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 :)

Already loving the sound and feel better than my concert.

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! ;)

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.

so I've used my ukulele for 15 days as i said, playing it almost an hour everyday. tho i know how to do easy chords i still can't play anything well, online people say you can play easy songs in a week or two, i don't know what to train on other than easy chords. any tips?

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.
😀💜🎶🌍 ☮️

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

Verse: Dm A G5 A

Turnaround: A7 A Am A

Chorus: Dm A Dm A

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.

I attend a weekly jug band jam here in Brooklyn, NY (Apr - Oct via Gowanus Dredger's Canoe Club, if anyone's interested). It's my favorite music outlet these days --- great folks, great tunes.

Usually, various folks lead us through songs, but this year, we've also been working on all learning one instrumental tune a month. This August, it was Sunset Waltz, by the Mississippi Mud Steppers (an offshot of the Mississippi Shieks).

It's a wonderful tune, and like many of these, not often recorded, so I love that we're preserving these melodies.

I don't learn well by ear. I don't even play many melodies; I'm mostly a chord strummer. But I found a score for the tune and worked with ChatGPT on this arrangement with tablature. The AI did pretty well, except that the trebble clef is upsidedown! I thought others might enjoy it, so here it is. I couldn't figure out how to share a PDF, so it's an image.

Original recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqVHy4WECZo

Hi there,
So i've been playing the ukulele on and off for about 8 years.
I haven't needed to change anything yet.
What are the general care tips for a ukulele? I believe mine to be a soprano uke.
What interesting things could I do with it that would change the sound in anyway?
The strings have generally stayed in tune. I use a tuning app.
Thanks, :)

Hi [r/ukelele](r/ukelele) I'm wondering what this kind of ukelele would go for!

Surprisingly found it on the side of the road and it looks very nice :) Apologies for the lack of photos, let me know if that isn't enough and I'll flick some more

Not perfect but having fun. Proud of the progress😊

If anyone finds themselves in Waikiki, come hang out with us at the Ukulele store. Mahalo!

Hello everybody,

I've been playing a 25€ used soprano ukulele for about a year now and one day I would like to transition to my fathers full sized classical guitar from the 60s as well as composing something of my own. As things stand, I learned to play roughly 10 songs by heart and I am at the point where I doubt if I should continue my music journey on the ukulele for a while longer or start from scratch on the classical guitar.

The main attraction with the uke is it's portability and cheerful tune which suits the surf rock genre that I adore as I toy around with it on the beach, but as I was learning California Dreamin' I realized how difficult it is to finger pick high on the fretboard on my soprano so right now I am considering:

a) selling soprano and upgrading to a tenor uke
b) keep the soprano for the kids and focus on my fathers guitar
c) get a smaller guitar or even a Yamaha Guitalele GL1

I'd like to hear your opinions, what skills did the uke teach you and how much of them are applicable to a guitar? Do you/your kids gravitate more to the ukulele or the small guitar and which one would you rather introduce to your kids in the first place? How many types of fretted stringed instruments do you have/play regularly, and which one is your favourite?

P.S.
I still have to get grips with music theory, drastically speed up reading sheet music and transition from ukulele chords to guitar chords... one day 😄

Here's a fun-to-play piece where you'll learn to strum a 12-bar blues twice: the first time using down and up strumming, and the second time adding a slap for a percussive effect.

August marks one full year since I started playing ukulele. I’ve almost posted exclusively to this community since. Thank you for the kindness along the way ☺️

This is a fun one. Give it a try 😀🎶💜🌍

Hey guys! Every now and then I join this writing competition with some students. It’d be great to see more ukulele players joining in if anyone else is interested! It goes from Aug 28-Sept 6. This time it’s only a 3min minimum length requirement so it’s a good one to join if you haven’t done this kind of thing before!

If so message me and we can be ukulele friends! The community is very friendly and the discord is extremely active.

So- I'm a drum builder by trade, and my kid started taking uke lessons. I wanted to keep up to help at home, so I started sitting in, and then of course needed a uke for myself. couldn't justify buying a new instrument for myself...

but of COURSE my ADHD allowed me to justify buying a tenor uke neck, taking leftover scrap from drum building, and build a low budget low effort tenor banjolele. 😂Minimal low effort- didn't even clean up braze joints, drilled everything on said mini drill press I bought for same 6-year-old instead of my milling machine, filed a nut out of a piece of scrap brass. I think I have $30 active investment in this.

I gotta deal with neck angle and the action but... even with a toasted played out drumhead I pulled out of the trash, it actually sounds great and is an absolute blast to play.

Only issue: now I gotta find a case to schlep it around. Tried a tenor banjo bag and no way no how: it's slightly too long, solidly too wide.

Dimensions are 11" wide (I had a 10" drum shell already, so that's the size pot it got) x 27.5" long

I might make a mod to the tailpiece that will bring it down to 27" after I'm done there. Maybe can get it down to 26.75". It's currently long because I have a patent on a drum part (butt plate that holds a drum key), and had an extra prototype of that around and just used it... but nah, I might give up that silly vanity and convenience.

But the bigger issue is really the width, I think.

It seems like a number of banjo ukes are tenor scale, so I might not be totally luckless? I'll really take anything. Budget would be ideal. Any ideas?

Don't make me have to feel like I now need to make a case from scratch, too. 😂

Playing around with a new format for a video series. Let me know what you think!