Ukulele For Dummies (74 page)

Going Online

The best place to get answers to your ukulele questions and make some uke-playing buddies is to start participating in an online ukulele forum:

Flea Market Music
(
www.fleamarketmusic.com
) is full of experienced and knowledgeable players.

Ukulele Cosmos
(
www.ukulelecosmos.com
) is a good place for a joke and an argument.

Ukulele Underground
(
www.ukuleleunderground.com
) is very busy and enthusiastic.

You can also find plenty of ukulele players on social networking sites. Facebook has a huge number of groups for ukulele players from local groups to those campaigning for Tiny Tim's inclusion in the Ukulele Hall of Fame. Twitter is packed with ukulele players too, including famous ukers such as Amanda Palmer, Jake Shimabukuro and Ingrid Michaelson.

Spreading the Uke News

The ukulele boom hasn't been spread by big TV stars or rock gods; it's built up by word of mouth, through groups of friends seeing each other play and loving it.

Now that you know the joy of the ukulele, get more people involved. You'll soon be the local ukulele expert. With the speed that the ukulele is currently spreading, before long you're bound to have friends, family members and colleagues looking to you for advice.

Entering a Contest

Ukulele contests are a great way to show off your uke skills, spread your music and perhaps pick up a prize. The contests are usually sponsored by ukulele makers who offer up their wares to the best video submitted.

The biggest contest is the annual Bushman World Ukulele Contest (get the details from
www.bushmanmusic.com
), which kicks off every October. Winning has been responsible for boosting the careers of uke stars such as Julia Nunes.

But small contests also go on all the year round. Many ukers themselves start their own mini-contest.

Although winning is nice, that's not what the contests are about. Contestants always check out each other's videos and leave encouraging comments, and so contests are a chance for you to get your music heard and make contact with other players.

Teaching Someone

Teaching someone else to play is a great way to tone up your ukulele skills. After all, you have to make sure that you've got a technique mastered so that you can pass it on effectively.

Don't worry if you don't feel like an expert; even as a beginner, you have important information to pass on to beginners. When you start playing and people see how much fun you're having, they may well want to join in.

If you want to teach more formally, an increasing number of schools are replacing recorder lessons with ukulele lessons.

Writing Your Own Songs

Covering songs you love is the perfect way to get started making music – and it's always great fun – but writing your own songs (or your own tunes if you're not a singer) adds a whole new level.

Coming up with your first song can be difficult, but here are a few tricks you can use:

Remix:
The writers in ABBA used to take the lyrics to another person's song, write new music to fit those words and then write new lyrics. This trick is useful because it gives you a starting point to work from. And it means that you already have the arrangement before you start.

Repurpose:
Steal a chord progression: the law states that you can't copyright a chord progression. So find a progression you like, speed it up, slow it down, change the rhythm and/or change how fast the chords change. ‘Pretty Green' by The Jam uses chords taken directly from The Beatles' ‘Taxman'.

Reverse:
Take the chords of a song you know, mix them round and see what you can come up with. Also, try playing songs backwards. John Lennon wrote ‘Because' to the sound of Yoko Ono playing Beethoven's ‘Moonlight Sonata' backwards.

Of course, you may not need any of these tips, but if great songwriters such as John Lennon, Paul Weller, and Benny and Bjorn used these tricks, no one's going to blame you for doing the same.

Seeing a Show

An increasing number of ukulele acts are touring – from big bands such as the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra and accomplished soloists such as James Hill and Jake Shimabukuro, to indie stars such as Beirut and tUnE-yArDs.

One of the best learning experiences you can have is watching a professional player up close.

You don't have to visit ukulele only shows. I find watching all talented musicians hugely inspiring, even if for some baffling reason they choose not to play the ukulele. You can find out a huge amount from players of other instruments. Even if they don't play a string instrument, you can listen to how they use phrasing, vibrato and pauses.

More and more ukulele players have taken techniques from other disciplines and brought them to the ukulele. A popular one is the banjo technique of clawhammer picking. Flamenco techniques work great on the ukulele, too. A good example is Jake Shimabukuro's tune ‘Let's Dance', which includes Flamenco strumming techniques (such as the roll I discuss in Chapter 6), rhythms and scales.

Chapter 22

Ten (Or So) Tips for Improving Your Playing

In This Chapter

Making best use of your practice time

Getting better, faster

Avoiding a rut

Y
ou have two ways to go in order to develop musical excellence. You can enter into a Faustian pact and sell your soul to Satan in return for lightning-fast fingers (the option favoured by Robert Johnson, Paganini and Justin Bieber). Or you can sit down with your instrument and practise . . . lots and lots.

This chapter assumes that burning eternally in a lake of sulphur isn't your thing and you choose the second option. It contains ten ideas on getting the most from the hours you put in, keeping yourself motivated and building your musical chops, plus a bonus section on getting out of a uke rut, if you ever find yourself in one.

Playing Very Slowly

Pieces always sound best when played at full speed, and so you may be tempted to practise them that way and hope that if you play them enough you can smooth out the mistakes. But that's the exact opposite of how your body learns to play.

While practising, you're building muscle memory. The more your fingers make a certain movement, the better and quicker they can do it in the future. The speed is irrelevant; what matters is that your fingers get used to making the correct movement.

Whatever your fingers do now, they're more likely to do again in the future. If you make a mistake once, you're more likely to repeat that mistake next time. Don't practise your mistakes; play slowly enough to get the piece right. When you've built-up the muscle memory, gradually increase the tempo.

Refusing to Rush Things

At the beginner stage you may be tempted to strum the chord, stop, change chords and then start strumming again. But this approach creates a jerky, unpleasant sound. Instead, try practising at a tempo slow enough that you can change chords without stopping the flow of music.

Even as you advance in your playing, keeping a steady tempo is the biggest challenge. The temptation to speed up remains when playing a piece, therefore making it sound rushed. I still find myself doing it and even uke great James Hill says that consistent timing was the hardest thing for him to achieve.

Practise with a metronome to get used to playing at a steady tempo.

Recording Yourself

Recording your playing is so quick and easy that you really have no excuse not to. The result doesn't have to be great quality, just good enough that you can listen back to yourself. Recording yourself has two big advantages:

You can keep track of your progress.
Forgetting how you used to sound is all too easy, which can mean that you fail to realise the progress you've made and become disillusioned. Being able to listen back gives you a sense of how far you've come and how much your practising has paid off.

You can hear where you can improve.
Playing and listening carefully and objectively at the same time is difficult. When you record yourself, you can listen more intently and pick up any weaknesses. Are you speeding up? Are you creating buzzes by misfretting? Are the notes you want to emphasise standing out?

Playing With and For Others

Nothing gets you practising harder than the threat of public humiliation! When you join a ukulele group, a few pieces are usually given to all the members to learn prior to the next meet-up. If you're at all prone to skiving off practising, this gives you some accountability as well as a focus and reason for your practice.

On a friendlier note, ukulele clubs have experienced players who can see when you're going wrong and offer you tips and guidance. And, of course, people are always around to inspire you with new techniques, ideas and music.

Practising in Sections

You don't have to play a piece the whole way through each time you practise. If you can play most of a song perfectly except for one single phrase, you're wasting most of your time playing through the whole thing. Instead, isolate tricky sections and play them by themselves. Slow them right down and play them over and over until you get them right every time.

Also feel free to experiment with different fingerings to see whether an easier one exists or just a way that suits your style better.

Knowing When to Stop Practising

When you're deep into playing, you may be tempted to push through the pain in your hands. But this isn't a good long-term strategy.

If the pain is external (for example, sore fingertips), you won't do permanent damage. But if the pain is internal (for example, sore muscles or cramps), you can do permanent, long-term damage, which makes no sense at all. If your hand is feeling sore, let it have a rest. It'll have more strength and stamina next time you play.

If the pain persists, visit your GP.

Stealing From Everyone

Paul McCartney said that good artists borrow and great artists steal (and he should know, he stole that quote from Picasso!). You can discover a huge amount from watching and imitating ukulele masters.

But avoid imitating just one person; instead, cast your net as wide as you can. Whatever sort of music you enjoy (even if no uke is used), listen closely and pick out chord progressions or single-note runs that appeal to you. Try to recreate them on the ukulele.

Watch musicians (on the uke or other instruments) and notice how they hold their instrument, how they express themselves and how they use the spaces between notes and phrases. You can incorporate all these aspects into your own playing.

The wider the range of influences you can steal from, the more you develop your own style.