Ukulele For Dummies (18 page)

Try the new strumming pattern out on a song. See Figure 5-7 for the chord chart for ‘What Did the Deep Sea Say?', and listen to Track 7.

Adding Pep with Some Strumming Variations

This section guides you through some of the little tricks that you may come across in songs, which make them more challenging to play but much more interesting to hear.

Changing chords within bars

Chord changes don't always happen at the beginning of a bar, but often occur in the middle of a bar. You strum this pattern exactly as you would if the chord change wasn't there.

The folk song ‘Shady Grove'
illustrates this technique perfectly. Through most of the song you use the strumming pattern shown in Figure 5-8.

But one bar in the song is half an Am chord (which I introduce in Chapter 4) and half G, which is strummed as shown in Figure 5-9. (For how to play the G chord, take a look at the later section ‘Introducing the time signature'.)

So you play Am and strum down, down-up. Then you strum down, down-up on G as shown in Figure 5-10, which relates to Track 8.

Using your index finger to fret the Am chord (instead of your middle finger) makes changing between Am and G easier.

Strumming strongly and weakly

As well as varying the rhythm to add interest to your strums, you can also change the strum's strength and turn a boring strum into something much more entertaining.

Have a listen to the very boring continuous down-up strum in the first half of Track 9. Now compare it to the second half. The down-up strum is the same, but this time a weak down-up is followed by a strong down-up.

This change in the strength of the strums is called
dynamics
, one of the most effective and underused methods of making your strums more interesting.

In notation, strong strums are shown in capital letters. Figure 5-11 shows how the strumming in Track 9 is notated.

Introducing the time signature

Every song has what's known as a
time signature
, which indicates the number of beats that a song has in one bar.

All the songs I use in Chapter 4 and so far in this section are in
4/4 time
(spoken as ‘four four time'), which is to say that these songs have four beats in every bar. But that's not always the case: for example,
3/4 time
is also common.

When written down, the time signature of a piece is indicated at the beginning. If you're eagle-eyed you'll have noticed something at the beginning of the chord charts (see Figure 5-12): this sign indicates 4/4 time.