If you’ve been following my fingerstyle arrangements for a while you’ll have noticed – and probably been frustrated by – how much jumping between strings goes on. It’s certainly not the easiest ways to arrange tunes but it’s very effective and gives the uke a harp-like sound of close harmony notes ringing into each other.

What is Campenella?

The campenella technique was developed for the ukulele by John King who took long forgotten techniques for playing re-entrant instruments and gave them new life. In this style of playing you play one note of the melody on each string and let them ring into each other.

If you can avoid it, you never play two consecutive notes on the same string.

Here’s a standard way of playing a melody:

And here’s how you could play it campanellla style:

To get the full effect, it’s vital that you let the notes ring together. So you want to have your fretting hand moving as little as possible – holding chord shapes rather than playing single notes – and have your picking hand doing most of the work.

Why Play This Way?

The harp is my absolute favourite instrument (take a listen to Savourna Stevenson). If I had been richer and not so lazy as a kid you’d reading an article on Harp Hunt about how to make your harp sound like a ukulele.

I love to recreate that sound of notes cascading into each other on the uke.

It also creates a sound that is unique to the ukulele. Of course a uke is never going to sound like a harp. Playing single notes on the uke can often just sound like a guitar played high up the neck. Whereas the campanella sound couldn’t be achieved recreated quite the same on any other instrument.

How Do You Arrange This Way?

The way I do it is trial and error. When you play this way there are any number of different ways a simple line could be played.

The example we looked at earlier could also be played like this:

Or like this:

Finding the right one depends on a combination of playability, fluidity and note emphasis.

It’s also well worth keeping an eye out for open strings you could use. These will give you an opportunity to change positions whilst keeping a note ringing.

Campanella Arrangements

If you’re looking to play some campanella arrangements you have to get John King’s Classical Ukulele.

Some campanella arrangements on this site:

Hoppipolla
Sailor’s Hornpipe
Larry O’Gaff

I’m going to a quarter break by no-Beatles rule today and post Paul McCartney’s ukulele tune. The original has some very dodgy tuning in it, but Greg Hawkes’s cover makes it much more obvious what a nice little tune it is.

I’ve put up the tabs but you can just play the chords without missing out on too much.

Dandylion – Hevin (MP3)
Dandylion – Lady Grey (MP3) via nrk.no

On my wanders around the net I stumbled across a few mp3s from the former band of, Katzenjammer ukestress, Marianne Sveen (and, no, I wasn’t looking for compromising pictures and any server logs you find that suggest otherwise are forged). They’re not quite as genre-hopping as the Katzenjammer stuff but display what an incredible voice she has. Makes you wonder why the other ones in the band get a look in.

Download more here.

My post on the adorable Charlie ‘charlieissocoollike’ McDonnell’s A Song About Acne proved very popular, so I thought I’d follow it up with his latest tune despite the fact I don’t understand a single reference in it. I’ve only watched two episodes of Dr Who (one set in Rome and one with Peter Kay in) and they were both unremittingly dreadful. I didn’t even get that it was a song about Dr Who until he explained it at the end. Turns out I fail at video games as well.

The chords aren’t the standard fare – there’s not an open string in the whole tune.

Suggested Strumming

For the intro:

d – d – x u – u
– u – u – u d –

The verse starts with some single strums then doubles up the tempo with this strumming pattern twice for most of the chords but once each in the E – F# move.

d – x u – u d –

Download the band version on iTunes and subscribe to charlieissocoollike on YouTube.

Turning the brilliant up to 11 this week are Sigur Ros’s Jónsi (thanks to Fivetide who drew my attention to his performance
on Lauren Laverne’s radio show last week at about 1hr44), Allo Darlin’ quoting El Scorcho at a band-bigger-than-the-crowd show as SXSW, Tricity Vogue with one of her handsome young men, Thos Henley and a selection of familiar faces.
Read the rest of this entry »

No competition for the uke I want most this week. The Juke-a-lele is the latest addition to KoAloha’s Masterpiece series. Not as classic a design as the Sceptre, but that’s not going to stop me wanting one.

I’m not much of a banjolele fan, but I could go for one that looks as good as this Ludwig Wendell Hall.

A bunch of the cheapo Regal ukuleles up including the Harold Teen and the Regal nautical.

Jake Wildwood has a bunch of great vintage instruments up this week including a 1920’s Mele ukulele, a Slingerland Banjo and a Custom Kraft Kay Archtop Guitar.

A mystery tabber was kind enough to let me post a bit slab of baritone ukulele tabs of classical and traditional tunes.

The Re-entrants are trying to get their version of Ace of Spades into the charts. You can buy it on iTunes.

Olive Thomas on a ukulele. She had an interesting lifestory, there’s a documentary about her here.

Stretch your strings when you change them.

MP3s: Peggy Sue are giving away a bit of a greatest hits collection Body of Work including uke songs Alice in the Kitchen and The Conservationist.

What does a Playgirl centrefold do when he wants to pick up chicks?

Ukulele vegetable grater.

Pictures: Tiny Tim uke, Dirty Blond, Ukulele Lady, Pegasus Bridge.

David Cameron compared to a ukulele

This lovely tune from the Keston Cobblers’ Club got a great reaction when I featured it on the UkeTube. And Matt from the band was kind enough to share the chords and lyrics so I thought I’d write them up.

Suggested Strumming

For the most part it’s just down strums with a ‘d u d u’ just before the chord changes.

So in the first part the G would be:

d – d – d – d –
d – d – d u d u

And the C and E:

d – d – d u d u

The exception is the C in lines three and four where you just need two down strums.

Twiddly Bits

The little intro at the beginning of the video:

Buy it on iTunes.

Back in the olden days I had a fingerpicking mini-course available for people who signed up for my mailing list. It’s been unavailable for quite a while and a few people have been asking about it. So here’s the first part of it and the rest of it will be available once I work out what I want to do with it.

In order to tab fingerpicking, we need to introduce some new notation. The fingers of the picking hand are referred to as:

T = Thumb

I = Index Finger

M = Middle Finger

A = Ring Finger

The finger names come from pulgar, indice, medius, annular.

If you need a primer on reading ukulele tab in general, check out my series of posts on how to read ukulele tab.

Each of these fingers is allocated to an individual string:

Thumb – g-string

Index Finger – C string

Middle Finger – E string

Ring Finger – A string

Like this:

As you can see, I use my little finger as an anchor. This stabilizes the hand. However, there is a trade off. Letting you hand hover over the strings will give your fingers greater flexibility and make it easier to switch between picking and strumming.
Once you’ve got comfortable with that position, try this simple exercise.

Here, we’re picking through the each string in order while holding down a C chord. When picking a note, your fingertip should be very slightly underneath the string. You pluck it by bringing your finger up and towards your head (or up and away from you head for your thumb).

Make sure you let all the notes ring into each other so that, by the time you’ve picked all the notes, a full chord is ringing.

You can see a video (mpg) of me doing this (first slowly then sped up) here:

Example 1

Once you get the hang of this, you can try changing chords while playing it. Like this:

Example 2
This can feel like trying to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time. But a little bit of practice and it start to come more naturally.

I used to think this the was the best ukulele blog, but now I’m pretty sure it’s Ralph Shaw’s The Ukulele Entertainer. He’s full of great advice. And he’s one of the few people who agree with me that kids should be discouraged from making music. Two recent articles are essential reading for all ukers: Silence in Music and Make your Ukulele into a Pianoforte.

It’s must-read stuff for everyone, but particularly relevant for ukulele groups. It’s dispiriting to watch a group of ukers all playing the same chords in the same inversions with the same strum at the same volume for the whole song. If you’re just playing for shits and giggles, no problem. But if you’re playing in front of people, you need to put some thought into the arrangement.

And that doesn’t mean you need a band full of flash players. James Hill’s ukulele big band arrangements consist of each person playing one note at a time. And Will from UOGB only plays one note through most of Miserlou.

This Too Shall Pass would be an excellent tune for a ukulele group to play. The chords are dead simple, it’s one big singalong, there are some twiddly bits for the show offs, plenty of dynamic changes in the arrangement and plenty of room for ideas.

Suggested Strumming

When you are strumming you can use

d – d – d u d u

But the most important part of the strumming pattern is when you stop strumming. Make sure you’re not playing during the plinky bits and the, “Let it go…”

Twiddly Bits

The most obvious dip in the dynamics is this little bit that comes in the verse.

I like to play it further up the neck for extra plinkiness (let me know in the comments if you need these technical terms explained).

These notes are also used in the middle section but each two note pair lasts for twice as many beats.

And here’s the little xylophone bit that crops up in the verse:

It’s a little tricky to fit all those G notes in – even using two strings – so you can drop a few notes to make it easier.

There are tons of ideas for extra bits of filigree for you to add as the arrangement builds towards the end in the vastly superior but unembeddable marching band version. You can use any notes you feel like in the C major scale or, simpler still, pick notes from the chord that’s playing at the time.

A great way to keep strumming and add some colour is to use octaves like this:

All these notes come directly from the chord.

And so do these: