Standing or sitting, the instrument should be held close against your body. A little mindfulness at first means you won’t have to unlearn bad habits later and may keep you from straining your tendons. Uke is much more forgiving, but it’s important to strive for good technique right from the start.

Kids begin with a box and a stick until the teacher knows they are ready for the real thing. In the Suzuki violin method, an enormous amount of time is spent learning the proper way to hold the instrument and bow. Start your musical journey on good footing and learn to hold your ukulele. Heidi Swedberg: From ‘Seinfeld’ to Uke Clinician Holding The Uke The strumming hand can have longer nails, as they can serve as picks-or plectrums as they are known in British countries. If you are a lefty who has restrung, you probably know what to do-flip all diagrams and instructions to make them left-centric.Īll players will find things are much easier when the nails of the chording hand are cut very short. Also, chord diagrams are always drawn in the standard right-handed fashion. For our purposes, I may refer to the strumming hand as the right hand and the chording as the left.

Restringing is simple and can liberate a lefty from debilitating frustration. They have two choices: to flip it around, play upside-down-backwards, and devise their own chord shapes, or to restring their instrument. But some lefties find expressing rhythm challenging with their non-dominant hand. Most people, even some lefties, will strum with their right hands and chord with their left. A Note On Hands & ‘Handedness’ on Ukuleleīoth hands have much work to do! One is the chording hand, holding down strings, while the other hand is the strumming or “speaking” hand.

Free ukulele music download