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The truth is, that just the sound of this beautiful instrument has been giving people that warm and happy feeling for over eighty years in the mainland U.S. Willy has been teaching for 20 years, and his students have ranged in age from young children to folks in their 80s.Have you ever seen anyone frowning while holding an ukulele?Ībsolutely not! It's like trying to be sad while water skiing.
SITTING ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY UKULELE SERIES
He is the author of the Dead Man’s Tuning series of mandolin songbooks, and is a former member of the American Federation of Musicians. teaches guitar, ukulele, and mandolin lessons in Winston Salem, NC. Learn more ukulele songs and techniques by studying with a private ukulele instructor. I hope you have a great time as you give these easy ukulele songs for beginners a try at your next luau or 60s dance – or whatever fun party you’re going to have this summer! These five easy ukulele songs are sure to get your friends doing the mashed potato or surfer’s stomp in no time! Next time you’re sitting at your next backyard barbecue, throw in a little Beatles, and you’ll have everyone singing in no time! See the chords and lyrics here. You need to be a little careful when you attempt to play these types of Beatles songs, though, because when it comes to doing the little head shake thing, people have been known to get whiplash! Just kidding.
SITTING ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY UKULELE HOW TO
The Beatles get a little tricky and throw in that F chord to give it some spice on the bridge, but now that you’ve mastered “Dock of the Bay,” you know how to play it and can throw it into this song as well. It is also in the key of G, with only the three main chords G, C and D for the bulk of the song. “Love Me Do” is one of the easier songs The Beatles wrote. So, to conclude our little foray into these 1960s easy ukulele songs for beginners, we are going to look at a couple of these bands’ songs. No anthology of the 1960s would be complete without two bands who dominated the early 60s Billboard charts with catchy, easy to play love songs: The Beatles and The Beach Boys. And, once you get all your friends joining in on the la, ti, da’s at the end, you’ll feel like the master campfire ukulele player! So, tackling this song should be second nature. “Brown Eyed Girl” is another song in the key of G with only the G, C and D chords, chords you probably already know as a beginning ukulele player. Regardless of the complexity of the song structure, it is really easy to play and learn. It has a refrain, but it’s more like a bridge that sets up the verse again.
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I can’t really call it a verse chorus type structure, because it’s really just a long verse with a repeated ending at the end of each verse. “Brown Eyed Girl” is a very interesting, yet incredibly simple song to play. It provides the tension needed to get back to the more simple verse structure. Make sure you watch for the only F chord in the song when you get to the bridge. It works well, and this song has remained popular ever since it was recorded. But, what he’s really doing is borrowing chords from other keys to make the song sound more restless. To a new player, it will almost seem as if Otis couldn’t decide if he wanted to be in the key of G, C or A. This song is in the key of G, but typical to a lot of 50s and 60s gospel music, it includes a few borrowed chords: A, E, B and F. If you’re having trouble, you can tune your ukulele to Open G tuning to make it even easier, tuning it G B D G.
![sitting on the dock of the bay ukulele sitting on the dock of the bay ukulele](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YwsTJheVq-A/maxresdefault.jpg)
However, all of the chords are simple chords that you can barre across the fret board to create. Unlike “Up around the Bend,” “Dock of the Bay” has three parts that you’ll have to learn, and several chords. “Dock of the Bay” is a great song for the ukulele, and it will challenge you to move out of your three chord frame of mind. Though his life was short, the gospel-turned-R&B singer left a brilliant catalog of hits, and in my opinion, this is one of his finest. What 1960s collection of songs would be complete without including something from the late great Otis Redding? “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” was the last song Redding recorded before his tragic death in a plane crash at the tender age of 26 years old. In the chorus the song adds some depth by adding the G chord, but both lines of the chorus are simply a G chord to a D chord, and then finally ending on the A chord.
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You can also make the A chord an A7 when you are transitioning back to the D chord but really it is as easy as just playing the D for a line, and then the A for a line. The verse couldn’t be easier – there’s only two simple chords, the D chord and the A chord. The first song I want to point out to you is the classic Credence Clearwater Revival song written by John Fogarty called “Up Around the Bend.” This fun little tune has a verse chorus structure, so there are only two parts of the song to learn.