In this lesson, I show you five strumming patterns you can use to play thousands of different songs on ukulele (I’m not exaggerating!). These are my “go to” strumming patterns. I use them all the time and have used them in a lot of video performances on the site (e.g. You’ve Got a Friend In Me, I’ve Been Working On the Railroad). These patterns are versatile, simple and work for most songs.

The first thing to realize about strumming is that it’s not about how fancy or complicated you make a strumming pattern. Since strumming is a form of rhythm, in order to be effective, it must be consistent and steady. A steady, consistent strumming rhythm is always more pleasing to listen to than a really complicated strumming pattern played out of time.

The following strumming patterns, as demonstrated in the video, are played in 4/4 time signature. This means each pattern is played to a steady, consistent count of four: 1, 2, 3, 4, repeat. You can use these patterns for any song counted in four. As you practice each of these strumming patterns, count out loud, and even use a metronome to keep your strumming as rocksteady as possible.

For the most part, ukulele songs are displayed online and in print using chord charts. A chord chart includes the lyrics of a song with letters above to indicate the chords. Most of the ukulele songs I’ve posted on Ukulele Tricks are presented through chord charts.

The big downside to chord charts is that there is no indication of the rhythm (or strumming) of a song. By itself, a chord chart doesn’t inform you about how long to strum a chord or when to exactly change a chord. The chord letters are written to line up with the lyrics, as to try to indicate when the chord changes happen, but as you’ve probably found, it’s not that easy.

In this lesson, I show you some ways I go about approaching a chord chart and learning a new song. More specifically, I give you some practical examples and exercises from actual songs that allow you to get the knack for identifying chord changes in a song, while keeping a steady strumming pattern rhythm.

A common question I see in the Ukulele Strumming Tricks video lesson course, as well as in email, is about how to play a Bb chord. If you aren’t familiar, a Bb chord is played on the ukulele as shown in the diagram to the left.

As normally instructed, to play a Bb chord, use your index finger to hold down or barre the bottom two strings of the ukulele at the 1st fret; place your middle finger on the 2nd fret of the third string and your ring finger on the 3rd fret of the top string, as shown in the following picture.

A common way to play a Bb chord

This position requires you to bend your index finger in what can seem like a really difficult and uncomfortable way. If you struggle with stiffness or even arthritis in your fretting hand, this position can seem near impossible. Not to mention, this way of playing a Bb chord requires quite a bit of strength.

In my conversations with you, a lot of you have found an alternative way to play a Bb chord that works extremely well.

This lesson is apart of a larger lesson series that will help us learn the ukulele fretboard. So far, we’ve learned how to play a C major scale and a G major scale on ukulele. Now, it’s time to learn how to play an F major scale.

Scales not only help us learn the ukulele fretboard, but they also allow us to understand the music we are playing. For example, if we know the notes across the fretboard, we can build chords, craft solos, and look at a piece of sheet music and play it.

Each of these lessons build on the other, so if you’re just joining us, you will want to start learning the C major scale first.

Alright. Are you ready? Let’s do this!

Right now, we are in a big lesson series dedicated to learning the ukulele fretboard. We’re doing this by learning all major scales in the twelve different keys. This is the second lesson in the series. If you’re just joining us, welcome!

In the first lesson, we looked at how to play a C major scale on the ukulele. By now, you should be able to comfortably play a C major scale in all positions across the ukulele fretboard.

Learning the C major scale is a critical starting point. All of the lessons from here on out will be building off of our understanding of a C major scale.

So again, if you haven’t learned the C major scale, go here before reading on. If you don’t have a solid understanding of that lesson, this lesson probably won’t make much sense to you.

From here on out, I will be structuring each of these major scale lessons very similarly. First, we will look at the theory behind the scale, or how to build the scale, and then, we will look how to play the scale across the ukulele fretboard.

Over the next several weeks, we’re going to look at the twelve major scales and how to play those on ukulele. In the most basic way, a scale is a collection of notes arranged in ascending or descending order.

Every scale is built upon a root note called tonic. So in a C major scale, the tonic note of the scale is the note C.

There are only twelve major scales because there are only twelve notes in Western music from which we can build a scale. If we know a C major scale like the back of our hand, we can easily modify it later to play the other major scales.

For a broader explanation about scales, check out my post Ukulele Scales Explained for Beginners.