Here are the best Ukulele leaning apps in the market.
1. Kala Ukulele Tuner and Songbook
This app is a toolkit for beginners and will help you play songs in no time. The app is divided into four sections with the first being a tuner, the most important tool for any beginner. Then there is the songbook that has a list of song tutorials you can play along with. You can choose from pop, country to even gospel. So there are plenty of genres available. Simply select a song, and play along the track or get a clear picture with the chord tab. You also get to see the chord fingering in this section, in case you come across an unfamiliar chord.
In addition to strumming details, you can tweak the backing track from settings in the top right corner and change the percussion, ukulele strum difficulty, turn on the vocals or bass and more. Get Kala Ukulele Android and iOS
2. Ukulele Tabs
For those of you who’ve used Ultimate Guitar, this app is a bit similar in terms of functionality. With a large database of songs contributed by users, there is always constant addition of new material.
As you open the app you get a list of songs to choose from. On the top right there is a “random” song button that shows you random song lessons. You can filter tracks by country of origin, genre, difficulty, etc. To keep a history of your progress, you can add songs to your songbook. This helps you to create a list of songs you can come back to and polish. You can access songs offline and also edit, add or transpose notes. The archive consists of a large number of songs. In addition to multiple strumming patterns, there is support for tuner and chord charts but with extra app installations. There is support for left-handed players, tab preferences like changing the font, text size, color, and even dark mode. Autoscroll is again a distinct feature that is pretty helpful when playing along with the song or singing. iOS users can alternatively use Ultimate Guitar or Chordify, if covering songs is the priority. Get Ukulele Tabs here
3. The Ukulele App
This app, in my opinion, has the best UI in the list and that is not all it has got. If you ask me one app that can deal with all your Ukulele woes, this app would be on the top of that list. Why so? Here are all the features.
Starting with the lesson section, which is the best place to be for a beginner, you can find video tutorials from the very basic, i.e, how to tune your ukulele, introduction to basic chords to challenging songs. You can find song lessons in the video section. Though it ha a lot of classic and pop songs, the list is pretty limited. The tools section is stocked up too and the maximum you’d need, at least for now. The features include a tuner, virtual strumming, chord library, progressions, and a scale library, that can be used a limited number of times. The app comes at a very nominal rate of $2.49, which I recommend subscribing to. Get The Ukulele App for Andoid and iOS
4. OKMusician
One of the few advantages of learning an instrument with a teacher is real-time feedback. With apps and printed lessons, a student often gets the worse of his habits, maybe things like playing the wrong note, unclear voicings of notes, etc. To solve this issue, OKMusician gives real-time feedback as you learn.
It uses artificial intelligence and promises to make you familiar with an instrument in seven days. Well, I can’t fully second that but the idea still sounds interesting. You can either play songs from the library after calibrating your Ukulele with the app. You can either choose the gameplay mode which gives you the full song or do a distributed practice of some parts of the song, which makes it far more easier to learn. There is a lesson section as well, which has clear and well-produced video lessons. But the free version supports only three free videos. You can purchase the app depending upon the pack you choose ($9.99 – $59.99) and unlock more lessons, access to updated songs, 3D fingering demonstration and reverse chord finder. Get OKMusician for Android and iOS
5. Ukulele Lessons
A lot of tutorials are spread over the internet. Some of them offer quality lessons and some are a waste of time. Ukulele lesson app collects all of this and creates a repository of video lessons that you can watch and learn.
It is divided into sections starting from beginner to advanced lessons. Though the app is divided into sections the videos aren’t in any order, so you might have a bit of struggle connecting the dots. The music section consists of all popular Ukulele songs including covers. You might also stumble upon new music with three types of radio channels, classical, pop and Hawaiian. The only downside is the excessive use of pop-ups and ads. Get Ukulele Lessons here
6. Ukulele Chords
Chords provide rhythm to any music and is an important aspect to master for any musician. Proper understanding and knowledge not only helps you play better but lets you collaborate with other musicians as well. Ukulele Chords is an app that is minimal, so if you want to focus on chords, this may be the app to install right away.
You can choose between Soprano, Baritone or D-Tuning and so the chords will change with the tuning you choose. You simply have to select a root note, then a variation and a tuning. In addition to displaying the chord chart, it also shows variations of the same chord. There are quick controls at the bottom, where you can tweak the text and chord size. In case you get bored with the UI, there are few themes, like dark, light, pink, denim, etc, to choose from. It’s not yet available on iOS but here is a similar alternative that you can check out. Download Ukulele Chords here
7. Use PDFs
It’s not always necessary to install apps on your phone. There are plenty of resources available on the internet to download PDFs, ranging from a chord chart sheets to song tabs. You can simply download and access it through a PDF reader or get it printed. This gives you the option to format the document, in terms of changing font, adding color or highlighting a certain part of a song you find hard to play. These PDFs don’t take a lot of space, therefore you can create a database of resources.
Remarks
Ukulele is a simple and fun instrument to learn. If you’re already a musician, Ukulele Chords would be sufficient along with PDFs of the songs you want to play. In case you want to learn, The Ukulele App, Ukulele Lessons, and OKMusician are great apps to choose, though I’d suggest The Ukulele App out of the three. In case you just want to get familiar with the fingering and jump right onto songs, Ukulele Tabs and Kala might help you reach there quick. But remember there is no shortcut in music, so if you’re thinking to become pro without practicing, that’s not going to happen. Nevertheless, try using these apps to get familiar with the instrument. Enjoy Playing!
