Core Ukulele Skills: 5 Songs to Get You Started
Easy songs with TABs and chords
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These ukulele skills will help you on your way to becoming a better player. Take a look at these well-known songs and how they can help you with your ukulele-playing journey.
Easy Ukulele Songs
Core Ukulele Skills: What do you need to know?
The ukulele is a fantastic instrument to learn. Whether you’re a child or an adult, it doesn’t require the same effort and investment as other instruments.
Working across just four strings, the ukulele fits between your arms and doesn’t take up much space in your home or studio. Unlike guitar or bass, there are fewer skills and techniques to learn, allowing virtually instant access to becoming a pro.
However, there are still some key skills you’ll need. Here, we’ll be looking at using TABs and chord diagrams. Both of these are your ticket to playing and understanding the ukulele.
Stand By Me – Ben E. King
Our first ukulele skills are going to come from this classic hit. Learning recognisable songs always helps with your playing. Chances are, you’ll know how the song needs to sound, plus, it’ll impress your friends and family when you show them what you can play.
Here, we’ve got the TAB for the main melody and bass line of the song. If you’ve never used it before, TAB is short for tablature and is a lines and numbers system. The lines working across refer to the strings on the ukulele, and the numbers relate to the frets. Each fret is numbered.
Therefore, if you were to see a number 3 on the line at the bottom, you’d play that fret on the G string. Luckily for us, this piece only needs a couple of notes. Once you get the hang of it, you can repeat this throughout the whole song, making it a great beginner piece to perfect your core ukulele skills.
I’m Yours – Jason Mraz
Some cheesy mid-2000s pop here, working across some new chords for your ukulele skills. This time, we’re using TAB to see what chords we need to play.
This one has a nice, steady beat. Regarding music theory, we’ll be playing crotchets on beats 2 and 4 of the bar. This is because we have rests on beats 1 and 3. We can use the TAB to see what chord we need. For instance, the C chord requires us to play the 3rd fret on the A string, whilst also picking the remaining 3 open strings.
If it were me, I’d play these chords with down strokes, either using your fingers or a pick. Each chord would therefore get two downstrokes each.
Zombie – The Cranberries
Another karaoke classic here. Zombie allows us to expand on our ukulele skills by playing four chords throughout the entire song.
Yes, that’s right! All we need to master this Cranberries tune is four chords. Em, C, G and D are who we’ll be working with. Rather than using TAB to show us how to play these chords, we’ve got some chord diagrams.
Chord diagrams give us a bird’s eye view of the fretboard. Each vertical line represents a string, and the horizontal lines are our frets. Look closely at the black dots, these show us where to put our fingers on the strings.
This time, we’ll want to play four downstrokes on each chord. Or if that’s too fast, just play one downstroke each, with three rests between the chords.
When you’re feeling more confident, we can progress to double time. This involves playing across the beats 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+. Or, down up, down up, down up, down up.
Wild World – Cat Stevens
Similarly, this is another example where we can use TAB to show us what chords to play, and where to play them.
Here, we’ve got the verse section of Wild World. Unlike the other songs that we’ve used to help us with our ukulele skills, this one features some different chords. Some of which include Dm, F and E.
For the most part, we’ll be playing two strums on each chord. However, at bar 8 we change to a 2/4 time signature. This means that for that one bar, there are only two beats. Followed by a quick riff for good measure.
Riptide – Vance Joy
To conclude our look at tracks to help with ukulele skills, we’ve got this 2010s pop anthem. This track is all ukulele, and is one of those right of passage songs to learn when looking at the ukulele.
Chord-wise, it’s fairly easy. Just three chords across the whole song. Nice! Although, this one can get tricky when you start looking at the strumming pattern.
This is a quick track, not helped by the down down, up down up strumming pattern. This helps to make your playing sound more like the original track.
Relevant Gear
If you’re at the start of your ukulele playing journey, then you might need some key materials to get you started. From your actual instrument to various accessories. All available from *Thomann:
Core Ukulele Skills: Getting the ball rolling
With these tracks, you should be able to start learning your new instrument. Working across chords and TAB, you’ll gain the confidence to play bigger and better songs as you improve.
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