Ukulele Lessons
Four strings, a small body, a first chord that lands in the first lesson. The ukulele tends to sit close to whoever picks it up. Easy to begin with, and quietly hard to set aside once you've started.
There's a low barrier between picking it up and playing something on it. The chord shapes are simple enough that a beginner can move through a song in their first few lessons. The instrument is small enough to carry and quiet enough to play without negotiating with the rest of the house. Most people who start playing it end up playing it more than they planned to.
Most of the early ground gets covered quickly. Lessons tend to open up from there.
Four strings, simple chord shapes, and a small fretboard mean that the basic vocabulary of the instrument lands fast. A new player can usually strum through a song by the end of the first lesson or two. That early "I'm playing music" feeling shows up almost right away, and lessons build on it from there.
The ukulele is small enough that it doesn't compete with a voice. Once a student can hold a few chord shapes, singing through a verse becomes a natural next step. We don't push it, but we don't ignore it either. Most students who play ukulele end up singing while they play, even if they didn't plan to.
The ukulele is small enough to take to a porch, a campfire, a friend's house, or a couch on a Sunday morning. Lessons account for that. We work on songs students actually want to play with people, on the instrument they actually have with them. The point is that the playing keeps going outside the lesson.
The ukulele tends to fit people who want to be making music sooner rather than later. Kids picking up their first instrument. Adults who've always meant to try something musical. Players of other instruments who want a smaller, lighter companion that travels with them.
It's also a common pick for people who want to sing without being the only thing in the room making sound. The chord shapes are reachable inside a few lessons, and the rest of what makes a ukulele lesson worth showing up for unfolds from there. The path opens up differently for each person, but the early ground is the same: a few shapes, a few strums, a song to play through.
Seven teachers at Resonate teach ukulele. Most of them came to it as a second or third instrument: guitarists, vocalists, and pianists who picked up the ukulele somewhere along the way and now teach it alongside what they came in for. That's actually closer to how most people end up playing ukulele themselves. As a companion to other ways they make music.
In a one-to-one lesson, the teacher's musical background shapes how the work feels. A teacher whose main instrument is voice tends to weave singing in earlier. A teacher whose main instrument is guitar tends to point out the fretboard parallels. The student gets to pick whose room they sit in, and that choice changes the experience.
Click a portrait to hear more about how they teach.
Tell us a little about who lessons are for and what you have in mind.
You do not need everything figured out first.
If you'd like more before reaching out: common questions, the styles you can study, and what tends to develop in your first months and first year. Each section below is collapsed by default. Tap any heading to read more.
Real beginner questions. Tap any to read the full answer.
For most beginners, a basic ukulele in the $50 to $150 range is plenty. Kala, Lanikai, and Cordoba all make solid starter ukuleles that play cleanly out of the box. The very cheapest “toy” ukuleles (often the brightly-coloured ones at department stores) tend to have intonation problems that make learning harder than it needs to be. They sound fine plucked open, but they go increasingly out of tune as you move up the neck. A real entry-level instrument from a music shop costs only a bit more and works dramatically better.
Myhre’s Music in Edmonton stocks beginner ukuleles that are properly set up, and we’ve been referring families there for years. They also handle rentals if you’d prefer a low-commitment start.
Higher-tier ukuleles run further up. Solid-wood instruments from makers like Pono, Kanile’a, and KoAloha (typically $300 and up) are wonderful, but they’re upgrades you might make after a year or two of committed playing, not first purchases.
Ukuleles come in four common sizes:
For kids ages 5 to 8, soprano is usually the right call. For adults starting fresh, concert or tenor both work well: concert for the traditional sound at a more comfortable size, tenor for fullness and room to grow into fingerstyle playing.
In the early going, yes. Four strings instead of six. Softer nylon strings that don’t hurt fingertips the way steel guitar strings do at first. Simpler chord shapes (many basic ukulele chords use only one or two fingers). The first songs come quickly.
That said, “easier” runs out at a certain point. Advanced ukulele playing is its own discipline with its own depth. Fingerstyle arrangements, complex strumming, jazz chord voicings, and the technique to make a small instrument fill a room are all real challenges. Ukulele rewards casual players faster than guitar does, but it rewards committed players just as deeply.
The honest answer for choosing between them: pick the one that pulls you toward picking it up. A ukulele you play every day teaches more than a guitar you play once a week.
Ukulele is one of the friendliest starting instruments for young kids. The small size, the soft nylon strings, and the simple chord shapes mean that 5- and 6-year-olds can often make recognizable music in their first few lessons. Earlier starts work for some 4-year-olds, especially those drawn to the instrument at home.
For kids under 5 who love music but aren’t quite ready for a private lesson, our Tunes & Tots program (ages 2 to 3) and Junior Jammers (ages 4 to 5) build pitch, rhythm, and musical foundation in a group setting.
Many older kids and teens come to ukulele as a stepping stone toward guitar, or as a complement to voice for singer-songwriting. Adults often pick up ukulele as a low-commitment way back into music, or as a new instrument that doesn’t ask much from the hands. The ukulele has a reputation as a particularly approachable adult instrument, and it’s a reputation it has earned.
In person is generally the better experience, regardless of age. Chord shapes, strumming hand position, and the small physical corrections that build cleaner playing are all easier for a teacher to see in the same room. Ukulele forgives more than most instruments, though, so the gap between online and in-person is smaller for ukulele than for violin or voice.
We keep online lessons available because they genuinely serve students who can’t make it in regularly. That includes students who live out of town and come in occasionally for in-person lessons, recitals, or recording sessions. It also covers the weeks when transportation, weather, or feeling a bit under the weather means an in-person make-up isn’t practical.
Plenty of students use a mix of both formats. The quality difference is real, and we noticed it directly during the COVID period when everything was online. That’s part of why we treat online as a complement to in person rather than a substitute.
Faster than almost any other instrument. With consistent practice, even just 10 minutes most days, most beginners can play a recognizable song within the first one or two weeks. The basic chord shapes (C, F, G, Am) come together within the first few lessons, and many popular songs use some combination of those four chords.
What “playing a song” means varies. Strumming through the chord changes cleanly enough that the song is recognizable is one threshold, often crossed in the first two weeks. Strumming with the right rhythm of the original is another, typically a few weeks later. Adding fingerpicking patterns, melody lines, or your voice over the chords is the next layer. Most students cross the first threshold faster on ukulele than on any other instrument we teach.
Ukulele lessons here can move across a wide range of musical territory. Tap any style to read more.
Most ukulele students come in wanting to play songs they hear on the radio. Vance Joy, Twenty One Pilots, Billie Eilish, Beabadoobee, and the broader contemporary songwriting world that uses ukulele as either lead instrument or texture. By far the most common starting point.
The instrument’s home tradition. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, classic hapa haole songs, slack-key adjacent material, and the kind of warm, melodic playing that connects ukulele back to where it came from. Builds the foundational strumming and fingerpicking patterns that most other styles draw from.
Old-time songs, country, bluegrass-adjacent material played on a smaller instrument. Often paired with voice. A natural fit for students drawn to lyric-led music.
Solo ukulele playing where the player handles melody, harmony, and accompaniment all at once. Jake Shimabukuro is the contemporary reference. A demanding discipline that pushes the small instrument further than most people realize it can go.
For students writing their own songs or wanting to. Chord choice, finding melodies, structuring verses and choruses, getting comfortable arranging your own ideas on the instrument. Often paired with voice in lessons, since many ukulele-leaning songwriters sing what they write.
For students who want to understand how music actually works beyond memorizing songs: chord function, scales, basic notation, ear training. Rarely required and never forced, but available as a layer running through any other style. Especially useful for students moving toward songwriting, arranging, or playing with other musicians.
Rough averages. Pace varies based on age, practice consistency, and any prior musical experience.
How to hold the ukulele (against the body, with the strap-free balance most ukulele players use), your first chord shape (often C, which uses a single finger), how to tune it (tuners attached to the headstock are nearly universal now), and a first simple strum. Most students leave the first lesson able to play at least one chord cleanly. The visible progress is faster on ukulele than on most instruments, which is part of why it’s such a friendly starter.
With consistent practice, which is the single biggest variable in how quickly anyone progresses, most beginners can strum through a complete song using two or three chord changes by the end of the first month. Often something simple like “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz or “Riptide” by Vance Joy. Chord transitions feel less awkward. Strumming patterns start to settle. What’s developing in this period is hand coordination, chord muscle memory, and the practice habit. Progress tends to feel encouraging on ukulele in a way it doesn’t on most instruments. Students hear themselves making music quickly, which keeps them coming back.
By around three months, most students have a small collection of songs they can play through cleanly, growing comfort with strumming patterns beyond the basics, and the beginnings of being able to learn new songs from a chord chart on their own. Practice begins to feel less like effort and more like just playing songs. Weekly membership students reach their first complimentary recording studio session around this point, which can become a low-pressure way to capture something they’ve been working on.
The difference between students widens here. Those who practice regularly typically have a meaningful catalogue of songs they enjoy playing, comfort with multiple strumming patterns and some fingerpicking, basic chord theory knowledge (so they can play a song in a different key if their voice prefers it there), and the growing confidence to play in front of other people. Less consistent students may still be building basic comfort, and that’s fine too. Through the year, opportunities to perform in Resonate recitals and to use the included recording studio sessions come up several times for students who want to take them. The honest answer to “where will I be after a year” is that practice frequency between lessons matters more than almost any other factor.
Ukulele is a lifelong instrument. The teachers here have been playing for decades and still find new things in it. The first year is about getting the foundational pieces down: clean chord shapes, comfortable strumming, hearing chord changes in songs. What comes after is leveling up what you can do with those foundations: the songs you can play, the songs you can write, the fingerstyle arrangements you can take on, the recording sessions you can carry, the people you can play with.
Some students stay with ukulele as their primary instrument and go deep. Others move into guitar and bring ukulele along as a complement. Some shift into songwriting. Some teach. Many do some combination of these over time.
Most students who stay with ukulele stay in lessons for years, because there is always another layer to add: another style, more refined strumming, more comfortable fingerpicking, deeper musical understanding. The road forks based on what lights you up, and a good teacher helps you notice which fork is calling.
