Getting Started With Your Ukulele

The first thing to do as a Beginner is to familiarise yourself with your ukulele and get ready to start playing. Then start playing of course!

The Babbacombe Ukulele Strummers have produced an excellent ‘Beginners Guide to the Ukulele’ to step you through the topics to do just this, namely:

  • Parts of a ukulele
  • Types of Ukulele
  • How to hold a ukulele
  • Strings and Tuning
  • Strumming
  • How to read strumming patterns
  • Reading Chord Diagrams
  • Ukulele Chord Chart
  • Top Tips
  • Useful Resources
  • BUS Beginner Tunes

Click here to download or print this guide: BUS Beginners Guide to the Ukulele

A very important step is tuning the strings of your ukulele.

If you haven’t yet bought a tuner as recommended in the guide, then Dr Uke has an audio you can play for each string of the ukulele i.e.  G – 4th string, C – 3rd string, E – 2nd string and A – 1st string.  Simply play each audio and tune the appropriate string to it.  These audios are the first four songs of Dr Uke’s songbook, Click here to find them.

And finally, in addition to the full chord chart in the guide, here are some simple chord charts for Beginners:

. . . . Happy strumming!