Play Ukulele Now
What you'll learn
- Explore the ukulele and learn to play it
- Explore rhythm, harmony, melody and capture the theory behind them.
- Identify and clarify the musical options afforded by the ukulele
- Provide not just the basic techniques, but challenge students to develop their own styles
- Provide encouragement throughout the entire learning process
- Relish the history, lore and impact of the ukulele, it's music, players and styles
- Keep it fun
Requirements
- Software to read PDF files, view video and hear audio
- Ukulele, tuned GCEA
- Electronic tuner, pitchfork, piano or a good ear for pitch recommended
- Penchant for fun
Description
The diminutive ukulele, born of a marriage in Hawaii in 1879, is currently in its third wave of worldwide popularity. Ukulele festivals and clubs abound planet-wide. Players of all nationalities come together to share their hopes and dreams and joys through the universal language of ukulele music. It's a charming, friendly instrument and ultimately easy to play. And there are many treasures hidden in its depths.
The learning never ends.
This course is taught by Dan Scanlan, an aficionado of the ukulele who has performed on it for 60 years and taught it for 30. In 1998 he returned the ukulele to Madeira Island, Portugal, (from where the two instruments came from that married in Hawaii) and taught it to Madeiran folk musicians. His workshop in Ireland founded the Ukuhooley group there. He had led several ukulele groups and taken them to New York and Hawaii festivals. In this course, he will hold your hand as you learn to play ukulele, learn its parts, its lore, its tuning, and show you how to steer it into the world of harmony, melody, rhythm and song.
Written lectures are often backed up with video presentations. The course includes a video chord "dictionary" to help students learn how to play the chords and to learn how they are named and built.
The instructor is available via email and responds to questions.
This course is appropriate for absolute beginners who want to learn ukulele, guitar players who wish to migrate to the ukulele, and accomplished ukulele players looking for new challenges. The course seeks also to give students an idea of the many paths one can choose to take to expand their musical adventure in the ukulele world.
Who this course is for:
- Absolute beginners
- Advanced beginners
- Advanced players
- Students of culture and music of all kinds
- All ages: children to retirees
- Anyone who wants to learn music
Instructor
- 4.5 Instructor Rating
- 354 Reviews
- 4,062 Students
- 1 Course
A ukulele performer since 1961, Scanlan returned the ukulele to its ancestral home of Madeira Island, Portugal in 1998 in the historic Father and Son Reunion, a project that reunited the ukulele with the rajão and braguinha and united Madeiran and American players in performance, including a live telecast from the Lisbon World's Fair.
For the past 25 years Scanlan has been teaching a weekly ukulele class that doubles as a performance group that performs at least once a week at fairs, schools, hospitals, retirement and convalescent homes. The group, the Strum Bums, received a standing ovation at the second annual New York Ukulele Festival. They performed at the Santa Cruz CA Ukulele Festival, and twice at the Honolulu International Ukulele Festival.
Before he started the Strum Bums, Scanlan led the Vokuleles ukulele group in Chico CA, for the last seven of its 37 years. .
Scanlan's ukulele workshops and performances have been highly acclaimed at festivals at the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum, Santa Cruz, Southern California, Tahoe Area, New York, Auburn CA, and the Liverpool, Nova Scotia, International Ukulele Ceilidh, where he served as emcee. In 2008 he gave the initial ukulele workhop in Dublin, Ireland, to a group that became Ukuhooley, Ireland's largest ukulele group and presenter of the annual Ukuhooley Ukulele Festival.
Scanlan's ukulele has supported the efforts of Cindy Sheehan, Julia Butterfly Hill, U. Utah Phillips, Judi Bari, Daniel Ellsberg and other peace and justice activists. He and his ukulele have fronted several bands, including Flathead, the Self-Righteous Brothers, Jukolin, Top Quark, and Cool Hand Uke and the Enablers.
In 2017 Simon and Schuster publishing asked Scanlan to write How to Play Ukulele after checking out this course. The book was released on June 2018 and is a good companion to this course.
"Dan Scanlan has more talent in his little finger than he has in the whole rest of his body." — Utah Phillips