Ukulele Buddy Review by JP Allen

Ukulele Buddy is brought to you by JP Allen and Mitch Chang. This course is designed to give absolute beginners a structured, entertaining, and well-thought-out plan for learning the ukulele. One of my biggest frustrations with some of my students is they’ll go onto YouTube and find skills or songs far too difficult to play and ask me to teach them. You won’t have that problem if you follow this course!

Here is a quick summary of the pros and cons of Ukulele Buddy. We’ll dive into more detail on each point down below!

PROS of Ukulele Buddy

Now that you’ve got an idea of what the pros and cons are, let’s dive into each in more detail so you’ll be better educated if Ukulele Buddy is right for you!

Guided Path For Beginners

When learning a new instrument there are a LOT of things going on. It can be easy to skip something you should learn early, practice things that are far too hard for a beginner, or simply get lost.

With Ukulele Buddy you have about 70 videos and over 3 hours of content to teach you everything you need to know. You’ll learn about:

• The ukulele and the fretboard
• Chords and scales
• Pretty much everything else

The course will explain how to play chords, easy soloing techniques, picking techniques, strumming patterns, and more! The course is designed to teach you three lessons a week, but these can easily be slowed down if you need time before moving on.

The lessons are also laid out in a way to keep you motivated and excited about learning. If you follow the program you’ll be learning your first song in the first week!

Professional Instructors

JP Allen, the course creator graduated from the University of Texas and went on to teach music there. He firmly believes that adding fun to learning makes the process easier, and you can often find this in his videos.

JP actually spends some time on the harmonica playing along with his co-host, Mitch Chang. Mitch is a professional musician whose first love is the ukulele. Mitch is super talented and I actually enjoyed his teaching style more than JPs.

Short, Concise Videos

Each lesson varies between 7-15 minutes. For the most part, this is the perfect length to keep your attention, while not being so long you start to get bored listening to them! A good portion of the videos are interactive as well, so you won’t be just sitting and listening to them the entire time.

One misconception I’ve heard from people is they won’t practice outside the video. To learn to play you’ll…. you guessed it….actually have to play.

If you plan out a half-hour you can watch a video with part of the time and then practice with the rest. You will likely need to practice each skill more than once before moving on to the next video though, so plan to play at least 10 minutes a day!

Self-Paced

The course is designed to be consumed by watching three videos a week. I think that most beginners will struggle to master many of the chord shapes and strumming techniques in the time given.

That being said, you don’t HAVE to go on until you’re ready, and we actually would advise against it! Pick out the contents of two or three videos and practice those skills, as you master them you can move on when you are ready.

Affordable

Ukulele Buddy costs a one-time fee of $67. This gives you lifetime access to the program and videos. You can either get a set of DvDs or the online video library. The program comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee as well, so if you decide a few days in that you don’t like it the refund process is quick and easy.

=> More About Ukulele Buddy!

Cons of Ukulele Buddy

While doing my review of Ukulele Buddy I didn’t find too many drawbacks. Overall the pros that we’ve already covered do outweigh the cons by quite a bit in my mind.

That being said, let’s dive into the two drawbacks of the program.

Not For Intermediate or Advanced Players

With Ukulele Buddy the first 39 lessons are foundational. Covering how to play different chords, changing between chords, strumming patterns, and a few other key items. The rest of the lessons cover more advanced topics.

Unfortunately, when I say advanced, I don’t really mean advanced. If you’ve been playing the ukulele for more than six months you probably have outgrown this course.

While this is a drawback of this course, I don’t know of too many online ukulele resources that are designed for more advanced players so Ukulele Buddy is not alone in this fault!

Older Videos

The video quality of Ukulele Buddy is not quite what you’re probably used to seeing on YouTube these days. You can tell these videos are a little older and honestly could probably use a refresher.

While the video quality isn’t the best, the program was filmed at a professional studio so the sound is good and it’s easy to understand the instructors.

Overall, Is Ukulele Buddy Any Good?

Ukulele Buddy is great for absolute beginners or those who have struggled and failed to learn Ukulele in the past. The online structured learning path gives beginners a solid foundation and is designed so you’ll see progress right away.

This program is really affordable and because it is a one-time fee you really can go at your own pace while learning. Best of all, if you don’t like the program you can use the 60-day money-back guarantee to get a refund.

=> Buy Ukulele Buddy!