Jake Shimabukuro’s Tips for Strumming a Ukulele (With Video)

You can strum a ukulele in one of two ways: with a pick or with your fingers. Three easy ukulele strumming techniques produce notably different sounds.

1. 1. Strum with your finger. When strumming full chords, use the fingernail on your index finger. For the down strum, keep your knuckles pointed away from you, curl your fingers in toward your body, and strum in a downward motion with your index fingernail striking the strings. For the up strum, use the fleshy pad of your index finger or your thumbnail. Learning to strum with your fingers will prepare you for fingerpicking.
2. 2. Strum with a pick. This technique involves using a small plastic or nylon pick. Grip the pick between the fleshy part of your thumb and the side of your index finger, and keep your wrist flexible. Using a pick enables you to strum in patterns reminiscent of a guitar or mandolin. Picks also produce louder, brighter tones. They're great for rapid tremolo picking, but they don't work as well as fingers when it comes to skipping strings.
3. 3. Mute the strings with your palm. To mute the strings, lightly press the side of your right palm against the strings just above the bridge as you stum. This deadens the strings' vibrations and produces a muted sound that is characteristic of Hawaiian ukulele music.

Jake Shimabukuro is one of the best ukulele players in history: a trailblazing technical guru, a format-breaking artist, and a globetrotting ambassador for the instrument. As Béla Fleck is to the banjo or Yo-Yo Ma is to the cello, Jake is to the ukulele. Jake has six expert tips for strumming your ukulele:

1. 1. Start with your thumb. Jake advises that you first learn to strum the ukulele with the thumb on your strumming hand. “You just want to lightly touch the string, apply some pressure, and then let your thumb slip off the string. The feeling you should have when you're releasing the string is like when you put your foot on the edge of a curb and you let half of your foot start to slide off gently. And you just put more and more weight on your foot. And then that moment where your foot just slides off the curb. That's the feeling that you want to have.”
2. 2. Move on to your index finger. Once you have thumb strumming under control, you can add your index finger to the mix. It's important that you learn how to strum with an upstroke, Jake says. “When I say up-stroke, you're going to take the fleshy part of your index finger and you're just going to place it against the first string. You're going to do the opposite of what you did with the thumb. You're going to apply some upward pressure and you're just going to let it go back up. So that's going to give me a completely different timbre, completely different color.”
3. 3. Begin alternating thumb and finger. Let your thumb and your index finger work in concert with one another to create a steady strum pattern. “I get the same kind of characteristic going down and coming up. G down with the thumb. And up with the index. Down with the thumb, up with index.” In ukulele tablature, this pattern is notated D-U-D-U-D-U-D-U.
4. 4. Reverse your strumming pattern. For a different sound, use your fingernail on the downstroke and your thumbnail on the upstroke. “Sometimes, we want more of an attack. We want something quicker, and maybe there's a little bit more presence against a string. So we're going to reverse everything. Instead of going down with our thumb and coming up with our index, we're going to go down with our index. Make sure the top of the nail of your index makes contact with the strings, and then come up with your thumb and make sure that the nail of your thumb comes up on the string.”
5. 5. Strum your ukulele where the neck overlaps with the body. For Jake, the sweet spot for strumming is closer to the neck than the soundhole. “Positioning is very important because that is another way that you can add so much color to your playing. I like to strum over the part of the neck that overlaps the body of the instrument. I think that's a nice place to strum. And the thing about strumming there is the fretboard kind of helps to guide your finger over the strings as you're strumming. It almost acts as a little ramp for your finger.”
6. 6. Play with emotion. Jake’s strumming doesn’t end with his thumb and fingers. “Sometimes it's almost like you need to get into character. Sometimes if I'm playing a piece, depending on what kinds of emotions or what that piece is reflecting or expressing, I almost have to take a little moment to get into character, to get into that headspace, to feel that emotion. If you don't have that inside of you before you make contact it's just going to be like an empty box.”

Grab a MasterClass Annual Membership, stretch out those fingers, and get your strum on with a little help from the Jimi Hendrix of ‘ukulele, Jake Shimabukuro. With some pointers from this Billboard chart topper, you’ll be an expert on chords, tremolo, vibrato, and more in no time.