I fancy having a stab at learning the ukulele. No particular reason other than " why not " . The only problem is that I have big shrek hands . Has anyone on here successfully learned the uke with huge hands? Thanks in advance
Just don't. It's not funny, and it's not fair on other people.
I bought one on a rainy day in Wales. Spent about 2 hours trying to get the bastard to stay in tune. Never picked it up again. It's nice to look at though
It's looking quite promising so far then 😉
Have a play with this:
I mucked about with a few of his vids when I was starting and he's got pretty sausagey fingers I'd say.
@northwind the cheap ones usually come with crap strings so maybe that was why. Or they needed a bit of a stretch.
They don't stay in tune at first, but the string stretch and it's not so bad.
Loads of tutorials online. Just don't play George Formby numbers and you'll be ok. The trick is to just use the tippy tip of your finger, not the whole pad.
Ok thanks fellas
Ukes come in different sizes. Kids normally use sopranos at school, but you can get concert, tenor and baritone sizes too.
Try a baritone at a shop, much more playable for grown up size hands.
And what milko says, buy cheap and you wil wonder why you bothered. Hit the £80-100 mark and they are getting quite nice.
milko9000 - Member@northwind the cheap ones usually come with crap strings so maybe that was why. Or they needed a bit of a stretch.
Yeah, it's just a load of stretching but my initial enthusiasm period (1 day) was used up entirely on that and then I couldn't be arsed
We bought one for our daughter. Didn't spend silly money but we bought her a decent one. If you can play the guitar then playing the ukulele is a sinch. A lot of the chord shapes are the same as a guitar but you are playing a different actual chord. It took me about 3 minutes to learn how to play "somewhere over the rainbow" 😉
Yamaha make a six-string Uke, cost around £35-ish, thinking about getting one then I can still use the guitar chords I remember.
Edit: Yikes! I wish I'd bought one last year when they [i]were[/i] around £35, the cheapest I've found is in a music shop in Bristol for £54!
I have nothing helpful to add, but do you know what's the difference between a ukulele and a trampoline?
Try the Yousician app - my kids found it really useful to get them started and it has an easy to use tuning tool.
It's easy if you've ever played another string jnstrument, 10 mins and you'll be all over it. It'll go out of tune to begin with, transpose songs to avoid playing E chord as that's a bastard.
Why the F not ? Uke's are pretty cheap, fing a decentish used one and just have a go.
Have a google of "write it all down" used in the Swiss segment of mtb movie Strength in Numbers