For every hour I teach, I probably spend two hours developing the content (ukulele curriculum) and preparing the material (sourcing, printing, copying, etc). To save time, I’ll log what I’ve found useful and free for teaching music via the ukulele in this blog post.
There are plenty of useful diagrams and images on the Internet – for any purpose. For ukuleles, be sure to include the correct spelling of the word in your search.
The left diagram illustrates the tuning of the ukulele. So-called reentrant tuning or “My Dog Has Fleas” is represented by gCEA because the fourth string is tuned above the next two strings of C and E. Soprano ukuleles are typically tuned this way. Low G-tuning, also called linear tuning is represented by GCEA. It gives the ukulele a greater range, useful for fingerpicking and fingerstyle ukulele.
USEFUL BLANKS
Blank ukulele chord diagrams. For kinesthetic learners, it’s particularly useful to write down the chords as you learn them. I encourage my students to think about how they want to organise their chords so that it’s easy for them to refer and look them up. Order as they learn them by number of fingers used or popularity?
Blank chord diagram and tablature. From day one, I use the “aural method” of naming chords, that is, by four numbers that represent the frets to be pressed for each of the four strings in GCEA sequence. This translates directly to tablature.
Blank staff paper and ukulele tablature. To teach how to read notes, I encourage students to write notes and tabs and see the one-to-one correspondence.
Blank ukulele fretboard. Let’s open up the black box that is the fretboard and label the lettered notes.