I’ve been officially disengaged from politics since February 2003, so I wasn’t going to mention the election. But the trend of ukulele Obama songs is impossible to ignore.
The Million Ukulele March is, British writer, Sylvie Simmons’ attempt to get a million ukuleles to pledge their support for Obama. You can sign up for the march (it’s virtual – you don’t have to get off your arse) on MySpace.
I get quite a few emails asking me about strumming, so I thought I’d put together a ‘How to Strum a Ukulele’ post. This is how I strum – any resemblance to good technique is pure coincidental.
UPDATE: For a more comprehensive coverage of the subject check out my ebook on ukulele strumming. And there’s also a healthy section on strumming in my real-world book Ukulele for Dummies.
Strumming Hand Position
1. Make your strumming hand into a loose fist.
2. Hold it infront of the centre of your chest.
3. Point towards your left boob (or right boob if you’re left handed).
4. I like to have my thumb steadying my strumming finger. It gives it extra strumming support.
Where to Strum
If you strum your ukulele too close to the bridge it sounds very tinny (which might be an effect you want sometimes) and the strings have very little give there. The ‘sweet spot’ on the soprano and concert ukes are around the point where the neck hits the body. The sweet spot for tenors is a little closer to the bridge than this.
Strumming Technique
As any teenage boy will tell you, moving your arm rapidly up and down gets tiring very quickly. When you strum, use your wrist rather than your whole arm.
When you strum down, you should be hitting the strings with your nail. When you’re strumming up, with the fleshy tip of your finger.
Swing/Shuffle Strums
Lots of forums of music popular on the uke use swing time – such as Hawaiian, jazz and blues. In swing time the down strum lasts twice as long (ish) as the up strum like this:
This makes a simple up, down strum sound much more interesting.
Simple Strumming Patterns
You can create some more interesting strumming patterns by keeping the same up, down motion but not hitting the strings on certain strums. In this clip the actual strums are down, down, up, up, down. But I’m doing a constant up, down motion (I strum down, miss the strings on the up strum, strum down and up, miss the down strum, strum up and down, miss the up strum).
You can funk up the strumming a little with a few ‘chnks’. With a chnk you strum down and hit the strings with the underside of your hand, so you get a percussive sound from the strum. In this clip I strum down, up, then a chnk followed by an up:
Dead/Muted Strums
Dead or muted strums are another way of creating a percussive click from strumming, but this time you’re creating it with your fretting hand. To create them, you stop the strings ringing by laying your fingers across all the strings like this:
Advanced Ukulele Strums
Once you’ve got the basics down, you can start checking out the advanced stuff.
I thought this song was going to be easy to work out and play, it wasn’t. There are very few open chords in the song – most of the time you have your index finger clamped across the fretboard. By the time I’d finished working it out, my hand was sooore. To stop that happening, you might want to throw in a few variations for chords like G.
For the strumming, down, up, chnk, up will get you through most of the song.
At various points in the song, there’s a repeated D-Dsus4-D move. I’ve written it up as just D – Dsus4, but it’s more complicated than that. Here’s how it goes.
The strumming is just down, up all the way through that.
Ben Lerman is another hilarious uke-comedian from the ukulele comedy capital of the world New York. It’s only fair to those of you with a delicate disposition to stay well clear. But the rest of us who like to chuckle at song parodies involving genitalia and hot, sweaty man-on-man action can sit back and giggle our rocks off at his Ace of Base parody.
This song comes from the Tim Burton film Nightmare Before Christmas. And ‘nightmare’ is about frickin’ right. It’s full of key changes, time signature changes and nothing is played the same way twice. What I’m trying to say is: EPIC FAIL.
I’ve only been able to tab out the first section of the song and time has run out. Hopefully there’s enough there to get you going.
In the arrangement I’ve tried to capture as much of the backing as I can. It’s mostly chords with a few little runs thrown in.
Some ukes made of unusual wood this week. Kala have a new range of ukuleles with lacewood bodies and spruce tops including this concert and an eight string baritone. Then there’s this bamboo ukulele.
But you really can’t beat koa for a handsome uke. Just check out the grain on this Peter Bermudez and on the back of this KoAloha tenor.
Another week, another shape of SpongeBob SquarePants ukulele. This time it’s a pinapple ukulele. If The Simpsons is more your thing, there’s a pink ukulele featuring Maggie and Lisa.
Ukulele Photo of the Week: George’s kid sister Ethel Formby.
For fans of ukulele kitsch, there’s a ukulele dish.
A big thanks to everyone who’s written to me saying nice things about How to Play Blues Ukulele. I’m completely knocked out by how well it’s been received. There was one small hitch, a couple of the examples got lost somewhere. If you bought the ebook – you should have an email from me. If not, you can download them here:
That caused a bit of a mix up with a few of the track titles as well (the file names are correct but Examples 15 – 33 had the wrong names in the MP3). Sorry for any confusion caused.
A lovely, simple uke tune from Ingrid Michaelson. Even simpler if you’ve still got your uke tuned down from the Eddie Vedder – Goodbye post (this one is in B tuning also).
The chords are straightforward, but the strumming is a little trickier. It involves plenty of chnks – rather than strumming, you bring the bottom of your hand down onto the strings as you strum to produce a click. The strum pattern for the verse goes like this:
The up arrows are down strums and vice versa. The row of x’s are chnks.
I’ve been mentioning that I’m working on a Blues Ukulele ebook for a while now and had a bunch of people asking me when it would be out. Well, it’s finally here.
It’s taken so long because I wanted to make absolutely sure you’d be blown away by it and I think you will be.
If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ll have noticed that I’m on a bit of a mission to change how people think about the ukulele. What music it’s capable of playing and, more importantly, what it’s capable of expressing. The reputation of the uke is pretty high right now, but there are still far too many people out there who don’t have a clue what it can do. By the time you’ve mastered everything in this ebook, you’ll have the chops to leave people in no doubt that the you can play the blues on the ukulele.
The book covers blues chord progressions, intros, outros, turnarounds, riffs and solos. To give you some idea, here’s an mp3 of little tune that’s tabbed out at the end of the book containing many of the ideas and techniques in it.
