Learn How to Play the Ukulele: Fingerpicking Part 2

Before I get to today's little mini-fingerpicking lesson, I just want to say that writing some of these tutorials is one of the hardest thing I've ever done! Why? Because some aspects of playing the ukulele are so intuitive to me, when I have to sit down and actually explain how I do what I do, I start to wonder how the hell I figured this out without a teacher. 

But it's a good exercise for me to have to try to communicate what I do and how I do it, so for today, we're going to do a couple of simple exercises to start moving our fingers around the strings when we're fingerpicking on the ukulele.

Fingerpicking Patterns

Part of learning how to do fingerpicking is practicing using different fingers on different strings, and plucking the strings in different orders. You might think that with just four strings on a ukulele that there wouldn't be too many fingerpicking combinations to learn - but you would be wrong. It feels like there could be thousands of different ways in which to pluck those strings!

When you're learning fingerpicking, start easy - just use your thumb and first (index) finger. You can practice by moving up and down the strings by alternating your thumb and first finger. 

Here's a quick video with a few different ideas for practicing fingerpicking:

Keep playing!