Quick questions

Hey guys and gals

I've started learning ukulele about a week ago. I'm having much fun and it's slowly kickin' in. My background his a base of musical theory. I played the tuba in high school so I can read bass notes. Never played the guitar, tried the bass guitar for a while last year but didn't like it cause it's no fun playing alone. I always liked the sound of the uke, it's fun and sharp, so I decided to start and bought myself a Mahalo 1TLE/3TS and am using mostly the web and the Hal Leonard Ukulele Method 1 book to learn for now.

I'm at the point were the tip of my left fingers are hurting, I can get basic strumming right and am working on smooth basic chord changes.

Some quick questions:
How good is that ukulele? It's at least good enough to learn, but is it durable and how does it compare to similarly priced ukes? The sound is ok but can I get a better sound by changing the strings or something like that? I got a soft leatherish case,any suggestion on a hard case for this one?

I learned music in french, any tips for learning to translate the name of the notes and chords back and forth from english to french?

Is there somewhere a list of songs (chords or tabs) sorted by difficulty?

[Edit] Bonus question! I got a pickup on this uke and an amp... how do I set up to record myself in Apple's GarageBand?

Thanks! I love this site and Aldrine's minutes and lessons, it's been very inspiring.

jfcote said:

Some quick questions:
How good is that ukulele? It's at least good enough to learn, but is it durable and how does it compare to similarly priced ukes? The sound is ok but can I get a better sound by changing the strings or something like that? I got a soft leatherish case,any suggestion on a hard case for this one?

I learned music in french, any tips for learning to translate the name of the notes and chords back and forth from english to french?

Is there somewhere a list of songs (chords or tabs) sorted by difficulty?

Thanks! I love this site and Aldrine's minutes and lessons, it's been very inspiring.

Click to expand...

Bienvenue! I'll answer what little I know...

Changing the strings will almost certainly help. Try some Aquilas.

I don't know of any song list arranged by difficulty (although I'm sure your method book presents songs in order of difficulty). But you might want to start with two-chord songs. Here's a thread with a whole bunch of them listed.

:shaka:

JJ

by soft leatherish case, do you mean the cardboard ones covered with leather looking nylon???
EDIT
That Mahalo is a good starter uke, but it definitely doesn't have the greatest quality. If you can, try one of the K's instead.

In Garage Band open a new project and  + alt + n : real instrument ... and here you go !

MisoHappy said:

If you can, try one of the K's instead.

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of course this is the best case scenario, but there are lots of other ukes for beginners just learning that will be better than the mahalo and do less damage to the wallet

ritzer012 said:

of course this is the best case scenario, but there are lots of other ukes for beginners just learning that will be better than the mahalo and do less damage to the wallet

Click to expand...

Thus, I included the "If you can", to prevent ruling out the other good brands.
:shaka:

MisoHappy said:

by soft leatherish case, do you mean the cardboard ones covered with leather looking nylon???

Click to expand...

No cardboard, it's just some fake black leather. I don't trust it... So what's a good source of not-too-expensive hard cases?

I settled on a starter tune: Just strumming and changing chords on Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (version from http://www.scorpex.net/uke.htm )

I also found a bunch of songs on chordie.com, that's a really nice place.

UkuCouS said:

In Garage Band open a new project and  + alt + n : real instrument ... and here you go !

Click to expand...

I got that far already, I even use GarageBand to tune up. But I guess I would have a better sound from the Uke's pickup than the computer's mic, just not sure how to set that up.

jfcote said:

I got that far already, I even use GarageBand to tune up. But I guess I would have a better sound from the Uke's pickup than the computer's mic, just not sure how to set that up.

Click to expand...

You can try one of these tricks:

• Get a cable with a 1/4" plug on one end (this goes into your uke) and an 1/8" plug on the other (this goes into the microphone input on your Mac). Or use a regular 1/4" to 1/4" guitar cable with a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter on the end, which you can get from Radio Shack fairly cheaply. The problem here is that, unless you have an active pickup, the signal level going into your Mac won't be that great. You'll have to really turn up the input level in the Sound Preferences, which might add noise.
• Get a guitar-to-usb cable. These convert your uke's analog signal into digital directly, instead of using the Mac's onboard A/D converters. Very useful if your Mac doesn't have a mic input in the first place. You can get 'em at Target for around $40. You might run into the same level problems here though, I don't know.
• If your pickup doesn't have a built-in preamp, and is causing level problems, you can buy an external pre-amp. L. L. Baggs makes some good ones, for example. You're probably looking at $100+ though.
• The ideal solution would be to use neither the computer's built-in mic nor your uke's pickup. Use a good quality, external mic. I just got a Blue Snowball for $85 and it sounds great for the price.

JJ