Chords for Your FIRST Ukulele Lesson (Ukulele Beginner Lesson By A Music Teacher)

hello welcome to your first ukulele lesson in this video we will be I made
notes for myself we will be learning how to hold the ukulele where to put our
thumb how to strum and our first song so if you're ready for that please hit the
like button and subscribe to this channel by the way I will be using
ukulele and ukulele interchangeably and I encourage you to do the same as well
okay so first how to hold it I'm gonna teach you exactly the same way I teach
my students okay you want to put the back of the ukulele on your belly have
it glued to your belly if the mouth of the ukulele is playing up that way
that's not your audience your audience is gonna be out here so you want the
mouth of the ukulele pointing to your audience so think about it that way now
let's pretend that your o'clock this would be 12 o'clock 1 o'clock is way too
high but 3 o'clock is kind of way too low so bring it up somewhere in between
sometimes your shoulder is a good way to measure it like at the height of your
shoulder but for some people it might be a little uncomfortable so you can bring
it down here next if you have a necklace or long sleeve move that out of the way
so that it's not touching your ukulele so now we're gonna do a thumbs up and
put that in the back center this is what my thumbs up looks like _ [N] it would be
incorrect to glue the whole thumb parallel you don't want to do that
that's actually going to create some tension and hurt you in the long run so
do a thumbs up _ and put that to the back center [Eb] so now that we have our thumbs up
unfold the hand naturally just imagine it this way it's not tense [D] it's not like
strained just very [Eb] natural okay so now this hand is going to serve as a seat
belt to test if your seat belt is strong enough drop [B] this hat the ukulele should
stay in place if your ukulele fell then this part of your arm isn't working hard
enough so use that part of your arm to glue the ukulele to you and grab it by
the waist so here we are grabbing it by the waist and this part of my arm is
holding it to me [N] make sure you don't carry it like a book bag keep it in
front of you on your belly your torso okay so we have thumbs up to the back
_ _ unfolded now we're gonna strum first with our thumb keep the hand glued to
the waist [Am] and just strum this way _ I'm not really pressing anything yet and _ _ _
play with that [Eb] a little bit make sure [G] your thumb doesn't dig in that's [Am] way too
harsh just slide it down gently _ _ _ _ _ _ _ now let's learn our first chord [Db] we're going
to use our ring finger on the third fret so one two three so we are on the third
fret string closest to the floor and you see those dots on my fingers those are
the dots that should touch the ukulele string so I'm gonna use that part of my
finger very very tip to squeeze the string down I'm gonna test only that
string [Cm] _
it [N] rings if you get something like this you're not squeezing hard
enough so squeeze keep the thumb on the back and [Cm] squeeze and you [C] should get that
now strum through all four strings _ _ if you get this _ don't [Eb] worry the strength on
this hand will [B] come so if it hurts [Eb] to squeeze [C] just do a little bit every day
and you'll get stronger _ _ if you're sitting down you don't have to carry the
ukulele by the way you can have it just rest on your legs just keep a nice angle
up here so that your wrist doesn't do the carrying you know what I mean okay
so another place where you [B] can strum is right here on this part of the nail and
you can have the strings touch right there let me show you [Am] _ _ and notice I'm not
[Db] like bringing the whole string into my my skin that would [Eb] be too painfully
just the tip [Am] _ and _ I'm not [Ab] going to do this very [C] harshly _
[Am] this is gentle _ [Am] so
depending on what works for you you can use the waist drum this way you have
more control and this way might sound a little bit louder because you're hitting
with [Eb] a harder surface so now let's go back to C chord _ and let's just [C] strum
strum with me not fast not slow just strumming down [N] now we're gonna do our
first song on C chord strumming downwards like we were just doing let me
do it first and then we'll do it [C] together _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ so now let's do it together one _ _ _ _ one two ready go _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
nearly nearly nearly _ life is but a dream [N] when I was going to school to become a
teacher they taught us that if we reviewed for three minutes at the end of
class that you would remember 50% more than if we had not reviewed so this is
gonna be the review part of the lesson remember this is gonna help you remember
more so let's review back to belly seat belt hand hold it with the forearm this
should keep it close to you _ _ thumbs up to the back center _ _ ring finger to C [Eb] chord
_ _ strumming downwards with the thumb [C] is okay _ or with the fingernail on index
finger is okay _ if [N] you think of yourself as a clock _ go to about two o'clock that
would be a very nice position and one thing that I didn't mention make sure
that your wrist isn't bent and carrying the ukulele when you're switching
through chords that would bring a lot of pain to your hand so make sure that you
drop the wrist keep the house for the mouse and you should feel comfortable
watch this video again in the morning and then at night time in the morning
and at night time watch it about four times so that everything that you learned
today will really sink in and then after that go and watch the next tutorials I
have the next tutorial in the description box below so that you can
learn more songs if you enjoyed this lesson let me know by giving it a like
and dropping a comment down below as always thank you so much for watching
and I will see you in the next one
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [N] _ _