Ukulele as a "serious" musical instrument: Making the path to higher musicianship inclusive and fun.

In music education, certain instruments are treated as more or less "valid" than others. Orchestral and symphonic instruments are treated more seriously by music schools, musicians, and by the public at large. As a result, learners who enter into musical studies through less "serious" instruments, such as guitar, drums, keyboards, and ukulele, can be made to feel inferior in a number of ways.

The ukulele presents a particularly good opportunity, as it has become very popular over a very short time span. Many instrument manufacturers jumped on this opportunity, and several companies are engaged in a war to produce the cheapest ukulele possible. When instruments are priced so low, it is natural to treat it as a toy. Not everyone who buys a $30 instrument intends to invest in expensive music lessons or time-consuming music programs at school.

Without useful resources, learners tend to learn a few chords, get bored, and move on to the next thing. Instead, we hope that learners of ukulele can discover a place where their “toy” ukulele is treated as a real instrument, so that these players can stay on a path of musical fulfillment for years to come.

The target audience consists of beginner to intermediate players of the ukulele who want to learn ukulele and music together. The tone is somewhat academic, in that it does not shy away from talking about music with a more sophisticated vocabulary, so the reading ability of users should be at least the 8th grade level. The site is also designed to meet the needs of more experienced musicians, who are interested in deepening their knowledge of music theory and history - possibly in preparation for enrollment in music school.

Sarah is a 10th grader who is active in her school’s chorus and theater program, and wants to take her interest in music to the next level by learning an instrument. She bought a beginner’s ukulele, and taught herself how to play a few Beatles songs by watching videos on YouTube. Still, she doesn’t think of herself a real musician, since note names and sheet music seem like a foreign language to her. Sarah wants to apply to a theater arts program next year, but fears that, if she is going to pass any music entrance exam, she will have to learn to play a new instrument like piano, and she just can’t afford that.

Sarah then stumbled upon our website, and saw that music theory can be learned with only a ukulele. After browsing through all of the basic lessons, she decided to become a Premium member, and was assigned a track that will teach her everything she needs to know to convince schools she is serious about her musicianship. Sarah also met other people on the forums who have recently been accepted to music schools, and have offered her advice for how to prepare for the auditions.

Jon is an experienced musician who studied guitar in college. He received a ukulele for Christmas, and is seeking resources that can help him build up his repertoire on the ukulele, and can prepare him for collaborative rock / folk projects, where will improvise chord / melody accompaniment. He has visited a number of ukulele websites, but, by and large, they don’t at all seem interested in talking about music in musical terms.

Jon wants to be able to find resources that talk about scale patterns and how to utilize the unordered string structure of the instrument as an advantage. Furthermore, he wants to connect with advanced ukulele players and find out who their influences are, and how they are experimenting with the instrument.

We want to create and foster a community of engaged ukulele players who will support each other through their continuing journey to advanced musicianship.

The paid version of the site will be the focal point of our strategy and success metrics. We will look to regular site visits, advancement through curriculum, and posts in forums as the primary measures of success.

Make sure your program does something to measure the consider assessments as a part of your program. Here are a couple.

• Pre assessments
• Formative assessments

• The website should offer basic instructional content to visitors of the webpage.
  • Free content is non-interactive, and is generally surface level information, such as music theory basics, chord charts, diagrams, and music history articles.
• Users with premium accounts will gain access to a personalized instruction plan and forum.
  • The personalized lesson plan will create a map for users based on their experience with the ukulele, prior music theory knowledge, and stylistic interests.
  • Personalized lesson plans may include sequences of 50-200 videos. Furthermore, students will be able to message instructors to voice comments, questions, concerns about each video lesson.
  • Forums provide a sense of community for site users, and focus on allowing users to help one another out.
  • The forums allow users to dive even deeper into content such as technique, theory, and history, and also will allow users to share knowledge about gear, inspiring artists, and career advice.

• Understanding the ukulele itself
  • Parts
  • Maintenance
  • Buying advice
• Musical context of the ukulele
  • Related instruments
  • Musical styles
    • Traditional / Hawaiian
    • Pop
    • Jazz
    • Folk
    • Classical
• Music theory
  • Note names
  • Names of strings
  • Intervalic relationship between strings
  • Scale patterns
    • Diatonic scales
    • Modes
    • Non-western scales
  • Chords
    • Intervalic relationship between notes in a chord
    • Triads
    • Chord extensions (7^ths, 9^ths, etc.)
    • Chord modifications (add, sus, lowered or raised notes)
    • Open chord shapes
    • Moveable chord shapes
  • Rhythm
    • Duration of notes
    • Subdivisions of time
    • Time signatures
      • Common meters (4/4, 6/8, 3/4)
      • Odd meters (5/4, 7/8, 11/8)
  • Notation
    • The treble clef (G Clef)
    • Bass clef (F Clef)
    • Moveable clef (C clef)
    • Tablature

A premium user gains access to a number of key features, include the Forums and a Personalized Lesson Plan. Users will take a short quiz indicating their experience, goals, and interests, and an assessment tool written in javascript will classify the user into one of 30 different tracks. Sample tracks may be "Inexperienced Folk Artist Seeking Academic Route", or "Experienced Classical Artist Seeking Improvisational Based Performance".

Each track is a collection of videos that pull from the major content sections: Lessons, Styles, Music Theory, and are augmented with videos covering goal-specific techniques, (e.g. tremelo picking for a Classical student).