John Nash
John Nash is a ukulele artist and instructor based outside of Denver, CO. He is the founder of Ukulele Inspired, an online teaching platform providing private and group instruction as well as video content with a mission to inspire and inform. He found and fell in love with the instrument in 2008 while living on Oahu and has been focused ever since on sharing his passion for ukulele and music education. A dynamic and experienced performer, he is constantly trying to innovate and stretch the limits of what can be done with ukulele. His teaching philosophy is rooted in a strong belief that everyone can learn ukulele given the right amount of challenge, encouragement and inspiration.
Workshop 1:
Learning Repertoire
Let’s start here, how do we learn a song? In this workshop we’ll be discovering the fundamental elements that make up music and learn how this applies to learning repertoire. We’ll be learning a beginner friendly version of the REM tune, “Losing My Religion” and using it to show a systematic and repeatable approach that we can use to learn songs in a way that really sticks.
Workshop 2:
Rhythm on the Ukulele
What’s the strum pattern for a song? How do I learn more strums? In this workshop we’ll expand into an intermediate arrangement of our REM tune and use it to dive deep into how rhythm functions on the ukulele. We’ll explore how to replicate what we hear into predictable movements and patterns. We’ll also learn a couple of techniques to expand the number of sounds we can use in those patterns.
Workshop 3:
Solo Playing
What is solo ukulele? This style of playing on the instrument is one of the most challenging and rewarding approaches to playing that we can learn. In this last workshop we’ll add some impressive finishing touches to our REM tune by learning the riff sections and using them to introduce some basic concepts of solo playing. We’ll learn how to combine these melodic phrases with harmony and rhythm on a single instrument and create the illusion of a full band inside of our ukulele.