Your first song

I want to start by saying I did search this up but the only one I found relevant didn't have the same question I wanted to ask. And anyway, it would be nice to ask the current members.

How long did it take you to learn your first full song? And what was it?


Recently I've been making a "songbook" on ukulele-tabs of songs I want to learn (most rate fairly low on the difficulty scale so I am confident!) I know that people learn to play instruments different from each other so I thought it would be cool to see the variations in song learning. I don't have a ukulele yet so I can't answer!

"Raindrops keep falling on My Head" I learned it quick. Mr Mike Lynch (MusicTeacher 2010 on Youtube) is a good teacher.

A friend lent me a cheap 'toy' uke, then taught me the chords to No Woman No Cry, and after two days of playing at every given opportunity I nailed it!!!

I've played bass and guitar for over 30 years so when I picked up the uke it wasn't much of a struggle. First song I learned was Your Mother Should Know and it took around 10 minutes.

Jakes While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I played for about 7 hours straight to get the main song, but since then I have never stopped revising and changing it to my liking.

LOL, I just resurrected an old thread that asked first uke and first song.

Then I saw this thread. Umm. sorry.

But since you asked: First full song: Hidden in the Sand - by Tally Hall. Took me a day or two, I think. This was the song that tipped me over the edge to actually buying my first ukulele.

I was joking around with one of my friends and trying to figure out what song I want to learn. Everything I kept looking up had 8 or more chords I did not know. Some how we ended up joking about Beiber. I looked up his song Baby. Found an easy 4 chord version and that was my first song. It took a couple of days for me to get used to strumming. But I was able to play it for the kids at the daycare that week. They thought I was the coolest teacher ever.

When I first started playing I learned a song a week. Then on Fridays, I would play it for my boss at the gas station I worked at and at the Daycare. We called it Ukulele Friday. My coworkers and students would request songs and I would do my best to learn them. It was a lot of fun!

Now I am a full time Pre-K teacher and I use my ukulele in the class all the time.

Good luck on picking your first song and keep us posted!

can't remember exactly, it would have been around early 2006 though and possibly either 'Dump the Dog' by Loudon Wainwright (chords D, G, A7) or 'Song for Dennis Brown' by The Mountain Goats (G, C, D). Didn't take me long as I'd migrated from playing guitar for many years.

Good thing about the uke is I've never found any style of music that the uke doesn't sound awesome on....blues, jazz, pop, folk, country, novelty, kids music, classical, spirituals...it is the most flexible and adaptable instrument there is!!!!

I hope you get bitten by the uke bug too when you get your first one Amber. So much joy in such a small lil' package!

I've been playing for a couple of years now and I STILL haven't learned my first full song!

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but having picked up the uke in my forties after several decades of playing drums professionally, I find that my brain doesn't absorb chord changes all that well. I can fool my musician friends into thinking I'm really a master by just strumming some random chords and messing around with the syncopation, but ask me to play Jingle Bells all the way through and I need to go running for my chord charts!

Good luck with your uke. Whatever song you choose to learn first, I'd suggest looking at the tab once or twice and then throwing it in the garbage. In other words, don't let yourself become dependent on having to have the chord changes in front of you!

That said, the first song I played all the way through was I've Just Seen A Face by The Beatles.

My dad taught me "Down in the Valley" when I was about nine. Just two chords, F and C7, 3/4 time. I can't remember how long it took to learn, but probably not too long. I think after that he taught me "Working on the Railroad", and then some of his faves like "Five Foot Two" and "Ja Da".

Seems a lot of people learn songs pretty quick. I suppose I should have asked it in the beginning but did you jump into the uke with a song or did you start off practicing different chords and whatnot?

For my learning style I want to just jump right in and learn an easy song. I guess I'm not one for just simple practice! Though I have tinkered with my friends uke and learned some chords along with how to properly strum (never played a stringed instrument so the first time I tried to strum her uke... LOL, it was bad.)

My 1st song , that I learnt was 'Whiskey in The Jar'

Didnt take to long to learn , could play it without looking at tab after about a week.

Of course for a while it was the ONLY song I could play , drove the wife and kids mad

My first song was Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"

After that it was a lot of CCR.

I thought everyone's first song learned was 'surf' - ka'au crater boys! lol j/k, but that was definitely the first song I learned, in a ukulele class in elementary! But I didn't start actually playing the ukulele until my friend taught me the intro picking, solo, rythym for 'put a little love' - natural vibrations. Took a couple of hours to learn & maybe a week to master!

My first song I learned was jakes while my guitar gently weeps don't remember how long it took me though

The Two Parts to Doing a Count-in:



1) Decide on the correct tempo. This requires that you get into the head-space of the song you're about to play. Take a moment to silently sing a bit of the next song in your mind with the feeling you want it to have. (This is what is going on in the heads of singers whom you see taking a mental pause between songs.) Avoid rushing into the next song or you may start playing at the same tempo as the last song you did. Once you feel you know the tempo of the song: some part of you; an arm, a foot or your head, may move in time to the music you're about to play. This is a way of capturing the tempo in your body as your mind concentrates on the next part of the task:



2) Know which beat the song begins on. This is a little tricky at first but it does get easier. The reason for its trickiness is that counting-in a song would be easy if all songs started on the same beat. But they don't. Songs can start on the first, second, third or fourth beats. Here are some examples, all in 4/4 time:



A song that starts on the one beat is Blue Skies by Irving Berlin. To count this in you just need to count to four and the word Blue lands on the next one beat:

One-two-three-four: Blue skies smiling on me, Nothing but...



The word "You" from You Are My Sunshine happens to come on the two beat. The word sunshine is on the one beat of the next measure. So you count it in like this:

One-two-three-four-one: You are my sunshine, My only...



The Gershwin/Heyward song Summertime starts on the three beat so you count it in like this:

One-two-three-four-one-two: Sum-mer-time and the living is easy...



The song Tonight You Belong to Me (as played by Lyle Ritz in The Jerk) begins on the fourth beat with the syllable Al (from Al-though.) The next part of the word: though lands on the next one beat. So the count in goes like this:

One-two-three-four-one-two-three: Al-though you belong to somebody new...



Practice by going through your song repertoire and try counting each song in. At first you really have to think about it. Eventually you won't need to concentrate so hard and it will become as easy as tying laces, mending inflatable punctures and spreading mounds of whipped cream over yourself (all of which are activities featured in the coming sequel to this years blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey - Hee hee)



The count-in can be delivered in many forms: In rock bands the drummer sets the pace by clacking his sticks. When studio musicians get intimately familiar with the process the count-in gets reduced to small bobs of the head followed by an intake of breath. There are many ways to do the job.



And when new year's eve comes and people are about to do the final countdown of the year notice how they introduce it. The person leading the countdown often makes sure that everyone starts on time and in the right tempo by counting-in the countdown. Going, twelve, eleven... and then everyone is set to come in together on ten and before you know it's next year and we get to do it all again.

Three chord version of "King of the Road". It was 4th grade music class back in 1968 at Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary. A local gentleman tried to teach 2 dozen of us military brats to play the uke (with limited success). We played that and the Hukilau Song over and over.

I think it was I've Been working on the Railroad - as a kid/over 20 years ago way out
at the Waipahu Recreational Center
...haven't stopped playing...!