I learned how to be a Ukulele Master Through Yousician (I CAN FINALLY PLAY A SONG!!!) - Yousician
3I learned how to be a Ukulele Master Through Yousician (I CAN FINALLY PLAY A SONG!!!) - Yousician
Script:
Today, I continue with the Yousician Series of trying every single option for sixty days by buying and playing the ukulele. I have to admit… I absolutely love playing this little guitar. Yousician organizes the lectures is probably the best out of the three I have played so far.
[Intro]
As always, let me give you a little background information. I’ve played Yousician so far for a hundred and twenty days between the bass and guitar, so I’m very used to how the application is organized. You can watch my other videos for more information, but basically, the application is laid out into three sections. First is the homepage, which lists many different songs you can play, including licensed cover songs of such hits as Billie Eilish or Jason Mraz. The lessons page will break down learning the ukulele into chords and Melody. From there, it’s broken down into videos you can watch and songs you can practice. Lastly, there a weekly challenges where you can compete on a leaderboard to see who is a ukulele god. It’s the same layout as Bass and Guitar, and I assume it will be the same for vocals and piano as well.
For my experience with this instrument, I have absolutely none. This is the first time I have ever bought a ukulele. I got mine off amazon for around sixty dollars, and I’ll put the link to the item below. Any soprano-style ukulele should work according to the site. It would be cool to see the app support other styles, such as a Contrabass Uke, but that could be added in an update. Most ukuleles don’t have a 1/4 inch input, so you will use a microphone to hook into Yousician. That was pretty much my only major complaint with the system, as my microphone would not work when testing the chords. You can see from my footage that it’s not detecting anything on the chord page, but when I skip it and play the actual song, the program can recognize it fine. It could be that I was running through a USB audio interface, but it was annoying. I just played chords on my phone and used my computer for melody, which worked out great to get around this. They were able to fix it literally the sixtieth day. They put out an update that fixed that issue. The update also had the recorded audio come out of my speakers like so…
Sweet! I can actually hear myself, and the recording can pick it up. Of course, since that happened on the last day, I have very little footage recorded of me actually playing, which is a bit of a bummer.
As I said previously, the learning paths are laid out incredibly well for the ukulele. The paths are broken down into eight levels instead of the ten levels for guitar and bass. From there, they are broken up into different sections for Melody and Chords. Both paths provided enough of a challenge in the songs to make you progress but not enough to make you upset. I would say that the application desperately needs mini-games like in Rocksmith to help get some of the techniques down, such as chord memorization. The app kind of throws you into the water by having you recognize the chords by level three instead of showing the chord chart in the song. It’s fine up until you start playing level seven songs with eighteen different chords in them and half of them you’ve never played before. More songs and mini-games are a must for a learning application, and it’s a little disappointing that the game doesn’t have any of this yet. If anybody watching knows Unity or C#, then apply for a job at Yousician so you can add this to the app.
The sections are broken down into subjects such as chord strumming patterns, double stops, String skipping, Slides, and so much more to outline what you will learn within the app. The ukulele section does not contain any theory or history sections which is a bit of a bummer. After sixty days of playing, I was able to start level six. I was able to gold up to level two. Some of these chords are just so tricky. After playing the lessons, I jumped back into playing songs listed on the homepage. The lessons prepared me well in doing so.
Let’s talk about the songs selection. I know that I railed against the song quality for the previous two reviews, but it’s fine here. I feel like, for bass and guitar, you should focus more on hard rock and other genres that incorporate the instrument better. Donna summer on guitar… yeah, that gets everybody excited. However, the pop songs work incredibly well with this instrument, so it gets a pass. The main complaint I have in the selection is none of the big songs are here for the ukulele. Over the rainbow? Not in this game. The lazy song? No, where to be found. Tiptoe thru the tulips? Missing completely. Where’s the Tiny Tim Yousician! I know it’s a shared pool of songs for guitar, bass, ukulele, and probably the other two options, but that’s a bad thing...
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