Ditching the Tabs

As part of my progression with my uke, it is really important for me to ditch the tabs and be able to read sheet music. With any other instrument I play, I have always learnt through sheet music however the ease of learning the ukulele with chords and tabs has meant that I have never tried. My main motivation for this is to allow me to be able to learn virtually any song as there are so many more resources in terms of sheet music than ukulele tabs.

If you're new to sheet music, it will be worth learning some music theory to understand the meaning of different musical notations. Here's a link to an article that goes through the basics.

My first step is to find a sheet music of a song I want to learn (nothing too difficult). Unfortunately there's not a lot of music that is written specifically for the ukulele but I suggest that you choose something in treble clef or maybe an easy piano version of a song (remember for piano the second staff is in bass clef). In my own house I have plenty of music books to choose from but there's plenty of free resources online to get you started. My personal favourite is Musescore, which is primarily a free music notation software that also has a community who share their own scores that are available to download. Aside from it being free, other benefits are that you are able to listen to the score and adjust the speed. Additionally, if you want to edit a score to adjust it to the ukulele or write your own, the notation software allows this.

The second step was to work out where the notes on the paper are on the ukulele. I have made the diagrams below to demonstrate the first 7 frets of each string:

Ukulele (G-C-E-A) 

 Baritone Ukulele (D-G-B-E)

The third step is to work out the chords. If you just have the tune, it's good to know what chords can be used to help work around the tune and give the song more depth.

And the final step is to get playing. It's easier said than done to find the time for this so I'll let you know once I figure this one out.


Let me know if you have any tips on ditching the tabs.

If you're not feeling ready to ditch the tabs but would like to improve your fingerpicking, check out Ukulele Hunt. They've got a great selection of tabs with videos to show how they should be played. I'll be sharing my favourite tabs from that website with you very soon.


Happy Uke-ing
Lucy