Ukulele For Dummies (63 page)

Playing Campanella Style

The method of directly transferring pieces from guitar to ukulele that I discuss in the preceding section doesn't always produce great results and never takes full advantage of the uke's idiosyncrasies. The campanella method of playing, however, uses all the uke strings and produces a much more pleasing sound.

Campanella
uses the re-entrant g-string of the ukulele (check out Chapter 2 for more on this topic) to produce a harp-like sound of notes ringing into each other. In the tunes that I describe in earlier chapters, notes are played up and down the strings so that each string has consecutive notes played on it. In campanella, notes are played across the strings so that each string is never played twice in a row.

John King developed this technique for the ukulele and you can hear him using it with wonderful results on his album,
Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita No. 3, BWV 1006 for Unaccompanied Ukulele
.

Figures 16-7 and 16-8 illustrate how the campanella idea works. Both figures are of the same tune: the opening line of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner'. Figure 16-7 (Track 96, Part 1) shows how this piece is usually played, with consecutive notes sometimes being played on the same string.

But the E-string, third fret, is the same note as the open g-string. So you can replace the E-string third fret in Figure 16-7 with the open g-string to produce Figure 16-8 (Track 96, Part 2).

Now every string of the ukulele is being used for one note only, which allows all the notes to ring into one another producing a C chord. When you play this figure, hold down the familiar C chord shape and make sure that all the notes ring as long as possible. Assign one picking finger to each string (thumb on the g-string, index on the C-string and so on).

Compare the two methods and I think you'll agree that the campanella version sounds much richer.

As good as campanella sounds, the downside is that it can be much more difficult to play. Compare Figures 16-9 and 16-10. Again, these take a familiar tune: ‘Gran Vals' (much better known as an annoying mobile ringtone). Figure 16-9 (Track 97, Part 1) takes the standard approach of transferring directly from guitar to ukulele, while Figure 16-10 (Track 97, Part 2) takes the campanella approach.

As you can see in the standard notation, the notes are exactly the same. But in Figure 16-10 each note in the bar has its own string, which allows all the notes to be ringing at the same time.

For the campanella technique to be effective, you must hold down the notes as long as possible. To do so, you need to prepare your hand into the correct shape. Look at all the notes coming up in that bar and position your fingers ready for them at the start of the bar.

So, for example, at the beginning of bar one you hold the following down:

g-string:
Ring finger, tenth fret.

C-string:
Middle finger, ninth fret.

E-string:
Index finger, seventh fret.

A-string:
Little finger, tenth fret.