Basic Things About the Ukulele.

Hi there!

  Welcome to my blog, you might have read the title, so in this blog, I'll be telling you 'basic things about the ukulele', like its important parts, basic chord, and basic strumming patterns.

Ukulele Parts

Headstock

The headstock is the top of the ukulele, which holds the tuners.

Tuners /tuning head/tuning keys

The four tuning keys are located at the side of the headstock. The top end of the string is attached to the tuning key, so when you rotate the key in downward/upward motion the string tightens or loosens depending on the direction you rotated the tuning keys.

Nut

It is an elevated area between the head socket and the fretboard. It has small notches, which keep the strings at a fixed place and evenly spaced from each other. Even though it might not seem that important but without a nut, playing ukulele would be troublesome, with strings rubbing against the frets and slipping from its place.

Fretboard

It is the strip of wood, beneath the strings, that runs along the neck of the ukulele. It consist of Frets. Frets are the small horizontal bars on the fretboard. As the frets get closer to the soundhole the spaces between them decreases. The white/silver dots on the fretboard is known as fret markers (could be of other shape or color too). Usually present on the third, fifth, seventh, tenth, and twelfth fret.

Strings

Ukulele has four nylon strings, tuned G-C-E-A.

 Why/how to tune your ukulele?

Sometimes the strings loosen up or are stretched too much which results in a very blunt or pitchy noise. To prevent that noise you need to tune your ukulele.

To tune your Ukulele you can download any 'Ukulele tuner' app from the play store.

How to strum?

o   To strum, make a loose fist with your index finger extended.

o   Hold your fist in the center of your chest pointing left.

o   Brush the fingernail of your index finger down across the stings toward the floor and practice Down strums.

o   Use the tip of your finger to strum on the way up and practice up strums.

Some basic chords

Basic strumming 

Here D is for  Down strums and U is for Up strum

D D D D

U U U U

DD UU DU

 Thank you for reading patiently, hope it was helpful.