Rosie is my ukulele. I have named her and she is mine and we will make beautiful music together.

In other news, I will annoy everyone in my household by playing the one song I have learned yesterday, which, of course, is ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, the ukulele version which everyone loves to play once they know how to (I’m a trend follower, what can I say).

As a music teacher in training, I realised that knowing only how to sing and how to play the violin can be useful in many ways but it won’t really help me when I’ll need to accompany my class with some simple chords. I can fiddle a little around the piano but I was never very good at reading piano music so my other choices were the guitar or the ukulele. My tiny hands said no to the guitar (for now) and have opted for a more itsy-bitsy-hands’ friendly instrument. Of course, due to my perpetual need to procrastinate, I have been thinking of buying a ukulele for the past year and a half….😅 But nothing is a better motivator than social isolation due to a world-wide pandemic. So, a trip to a local music shop and $89 later, I can now say that I am a proud owner of a ukulele baby.

Of course, even after I bought Rosie, it still took me about 2 weeks to actually sit down and start learning how to play her. But the day has finally come and yesterday, I had my first online lesson(s)! I thought that because this blog happens to be dedicated to education and technology, why not try and explore online learning in greater depth by discussing my own journey.

This is my first time attempting at learning an instrument online and naturally, I was a little lost. So where does one go when one is lost? Well Google of course! I typed in ‘Best ukulele teacher on Youtube’, got a list of learning channels which you can find here, and went on explorin’. I ended up picking three channels to start off my learning. So how did they compare? Well let me tell you all about it! Just a warning – these list of observations are my pure subjective opinions and am in no way saying that I am able to properly critique online learning channels. In saying that, let us go and critique some learning Youtube channles.

Justin Guitar

Justin lets you know from the get-go that he is primarily a guitarist and has been playing the ukulele for only a few months. However, it is obvious that his guitar knowledge easily translates as his high level of proficiency in the art of ukuleling is obvious. I appreciated that he started with how to tune the ukulele and what the names of the strings are as a lot of new learners might not be aware of these basic details. He also shortly touched on how to hold and balance the ukulele. I attempted to balance and failed so I resorted back to tightly clutching Rosie for the fear of her falling out of my slippery hands. Hopefully this part of my playing will improve with time 😅

Justin then continues by talking about strumming and how for now it’s probably best to use your thumb. I attempted and semi-succeeded but it was 100% success in my books.

For the rest of the video, Justin showed us, the learners, 4 basic chords which are: C, Am, F and G. I attempted this as well and, for the most part, was actually able to decently play it. G chord is a bit tricky but nothing too difficult so I persevered.

Overall, by the end of Justin’s lesson, I felt that his explanation of chords was very clear and sequential. Because of that, I believe that I was able to pick it up quite quickly. I did wish that he talked more about strumming technique as I surprisingly struggled with this aspect of playing. But maybe I am just jumping ahead and being impatient (which wouldn’t be a first).

Andy Guitar

Andy’s lesson felt very cheerful and positive! He had a big smile throughout the tutorial and I felt better for it. Not to mention that later on we even got to play ‘You Are My Sunshine’. Amazing! 🌞

In terms of the content, he began his lesson similarly like Justin Guitar by teaching the name of the strings, how to tune them and how to support the ukulele while playing. What I really liked about Andy was that he showed the chord diagram while he was teaching it to his online audience. It added an extra visual aid, which in my opinion, enriched the learning experience; quite useful when you are not able to communicate with the teacher face to face.

One aspect of Andy’s teaching which took me slightly aback was at how quickly he moved on to teaching ‘You Are My Sunshine’. I didn’t feel as if I had enough time to wrap my head with the chords he just taught. However, he only went through chords C, F, and G and also due to the nature of Youtube, there is not much space for a live feedback from the teacher so maybe Andy was just trying to keep things moving and entertaining. I also do realise now that I could’ve just stopped and replayed the video so really, this little critique is not such a big problem in hindsight.

Overall, I enjoyed his lesson and thought it was very concise and straight to the point. He made it quite simple to understand the content though I have to wonder at how easy or difficult Andy Guitar’s lesson would be for complete beginners in any instrument playing.

Cynthia Lin Music

Last but not least was Cynthia Lin Music channel and I have to say that this beginner lesson was probably the most comprehensive out of the three. The video is the longest of the two but this is mostly due to the fact that Cynthia likes to take her time in explaining all the concepts in a less edited and more free flowing online tutorial.

One specific aspect of Cynthia’s teaching that stood out for me was her explanation of how to strum. She took the extra time to explain the technique behind playing each string clearly which wasn’t something that the other two lessons focused on as much. Like Andy Guitar, she also only taught chords C, F and G but in a more deliberate and careful manner. I especially liked how she provided her online students with PDF version of the song she decided to teach in this specific lesson, which in this case was ‘Three Little Birds’ by Bob Marley and the Wailers. She also spent quite a lot of time explaining how to play the song – very useful for beginners that may not be very experienced in playing any instruments.

I would definitely recommend Cynthia’s channel to those who are needing more time and space when learning the ukulele.

Bringing it all together

To summarise my little internet research, here are a few points that I learned or realised while going through this process:

1. There are so, soo many resources out there for learning instruments like the ukulele. I felt that I had too much to chose from and it was difficult to narrow it down to only a few videos. In the end I kind of went with channels which seemed the most popular and which offered beginner lessons, not just tutorials on beginner songs.

2. The channels I reviewed all do some amazing things and really it always comes down to your own preference. There really is online tutors catering for all kinds of skills and levels of playing. In my case, I am already a musician and a teacher myself. It helps me that I also play a string instrument so translating certain skills on the ukulele wasn’t that difficult. Therefore, I was quite happy with channels like Andy Guitar and Justin Guitar who were very straight to the point about how to learn the ukulele, whereas people who are less experienced with playing instruments might find Cynthia Lin’s teaching much more beneficial.

3. Learning online is actually so useful when you might not have the money or the time to afford a face-to-face teacher! Of course, you will always need teachers and I have found that the more I was watching these videos, the more I realised that certain aspects of face-to-face teaching will never be possible to recreate online. Nonetheless, online teaching has its place and I have found out that I enjoy it quite a lot. Hopefully, throughout this process, I will be able to zero in on my favourite channels which I can use to improve my ukulele playing.

I hope that you found this review somewhat useful maybe? I’m not a professional reviewer and will hopefully get better at it but these were just some of my thoughts on the whole process of starting your online learning experience. Let me know if any of you have gone through a similar journey or if you’re on the other side of the camera and have actually filmed any online tutorials.

Stay tuned for my attempt at playing the ukulele and until then, stay calm and keep on ukuleleing 🎵

Image by FrankensteinsMobster from Pixabay