What do you consider to be “the basics”?

The fretboard, chords, scales, timing, playing songs, fretting technique, etc... "Easy" stuff, played with always more proficiency and quality. I was on a binge looking for answers and more, more, MORE advance concepts. His point was basically the same as what I've heard Jake say: "You can't spend too much time practicing quarter notes."

I meet a lot of "advanced" players that can't hold a groove or fret a clean barre chord. These are basics that should be second nature before moving too much further along the learning curve.

Bottom line is: even if you just learned your first three-chord song, there are fundamental skills you can improve upon that you will use no matter how advanced you become. The more skilled you get, the more you can improve these simple things.

Pay attention to your fingers, how they interact with the instrument, and slow everything down to painfully slow tempos (while still playing in time, of course). That's the basics, IMO.

That's a good reminder. I am getting deeper and deeper into jazz chord progressions, but I still have to look at the fretboard to play some basic triads. I need to re-connect with some core skills.
 
Please learn the difference between straight time and swing time before you memorize fancy chords.

I might put that on a t-shirt. In fact, I'm gonna start giving beginners this advice: Learn three chords and five strums. Play a bunch of 3-chord songs beautifully. Then learn more chords. YMMV as always.

We have a saying in one of my chosen professions (transcription & closed captioning): First you get good. Then you get fast. It doesn't work the other way around.

Seems like that might be applicable to the uke world too.
 
I like the advice Nickie gave us about the Left hand and holding the uke. It really starts there :)
Right had technique is where most of the fun is, but the 'basics' should begin with tuning, holding,
basic strumming (down, and up and down), learning some chords, and practicing moving smoothly
from chord to chord at a regular tempo (with or without a metronome) :)

Please visit ( ukulelebootcamp.weebly.com ) for more of my suggestions and a few songbooks.

Right hand is what makes things interesting, but the foundation begins with chording or finding notes
with your Left hand (for right-handed players) :)

keep uke'in',
 
This is a good and interesting question!
As I'm a beginner myself I just would like to very humbly give you an advice.
Years ago I tried to learn the guitar by myself and concentrated on what I thought would be good basics for a start. I made progress, but lost interest with the time, because there wasn't enough fun!

Now I made a fresh start with the Uke and I'm concentrating on....
1) what I think is fun for me
2) is achievable in a reasonable amount of time
3) brings me further in any way

And I am switching the tasks...
Mostly, I'm learning songs from turorials in youtube, in between I find a video for example... on interesting strumming patterns or chucking technique, then a song with more chords, then a song I've always loved which still has more chords, then some spanish flamenco stuff... so my humble advice is to concentrate on whatever keeps you motivated, is fun and makes sense for what you want to achieve...

PS. Oups - I missed page 3 of the answers - Croaky Keith already gave a very similar reply
 
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I agree, Moddy!

the bottom line is to have fun and that keeps us motivated to do more :)

my motivation, back in the 50's and 60's, was to play some of the current
Rock-n-Roll songs I listened to on the radio - Stairway to Heaven, Diana, etc.

I first learned to play the uke from my 6th grade teacher, Mrs Wong, who
taught the entire class. Well, it stuck with me once I figured out some of the
chords and sequences for the songs I wanted to learn. Then I had to work
on transposing, since the songs on the radio were not always in the key of C :)

anyway, that desire to accompany myself singing popular songs, kept me at it
day after day after day. Of course, as I was enabled to learn and do more with
all this trial and error, I found it more and more interesting! And that kept
me motivated to continue.

Bottom line, keep doing what you find interesting and you will put in the time
and practice to get better and better.

knowing What to do is important, but having a Why is essential :)

keep uke'in',
 
Interesting. It has - again - been several months since I last picked up an ukulele for any other purpose than to set it aside and vacuum the room. However, recently "the itch" has come back and I was wondering where to go.

I have Uncle Rod's boot camp and usually warm up with those progressions. I can switch pretty fluently, but have a hard time memorizing the chord forms. That in itself is something to work with.

Strumming is not something I prefer doing, however I do work through the Ukulele Aerobics strums when I get to them. I prefer fingerpicking overall, so use the Irish campanella book another Uke Underground forumite wrote. Love those tunes, but I play them way more slowly than intended, probably.

My main problem is, I have zero interest in learning songs - i.e. learning to strum and sing along. If anything, I'd like to learn the proper part (be it a guitar or uke part) on uke, but more often than not I see things have been transposed to C, regardless of the actual key of the song.

I guess tonight, after bass practice, I should just pick up one of my ukes and get going. Thinking about playing won't make me better either :D
 
For me the basics means all major and minor triads, all dom7 chords, and all minor7 chords. Also, a bare minimum for me was learning the Roman numeral system for chord harmonization. However, I think most people would disagree. Most people just pick a song, learn the three chords needed to play the song, and that's their basics.

When you say ALL, do you mean all these chords for all KEYS? Coming from a guitar background I would rather know the basic shapes for main keys (C, G, D, A, F) and as a basic skill know how to apply them to other keys through baring, capo etc ... this is much more useful than memorization of hundreds of shapes.
 
When you say ALL, do you mean all these chords for all KEYS? Coming from a guitar background I would rather know the basic shapes for main keys (C, G, D, A, F) and as a basic skill know how to apply them to other keys through baring, capo etc ... this is much more useful than memorization of hundreds of shapes.

It really isn't that hard. All the shapes fit on two sheets of graph paper.
 
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