The Thumb and Two Finger Method of fingerpicking differs from the One Finger Per String Method in two ways: – You don’t use your ring finger. All the picking is done with thumb, index finger and middle finger. – The thumb plays notes on both the g- and C-strings. So the fingers cover these strings: […]
Archive for the ‘Tutorial’ Category
The One Finger Per String Method is the most logical way of arranging your picking hand. Each string is allocated a finger. Each string is only played with one finger and each finger only plays one string. They are arranged: Thumb – g-string Index Finger – C string Middle Finger – E string Ring Finger […]
The last Three Weird Ass Scales proved popular so here are three more to introduce some new sounds to your playing. A quick restatement of the disclaimer: – The “weird ass”ness of the scales depends entirely on your perspective. – The examples are a lame pastiche rather than an authentic example of use. Double Harmonic […]
If you don’t know that I wrote Ukulele for Dummies I obviously haven’t been doing enough shameless self-promotion. It did well enough that the Dummies folks wanted a follow up: Ukulele Exercises for Dummies. I’m highly allergic to the word “exercise” – I had to take half a dozen Benadryls just to write this intro […]
I’m going to backtrack from the title right away. Whether these scales sound weird to you depends entirely on your cultural perspective. But they are rarely heard on the ukulele. There are plenty of good reasons to learn unfamiliar sounding scales: – Rut busting: Ever find yourself playing the same set of notes over and […]
Usually when I’m arranging for the uke I try to spread things across the strings, campanella style, so you’re not playing the same string many times in succession. But there are times when that doesn’t work out. It’s then I bust out the running man: You pick the string (the E-string in the case) alternately […]
The fake strum is a simple technique that I use a lot in my arrangements. So it’s about time I gave it a post of its own. It’s used in fingerpicking pieces to play full chords. It sounds like a strum but it’s just done by picking individual strings in sequence. Here it is played […]
Step 1: Wake up in the morning and feel around for your shoes. Step 2: Learn the chords C, F and G7. Play four bars of C, two bars of F, two bars of C, a bar of G7, a bar of F and two bars of C. Repeat. Step 3: Noodle around with the […]
Despite the increasing amount of tab and chords for ukulele on the internet, we still have to rely on guitar chords for most songs. If you’ve done this a lot, you’ll have come across – and possibly confused by – chords that look like this: D/F#. These are known as ‘slash chords’. On the guitar, […]
I was watching another enlightening and inspiring tutorial by Mark Occhionero today, this time on Little Grass Shack (you can get the tab on the YouTube page). It set me off vamping around in a Hawaiian style (despite the freezing cold weather) and playing the most Hawaiian lick I know:the Hawaiian turnaround. In its simplest […]
