Most people learn to play the ukulele in an arbitrary way. Any approach that seems to do the job becomes part of their tool bag.
But just because something seems to work doesn’t mean it’s the best way. The average ukulele player has a ton of bad habits slowing them down!
The upside:
As you iron out bad habits and learn proper technique, you’ll immediately see a huge amount of improvement in your ability to play faster, easier, and more precisely.
Start improving your feel for the ukulele today with my Left Hand Technique video course!
Overview video
If they gave Grammys for ukulele instruction, you should have several for your clear, patient, and pleasant teaching style. I have been to a couple of ukulele getaways and some ukulele jams, but I have learned more from your courses than any of the meetings I have gone to. Mahalo nui loa!
Howard Eskildsen – Ocala, Florida
My name is Brad Bordessa. With Left Hand Technqiue For Ukulele, I present a straightforward course of study from beginner to advanced that sets you up with the foundation of everything: technique. 🚀
Throughout the lessons, I share my 15 years of teaching experience and how you can use a detail-oriented approach to understand your motions better while not losing sight of the ultimate goal, which is playing music.
Beyond bringing your technique up to speed, the lessons contain a complete toolbox of understanding and navigating the uke’s fretboard.
You’ll learn how to:
- Play scales and melodies anywhere on the fretboard without charts or TABs
- Organize your fingerings smartly so that you can get to each note faster with shifting and position playing
- Think about expressing music with staccato and legato, articulations, phrasing, and more
My goal with this course is to give you the tools you need to feel comfortable understanding most musical situations.
There are no flashy, get-rich-quick schemes or here-today-gone-tomorrow four-chord pop songs. What you do get is a thoughtful, deep approach to the ukulele presented by an experienced player and teacher.
Get a set of lessons that will provide years of in-depth study for the price of two private lessons.
I am finding the course to be excellent and very inspiring. I find it very empowering as a learner and player to be shown the concepts that underly what we are doing on the ukulele. Your choice of songs to illustrate the concepts are great… I look forward to every lesson […] and I feel excited to know how much I can grow as a musician with the ukulele.
-Paula Davis
What’s in This Course?
The main focus of Left Hand Technique For Ukulele is lead and melody playing. There are lessons on playing chords and a tune strummed with jazz chords, but, to me, the foundation of technique is best explored through picking.
You’ll learn these concepts through a sequential set of 50 informative, concise, and beautiful HD video lessons. The play time for these are over nine hours!
Each video is shot with two cameras so that the fretboard is always easy to see when I’m playing.
In addition to the videos, each lesson has a dedicated page with:
- Additional information, illustrations, and resources
- Practice tips/homework
- Community discussion area for Q&A
Check out a free lesson to see the presentation style and format
Here’s what each page looks like:
To accompany the songs and examples, you get 19 TAB transcriptions (with standard notation).
There are also seven play through videos to reference when learning to play the songs.
Speaking of the songs, you’ll learn to play these classic melodies:
- “Hawaiʻi Aloha”
- “Star of the County Down”
- “Maunaloa”
- “Canon in D”
- “Maui Girl”
- “Tonight You Belong to Me”
- “Aloha ʻOe”
- “Sanoe”
I love how transparent and genuine you are in your teaching materials. Every course or book of yours I’ve used has been great, so I’m really looking forward to this.
Right off the bat in the first lesson, you’re hitting the big idea of music being a personalized journey and the fact that this is your unique take. We need more of this genuine and meta-cognitive style of teacher rather than the swarm of tabs, song tutorials, and clickbait YT videos that just show one specific thing and move on without tying it all together. Excited to begin!
-Stephen Smith
Lesson Index
Intro:
- Welcome
- Navigating the Course
- General ʻUkulele Holding Posture
- Left Hand Positioning
- Right Hand Positioning
- Using a Metronome
Beginner:
- How Fretting Works
- Finger Pressure
- Chromatic Scale
- The Chromatic System
- Scales on a Single String
- Three Note Fingering Windows
- Song: “Hawaiʻi Aloha”
- Leggato and Staccato
- Hammer-On
- Song: “Star of the County Down”
- Open Position
- Pull-Offs
- Song: “Maunaloa”
- Chord Tips
- Chord Relay Exercise
- Conclusion of Beginner Section
Intermediate:
- Intro to Intermediate Section
- Single String Review
- Sequencing Scales
- Arpeggios and Basic Chord Theory
- Minor Arpeggios
- String Transfer Windows 1
- String Transfer Windows 2
- Position Playing
- Song: “Canon in D”
- Finger Coordination Exercises
- Slides
- Song: “Maui Girl”
- Transposing Melodies
- Barre Chords
- Lift Muting
- Chord Slides/Scrubbing
- Song: “Tonight You Belong to Me”
- Chord Movement
- Conclusion of Intermediate Section
Advanced:
- Intro to Advanced Section
- Memorizing the Fretboard
- Vibrato
- Song: “Aloha ʻOe”
- Dampening
- Articulation Combos
- Bending
- Song: “Canon in D” – Articulation Study
- Natural Harmonics
- Song: Artificial Harmonics/”Sanoe”
- Pinky Muting
- Extreme Sequencing
- Conclusion
Left Hand Technique For Ukulele is a bottom-up guide to navigating the fretboard of the ukulele with your left hand and understanding the role your fingers play in making every note count.
You’ll learn to:
- Implement more effective musical styles
- Navigate the fretboard without charts
- Articulate and express notes better
- Understand basic “street” theory
- Fret easier and more precisely
- Play eight awesome melodies
- Practice more efficiently
- Perfect your posture
What Students are Saying
I am loving your Left Hand Technique class! Your teaching style is crystal clear and passionate. It is obvious you care deeply about helping your students learn ukulele.
It is especially helpful to me how you have broken down the techniques into manageable chunks. Not hold the “uke like this” as some teachers say, which is sometimes hard to see what all is going on. But you isolate each element of holding the instrument, such as where the elbow should be, then later holding the uke angled away from the body – all in brief, approachable lessons.
Your teaching style provides specific things to work on. Plus, I really like how you started the Left Hand focused class with some basics, like holding the uke, working with a metronome and even some right hand technique to get started. Thank you for making your lessons so enjoyable and helpful!
-Troy Brown
I’ve started working through the course and love it. […] Going back through the basics has helped hone in on some techniques that I might have overlooked! I’ve only just started the Beginner section but have already improved my string sound by really thinking about finger pressure and placement within the fret.
The videos and presentation are high quality and delivered in well thought out chunks enabling me to dip in and out when I can find time. Looking forward to working through the whole course… Keep up the good work, you’re an outstanding teacher.
-Joanne Craigie
Brad, your lessons are very focused and interesting. The lessons are seamless in learning new skills and putting them together to actually be able to play a ukulele and sound great! I am amazed how easy I am really learning to play. […] I do not feel awkward being a beginner at anytime. In fact, I feel very comfortable and confident from the success I am showing.
The videos are outstanding seeing your fingers close-up and your speaking very clearly. They are the perfect speed…not being too fast or to slow to learn the lessons.
I truly believe your strong educational background and grand presence in videos are the perfect blend for an outstanding teacher. Confidence in the teaching always gives positive results. By giving your students confidence and good practice habits you have already accomplished so much for their learning. You use each lesson as a building block to achieve positive success in each lesson.
You are more qualified to teach with your degrees than most teaching, yet your pricing is much lower. Also, locally one month of lessons is almost twice as much what you charge. Those lessons can not come close to your abilities. After one [Left Hand Technique] lesson with you I gave notice to cancel my private lessons. I celebrated by purchasing another Kamaka from Andrew!
I sincerely appreciate your lessons and enjoy them immensely. Brad, you are a skilled player and teacher that make learning the ukulele a joy. I feel blessed to have met you on my journey to learn the Ukulele.
-Susan Murry
So far I’m loving your course. I’ve completed only the introductory videos so far. I realized that my posture was all off!! The small tweaks you demonstrated really make playing so much more comfortable.
[…] If the few intro videos helped this much, I’m excited to start the actual course!!-Dr. Cat Howard, Texarkana College
I appreciate your teaching style and focus, and just plain enjoy hearing you talk– which may seem funny to say, but truly makes a difference in undertakings like this.
-SM Samuelson
Q&A
What is a Course?
A course is a set of pre-recorded lesson videos. Just like Masterclass or The Ukulele Way, you log in and access them at any time and at your own pace.
Once you’ve bought the course, you have lifetime access to the content so you can take your time working through the lessons or even revisit them years later!
Is this course for left-handed (reverse) players?
No! I teach in the normal orientation with my left hand on the fretboard. (The course is about fretting technique, which most people do with their left hand, hence the name.)
That said, all of the concepts explored in the course can be adapted for whatever style you play the ukulele in.
I already have the Left Hand Technique For Ukulele ebook. Do I get a discount?
Absolutely! I appreciate your previous support.
Click here and log in. There is a coupon code at the bottom of your LHT ebook download page.
Is the course for high-g or low-G?
Both! The songs and examples are mostly G-string neutral.
There are a couple of exceptions that require a low-G to get the correct octave, but they will still sound musical if you play high-g.
I’m a total noob. Is this course for me?
Yes and no. The course starts from the very basics of playing the ukulele. But it does so mainly as a review for more experienced players to make sure they are using proper posture before quickly blasting off to more sophisticated concepts.
I recommend the course for advanced-beginner/intermediate level players and up. You should be comfortable strumming some chords in time, playing some songs, and picking easy melodies.
My skills are prodigious. Will I be bored?
Unless you’re a world-class performer practicing five hours a day, I think there is enough content and inspiration here to keep most advanced players busy for quite a while (literally years and years if you really practice and internalize the content like you should).
For what it’s worth, there’s plenty here that I could stand to work on and that’s challenging for me to play.
Baritone uke version?
Unlikely. I feel like putting future efforts towards new subjects is more valuable for more people than re-teaching the same material for a different tuning.
The songs and examples can be played independently on any uke tuned in 4th, 3rd, 4th intervals (DGBE, ADF#B, etc). The only difference is that if you try to play along with me, we’ll each be in different keys. But played solo, they will still sound lovely.
Money back guarantee – what’s that about?
This course is my pride and joy. I think it contains some of the most useful uke lessons available. If you don’t agree and you’re bummed you paid for it, I don’t want your money. Send me an email within 30 days and I’ll refund your purchase ASAP.
Still have questions?
Send me an email and I’ll do my best to answer your questions at: liveukulele@gmail.com.
Brad Bordessa has offered an inventive, leveled, and comprehensive approach to learning the beginning basics through advanced skills with his Left-Hand Technique Course. The videos and instruction are top notch and there is something here for players of all levels. A+!
-Kevin Carroll, author of Ukulele Ceilidh