Calling all ukulele players

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[quote author=seilerbird]Why didn't you video the session? I would have loved to hear what you all sound like.[/quote]

Tom, one of the host uke group guys was taking video, and I asked him if he was going to upload it to YouTube. He said "my granddaughter does all that stuff for me". Meanwhile, here's an older YouTube video of one of their songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJryeYBV_8s

Not one of (my) favorite songs, but it's one of the few videos of the host group. Definitely not representative of the stuff I like or the stuff we played/sang today.

BTW they have this "hat" thing  ;D
 
That is really cool, Tom, I am jealous. Makes me want to buy a uke and move to Modesto.

Here is the ultimate ukulele preformance:

http://youtu.be/puSkP3uym5k
 
Thanks Tom. Jake is a very talented uke player, but I hadn't seen/heard that performance. I can only watch in awe.

I hear that the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz is one of the largest, with some 250 players. I heard today that a few UK clubs got together and had 800 uke players jamming at the same time.
 
I lived in Santa Cruz for 7 years and I never heard of them. I would have joined in a heartbeat. In the past month I have bought 3 guitars, an amp and 8 instruction books. I have been playing every morning for three or four hours. I have turned the living room of my motorhome into a music room. I will take some photos soon and post them.
 
Rest in peace.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I
 
Tom - I was wondering last night what type of ukulele you have. There are four types, soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. You said you are looking for a tenor. May I suggest a baritone instead. There are several huge advantages to a baritone. It is the largest of all ukes so it has the largest fretboard making it easier to fit you fingers onto the right fret and string. It is the loudest of all ukes giving you better projection. But best of all it is tuned to D G B E instead of my dog has fleas. This makes it a very simple matter to switch to the standard guitar if you ever should choose to do so.

And the quality of the uke is important. Cheaper ukes don't stay in tune, have very bad action (string height to the fretboard is higher, making it harder to play), and will be very frustrating. The major reason why most people don't get very far learning any stringed instrument is because of cheap instruments.

Here is a uke that I would recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Lanikai-LU-21B-Baritone-Ukulele/dp/B0018TBEPW/ref=sr_1_1?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1304261746&sr=1-1

 
Thanks Tom, much appreciated. I have a Lanikai soprano I purchased on amazon.com. Having borrowed a Lanikai tenor last week, I think it's a little too big, and I'm going to look at a concert.

One of the guys in our local uke club must have 100 ukes around his house; They're hanging on the walls of several rooms, stacked in cases, and sitting in uke stands in his living room. He loaned me an el cheapo Mahalo soprano before I bought the Lanikai, and he loaned me the Lanikai tenor. His wife (also in the group) told me yesterday that she'll have him dig out a concert for me.

This coming week I plan on visiting a music store (not local) that carries a good inventory of ukes, just to try various ones out. The gal who owns the store has ordered some additional models, including a few Kala tenors, for me to try.

A baritone isn't going to work for me, at least not at this time, partly because of the size and partly because it's tuned differently; I'd have to transpose all the music, which is more than my brain can handle right now.

Further down the road it might be fun to play a banjuke; A few of the folks in the group have them, and they're featured in some of the tunes we play.

Several members of the group have put some very expensive ukuleles in my hands, but I'm paranoid about damaging them, and haven't played more than a few chords before very carefully handing them back to the owners.
 
A tenor is the next best thing to a baritone. When you finally do get the uke of your dreams I would suggest spending a few extra bucks and having a guitar tech check the set up to make sure it is intonated properly (this insures the strings are in tune with each other). Let us know what you end up with.
 
shastalake said:
Rest in peace.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I

Yes, Izzy was the King!  At least we had him for a while.
 
Thought I'd post a link to our local group, the Delta Strummers. The header image, taken before I joined the group, was shot on the rear deck of a member's home. The background is typical  of the water views we have from our family rooms.

I hear that they have a good webmaster  ;)
 
Tom said:
I had a concern about my (lack of) dexterity, but figured I'd give it a try. It's going to take quite a bit of  practice
I have heard many people say they don't have the talent or coordination or dexterity to play a stringed instrument. But learning to play a stringed instrument does not take talent, coordination or dexterity to learn how to play. When you learn how to play is when you develop your coordination and dexterity. Most people think you have to have musical talent to be a musician, and nothing could be further from the truth. The very greatest players of all times are the ones with the talent. The other 99.9% of us have nothing but hard work to get us where we are.

It is called Muscle Memory, that is what makes a person a musician. Watch any great guitar player in concert and notice that most of the time he is paying very little attention to what he (or she) is playing. Even when playing extremely difficult parts. This is because he has played the song so many times that his muscles know exactly what to do. The way to develop your muscle memory is to play anything until you can play it automatically without thinking. Otherwise you will not be able to comfortably sing along with your playing.

Let me give you an example. I was in a group about ten years ago (sierraexpressband.com) and one of the songs we did was Johnny B Goode. I learned to play the song but I didn't learn it exactly, just a rough interpretation. I don't want to or need to play it exactly like the record on stage. But recently I have been getting back into playing guitar and I bought a bunch of instruction books (8 so far) and some books on Beatles and Chuck Berry tabs (sheet music). As John Lennon said "If you had to give rock and roll a different name it should be Chuck Berry. So I am going to go through and learn all the classic Chuck Berry riffs. But the first project I have undertaken is to learn the intro to Johnny B Goode note for note perfectly.

Now Chuck is nowhere near the greatest or most technical guitar player in the world, but he is amongst the sloppiest. That is not a negative comment, in fact it is positive. Nothing sounds worse than some of these mindless shredders that should like a computer in hyper speed. But that sloppyness makes him very difficult to do a note perfect copy. The first four measures are real easy, takes about 5 minutes to perfect. But measure number 5 (out of 13) is really causing me problems. Only 7 notes, but no one can agree on what those seven notes are.

Youtube has at least a dozen Johnny B Goode instruction videos. The first 4 measures in all the videos I watched are perfect. But the fifth measure is done differently by every one of them. So I had to use Audition to slow the intro down to half speed while keeping the pitch correct. I have finally figured out exactly what notes he is playing but I am still not too positive about which position he plays it in. Watching videos of Chuck playing the opening he doesn't seem to change position at the fifth measure, but all the instruction videos do change position.

So for the past week I spend 15 minutes a day of my practice trying to get this one measure down. It took the first six days to figure out what I was suppose to be playing. Now that I know what to play it will take me a few more days until I can play it at 50%. Then I will work on it at 75% until I get that down then 100% until I get that down. But by the time I get it to 100% I will be able to play it in my sleep. I would like to spend more than 15 minutes a day on the measure but I just got a new acoustic electric guitar and it has a 12 gauge set of strings on it. I have been playing on 9s most of my life. The 12s are much bigger and harder to bend and they are killing my fingers. So after 15 minutes I have to go on to something easier.

I am only an average guitarist so I can only imagine the dedication and the endless hours of practice they must endure to succeed.

But the bottom line is that playing guitar is sooooooo much fun that the hours of sounding lousy are worth it.
 
Thanks Tom, appreciate the advice.

It is called Muscle Memory, that is what makes a person a musician. ...  his muscles know exactly what to do.

A number of musicians have told me the same thing, albeit in slightly different words. However, there are some chords on the ukulele that my fingers can't seem to get to, no matter how hard I try or how long I practice. Some folks play substitute chords (aka cheater chords) for some of them, but I haven't found all the cheater chords.

Mel Bay, among others, has some good uke books; One of his chord books is illustrated with photos of his fingers alongside the finger position diagrams. One player I showed the book to said, in response to my question "how does he do that?", that "he has rubber fingers".
 
I have very small hands and a touch of arthritis, so a lot of those chords that seem unplayable really are. Of course there are many people large hands and long spidery fingers that can play those chords with ease. But you can't fight city hall. If your fingers don't reach there is nothing you can do to improve that. There are finger stretching exercises, but since it really hurts to stretch you fingers I choose not to do them. When you come to an unplayable chord there is a simple way around it without learning all the substitute chords. The answer is you don't need to play all four strings on every chord. So lets say you come to a chord you can't play, simply play as much of the chord as you comfortably can. Rather that strum all four strings, just strum the bottom two or three. And if even that is just too difficult then play only one string of the chord. Especially in a group all you need to do is play any note or notes that will fit with the chord.

 
Great advice Tom. Someone told me last week that I could just strum fewer strings. Now, when those are the top two or three strings, I just need to figure out to stop on a down-strum before reaching the no-play string(s).
 
Actually you don't stop strumming. There are several different ways to accomplish this. Generally it is the higher pitched strings that get played and the lower ones ignored. You can do all down strums and just start at the top string you are going to play. If you want to do alternating up and down strums then alter the angle that you are strumming with your strumming hand so that you miss hitting the strings you don't want to sound. Another way is to mute the strings you don't want to be sounding. You can either use an unused finger and just lay it on the string but don't push it down. Generally when you strum a chord you want every note to ring out clearly. So what you are doing is playing a chord and not all the notes are ringing clearly since one or two are muted. You can also mute a string with the fingers that are pushing down the other strings by adjusting the position of your finger so that it is touching the unwanted string. Or you can just lay you hand on the strings without pushing the strings down at all and play the rhythm with your pick on the muted strings.This is called chunking.  That actually sounds really cool. To hear this effect listen to the last half of Baby I'm Amazed by Paul McCartney.
 
Thanks Tom. I'll need to practice that. Here's one 'simple' chord that I just can't do. In ukese it's a Bb. When I bar the lower two strings on the first fret, my second and middle fingers want to lay down too, and just won't arch up and hammer down on the other two strings. Net result is that they're (incorrectly) laying across the lower two strings (on the second and third fret respectively).
 

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On a normal guitar that is the dreaded F chord that gets every beginner. That chord is probably responsible for more people quitting the guitar than anything else. The problem is you are holding the neck of the uke too close to your body. Push the neck away from your body so it is at about a 45 degree angle. Your fingers should just fall into place easily. Here is a shot of me from the 70s showing the position I play in.
 

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Well I'll be darned. I just had to take a break from the honey-do list and try that on the uke. It certainly helped, although I need more practice because the middle finger still wants to lay down with the first finger.

While I was at it, I tried playing just the 3 lower strings, and that works quite well. Since I was playing only 3 strings, I was also able to use two fingers for the bottom two strings (instead of barring them), and that worked too.

Thanks for the advice Tom!

Of course, doing this in slow motion is quite different from moving to it for one chord in the middle of a tune, then immediately moving to something else. I'm still "thinking" where to put my fingers, and I look forward to the day when they just "know" where to go without me having to think.

All this thinking, fingering, and strumming sure makes a mess of my singing. It's like trying to pat my head with one hand, rub my belly with another, and scratch my butt with a third hand  :(
 
Don't even try to sing and play at first, just concentrate on getting the chords right. There are a few other angles you can play with on your Bb chord. Are you rolling the top of the guitar back so you can easily see the fretboard and your fingers? Wrong, you really shouldn't be able to see your fingers very well if the guitar is in the right position. I know as a beginner you just have to look your fingers, but try and keep them out of sight as much as possible.

The other angle is the up and down angle of the neck. Most people prefer the headstock a few inches above level. Play around with the full chord and vary all three angles. You will eventually find the one that works best. And generally if it works best for the Bb chord it will be best for most all chords.

One last option you have is to barre all four strings with your index finger instead of just the two highest strings. This will be awkward at first, but most guitarist find the barred F a whole lot easier than the one you are trying.

Here are a shot of each chord on a guitar. You would just eliminate the top two strings and on the barred one use the third finger instead of the fourth finger on the top string.
 

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