The Case for the Ukulele in a Charlotte Mason Education

Let me start by saying that this post isn't limited to a Charlotte Mason education. I can find the case for ukulele in most any situation! So if you're here, and you are not a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, or if you aren't a homeschooler at all, never fear. The information found here applies universally.

The "broad feast" of a Charlotte Mason education has many opportunities for music throughout the school day, and I'm here to present a case for the ukulele as a perfect complement to those lessons. I came to the ukulele a couple of years ago, and I immediately fell in love with this happy little instrument. I'm an unabashed ukevangelist, starting a ukulele club for kids, and introducing a group of mama players to the instrument as well.

Let's look at some of the characteristics of the ukulele that make it ideal for a homeschool music setting:

• The instrument is inexpensive compared to others. A quality beginner ukulele can be obtained at a starting price of $40-$50. Compare that to the price of a piano, violin, wind, or brass instrument! With the exception of a recorder (OH, PLEASE - NOT A RECORDER! - said every mom who has ever had to ride in a mini van with a kid with a brand new recorder!), it's the most reasonably priced beginner instrument out there. A bonus with inexpensive instruments: Young students can play without fear that they may damage a priceless instrument!

• The instrument is quickly learned compared to others. Please don't get me wrong; there is nothing more beautiful than music played by an accomplished pianist or violinist. But to attain that level of proficiency/mastery takes MANY years of expensive private lessons. A child of ten or so can learn enough ukulele to accompany vocal songs in a month's time. It takes no time to become an "okay" ukulele player, and "okay" is good enough! By all means, please, keep sending your kids to their piano lessons. We need more excellent players out there! But in the meantime, add the simple ukulele to bring music to your household! YouTube has many ukulele teachers who can help your child to learn to strum, play chords, and even finger-pick melody lines. The majority of ukulele players out there today are self-taught or YouTube taught. 
  
• The portability is unmatched (again, except for that recorder...). A piano is rooted to its spot in your home. A guitar is bulky to pull out or toss in the back of the van. A violin, while of a similar size, seems to have a tuning up procedure for the instrument and the bow that takes several minutes, and has to be stored in a protective case that further delays playing. The ukulele is small (usually 20-26 inches in length). It is a hardy instrument that can be hung on the wall or left on a stand for easy access (unless you have a solid wood ukulele, which must be kept under specific humidity conditions, but most players will use a uke with a more forgiving laminate body). Charlotte Mason's lessons are characterized by their brevity, so time is of the essence. You want an instrument that you can reach over from your homeschooling spot and start playing immediately. And you can take the music with you pretty much anywhere you go! Nature walks and campfire gatherings are complemented by a little music. I have had as many as four ukuleles playing in my van while mom-taxiing. Try that with four pianos! or guitars! or trombones! I even traveled all around Italy with my ukulele case strapped to my backpack (for a kids' program mission trip - not just as an annoying musical traveler!).
  

• The ukulele lends itself to accompaniment for hymns and folk songs. Most hymns and folk songs utilize a simple sequence of three to five chords. A student can learn that many chords in an afternoon or two. Of course, there are many, many, many chords to learn, but if a student has only a few chords in his or her bag of tools, most songs can be transposed to fit those chords. It is my goal to begin transposing a selection of hymns and folk songs into "uke friendly" keys, so that a student would be able to play them after they know just six or seven chords! If you have any hymns or folk songs that you would like for me to consider working up, just comment below.

• The ukulele is a perfect instrument for learning chord theory. Let me first say this. Scales are a pretty important prerequisite for chord theory, and there is no better instrument for learning scales and how the intervals work than a piano or keyboard. So this is my pitch for early piano instruction! That's not to say it can't be done without piano scales - just that the piano is uniquely fitted to the process. You actually get to SEE the intervals in front of you. Can't say enough about this! That said, not all of my kids are able to play piano scales, and they are learning so much about chords and chord families through playing the ukulele. My oldest, in fact, has learned to play piano beautifully by ear AFTER spending a couple of years on ukulele. If you don't know much about music or chords, I'll explain it this way: Once you learn what chords "go together," all you need to know is what key a song is (or what key you want it to be in), and it becomes an easy matter to hear the chord changes and play the song without having to have written music in front of you. It also enables you to transpose songs into different keys to better fit the singer's vocal range.
• So why not guitar? After all, isn't a ukulele just a smaller guitar? This is a good question, because, really, who wouldn't want the fuller, richer sound of a guitar instead of the plinky ukulele sound? (Well, me, for one... But that's beside the point.) First of all, size. The guitar is big. The body is big. I'm five foot seven, and I struggle to reach over the wide body of the guitar to reach the strings with my strumming hand. The fret board is big. I have large hands, and I still struggle to reach strings on my chording hand. The strings are steel. OUCH! [Classical guitars do not have steel strings, so they are much easier on the fingertips, but the string tension is still much higher than on a ukulele.] Ukuleles come with nice soft strings, although I have changed mine to some that are a little harder because I love the sound. No fingertip bootcamp period of extreme pain until rough and ugly callouses form. Guitars have six strings; ukuleles have four. That makes it so much easier to remember finger placement! And finally the noise issue. With a much smaller body, the volume of a ukulele is much less than a guitar. In families with sleeping babies or siblings trying to do other activities, it's nice to have a quieter instrument to reduce disruption.
  

How can the ukulele be used in a Charlotte Mason education? I am working on a more lengthy post about music in a Charlotte Mason education that I will link here when it is published, so I will just answer in brief here. Lessons that include student-performed music include hymn singing, folk singing, solfege, and foreign language singing. All of these singing lessons can benefit from instrumental accompaniment. The instrument insures that we start in tune and stay in tune throughout the song, which is important for students who struggle with pitch. Solfege (do, re, mi, fa, etc...) definitely requires accurate pitching. Whether teaching absolute or relative solfege, it is impossible to learn well without a reference pitch source. It relies on scales and intervals, both of which the student or teacher can play on the ukulele.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a ukulele series that you can use to bring the ukulele into your home and into your lessons. I will link titles of subsequent posts below for easy access.