The Royal Kent School

Ukulele

I have created this page to support all you budding ukulele stars with learning and practising the ukulele at home.

On the right-hand side of the page you will find information about buying your own ukulele and how to tune it.  Below, you will find some short tutorial videos I have made to support you with each step of starting to learn how to play the ukulele.

Once you have become confident with the C chord, F chord and G chord, visit the 'Sing-Alongs' page and have a go at playing some songs with me! The words are all there.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch: hmacfarlane@royal-kent.surrey.sch.uk

Buying a ukulele

If you're interested in saving up to buy yourself a ukulele to practise on at home, I'd recommend going for a soprano ukulele.  This is the smallest size and exactly like the ones we use at school.  There are lots of different brands but the really cheap ones tend to go out of tune a lot which is frustrating so I'd recommend avoiding those.   You pretty much get what you pay for with ukuleles!  Some reasonably-priced brands which I know work pretty well are:

• Octopus (these are the lovely ones we have at school)
• Mahalo
• Makala
• Kala
• Flight
• Tanglewood

If you'd like an idea of where to start, there is a great selection of good-quality beginner ukuleles on this site and delivery is generally quick: browse ukuleles

Tuning a ukulele

Here is a video to help you with tuning your ukulele:

Tuning your ukulele (be warned that adverts may be shown before the video)

If you're struggling to use an app, the easiest option is to buy a clip-on digital ukulele tuner from guitar / music shops or online.  Here's an example of a really good one:

Clip-on ukulele tuner

Ukulele top tips

Have a look at the slides below to help you to practise the C chord, F chord and G chord and to try a few songs.  The formatting is sometimes off when you're viewing the slides on the website so you might like to download them.