Play Ukulele Now
What you'll learn
- Explore the ukulele and learn to play it
- 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 future impact of the ukulele, the music it makes and players who perform it
- 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. It's a charming, friendly instrument and ultimately easy to play. But there are treasures hidden in its depths.
If you want to learn how to play ukulele, in this course an aficionado of the ukulele for 50 years and teacher of it for 20, 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. And the instructor is available via email. This course is appropriate for absolute beginners trying to learn how to play ukulele, guitar players who wish to migrate to the ukulele, and accomplished ukulele players looking for new challenges.
</p>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
![Dan "Cool Hand Uke" Scanlan](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.8 Instructor Rating
- 341 Reviews
- 3,960 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 17 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 serves 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 wholoe rest of his body." — Utah Phillips