The Art of Ukulele: An Essential Handbook for Players and Performers

By Ralph Shaw, J. Chalmers Doane, Paul Casper and 2 more

LEARN ALL ABOUT THE ART OF UKULELE FROM A SEASONED MUSIC PRO

"Not many performers have the unlimited generosity to share their secrets that Ralph has."
-From the foreword by J. CHALMERS DOANE

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483581194

Book preview

music.

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Play Better Ukulele

The Best Way to Strum

A tour of available techniques, to help you find your favourite.

I’ve taught hundreds of strumming workshops. But at the start of each one I always have to go over something very basic: namely, which finger should a strummer use to strum with? I continue to be surprised at the different ways players find to strum. What is completely natural and intuitive to one person feels foreign and uncomfortable to another.

My default strumming method is to use my index finger, but other srummers, most notably many who play Hawaiian music, prefer to play almost exclusively with their thumb. And then I met one student who uses both her index and middle fingers together, and another who uses all the fingers of the strumming hand. In Australia I met several players who strum downwards with the index finger and upwards with the thumb. With so many ways to strum (not even considering use of the many picks available), how do we choose which is best?

Let’s delve into the different ways you can use your various digits for delivering music.

INDEX FINGER STRUM

Strum with the tip of the index finger and control accuracy by pressing your thumb on the last joint of the index finger. It’s as if your finger-end is the pick. Strum down with the back of the nail and strum up with the pad of the finger.

Pros—This method enables fast and accurate strumming with a large dynamic range. You’ll also find it relatively easy to switch from this strum to other types of strum or individual note picking.

Cons—Some people get pain from their finger hitting the strings or the edge of the fretboard. This is especially true for beginners who play overly hard or who haven’t developed good accuracy. In some cases damage to the finger and/or fingernail may even occur.

THUMB STRUM

Strum down with the pad of the thumb and up with the thumbnail. After the index finger strum, the thumb strum is probably the second most popular way of strumming.

Pros—This is a strum generally favoured by players who like a mellower sound and a slower strum. Instead of strumming with the whole arm, you gain accuracy from using the flexibility of the thumb while the hand, supported by the fingers on the uke body, is held stationary.

Cons—It’s generally hard to strum loud or fast with the thumb, and I also find it difficult to maintain accuracy when strumming freehand (i.e., strumming with the whole arm). For some of the techniques I teach, such as the syncopated George Formby split stroke or the fast samba, the thumb strum simply cannot keep pace as the tempo picks up speed.

STRUMMING WITH TWO OR MORE FINGERS

Strum down with the fingernails and up with the pads, just like the index finger strum.

Pros—This is a great way for people with smaller or weaker fingernails to play. The extra finger surface minimizes pain and finger damage. The technique also allows for louder playing.

Cons—When strumming with two or more fingers, it’s harder to play quietly.

STRUMMING DOWN WITH THE INDEX, UP WITH THE THUMB

I wasn’t really aware of this technique until my recent visit to Australia, where I saw several people using it. I met one teacher, Paul in Sussex Inlet, who recommends this to his beginners as a way to strum that prevents damage to the finger from overly hard and inaccurate strumming.

Pros—It’s an interesting technique because you get additional control from the action of the index finger flicking down on the down strum and the thumb flicking up on the up strum. The method takes a bit of getting used to, but you may also press the index and thumb together into a single point so that whether you strum down or up, you always have a fingernail making contact with the strings. Another variation is to strum down with index, middle and ring fingers and strum up with the thumb. This makes a sound that is both louder as well as consistent on the up and the down strums.

Cons—Like the thumb strum, this technique does not adapt itself easily to faster and more intricate strums.

STRUMMING DOWN WITH THE THUMB, UP WITH THE INDEX

This strum could save your marriage! It comes to me from Susan, who told me her husband liked to use the thumb strum but his thumbnail made an irritating clicking sound on the up strums. To get her to stop wincing, he adapted his strum to down with the thumb and up with the index, and marital bliss ensued.

USE OF PICKS

Rest the pick on the top side of the index finger and hold it in place with the thumb.

Pros—A host of different kinds of picks can be purchased. These range from felt picks that make the strum muted and soft to nylon, metal and other materials that provide a louder strum and sharper attack. As you can see, picks offer great variation in available sounds. They also prevent pain and damage to fingers.

Cons—Picks are easily dropped, which can be inconvenient in the middle of a performance. Keep spares close at hand. Using a pick also makes it harder to switch quickly to finger-playing styles. (Bear in mind that, while it is less common, it is also possible to adopt a hybrid picking style that incorporates both the pick and the remaining fingers of the same hand.)

WHICH STRUM IS BEST?

Would it help if I said all of the above? It’s true. If you want your sound to be varied and interesting, then you must vary your strums. Become adept at different playing styles. If you are a thumb strummer, go out of your comfort zone and try using one or more fingers. And if you never use your thumb, try it now; it could add a whole new dimension to your sound.

Spending some time playing in ways that feel strange and foreign can pay off. Benefits include increasing your dynamic range as well as improving your strumming accuracy and your playing speed. The many possible ways of strumming are not limited to the above list. If you have another way that works for you, then go for it.

Ask not what your country can strum for you,

ask what you can strum for your country.

—RALPH P. SHAW

Improve Your Musical Accuracy

All about the benefits of getting more exact with your music.

The single most important thing most of us can do to improve our music is to play with more accuracy. This idea may seem contradictory. Music is an expressive art, so we generally think of celebrating it with freedom, flow and warm, fuzzy feelings, not with a pedantic devotion to precision. In fact, I can already hear you asking, But Ralph, will attention to more exact playing really improve my music and make it more beautiful to listen to?

And Ralph says, Yes, it will. You want to be a good musician? Then be accurate.

The great thing about working on accuracy is that you don’t need to learn anything new. Just strive diligently to improve what you’re already doing. For example, if you want to work on your singing, then some of things you can practise include singing every note with exact pitch; making every word clearly understandable; controlling your phrasing, tone, vibrato, and so on.

And when you play ukulele, think about becoming more meticulous in how you play. For example, if there’s a difficult chord transition, practise it relentlessly until you land on the strings perfectly and right on time. However, the most noticeable area where we can forever improve our playing is to make each strum happen when it’s supposed to. In other words, to play exactly on the beat.

I recently saw an ad in a musicians magazine for a drumbeat analyzer. It helps drummers make their rhythms more exact. The device is a rubber pad that you drum on. The built-in computer then tells you whether your beats arrive early, fall behind or strike right on time. The device appeals to me and I don’t know if there is something similar for uke players—probably not. However, a gadget you may already have that can help your playing immensely is the metronome.

Metronome Avoidance Disorder is a disease (I just invented) suffered by quite a few ukulele players, who unfortunately believe that playing to a precise click takes the fun out of playing. If you’ve tried playing to a metronome and discovered that it’s really hard to do, this means you should do more of it, not less. A guaranteed way to make your strumming sound better is to make it more precise. And there’s no shortcut to precision other than habituating yourself to a rigorous and regimented beat.

Metronome work is so beneficial because it gets your attention out of yourself, splitting your focus between what you are doing and what is going on around you. It’s a great brain exercise. In fact, using the metronome may soon become like a game for you: both fun and challenging at the same time.

Don’t worry about overdoing it to the point where your strums become mechanical in their machine-like consistency. That doesn’t happen. Enough metronome practice will affect your playing in such a way that most people won’t have a clue what you improved. They’ll just know they like it better.

So, for a while anyway, instead of learning some new song or technique, try taking what you’ve got and making it better than ever.

Uke-less Strumming Practice

Some suggestions to put more variation into your strumming. For this practice you will need a paper bag (or piece of card) and an ability to listen.

It’s very common for beginning players to get into a rut with their strumming. After learning the basics, the beginner often adopts a default or one-size-fits-all strum they use for every song. We all know music shouldn’t be that way. When we listen to recorded songs we hear each one having a particular feel, or groove, and the essence of that rhythmic feeling, plus the variations within it, is what we want to capture when we strum.

The feel of a song refers to the basic quality of a song’s rhythm. There are two main types of strumming feel: straight and swing. To illustrate this, pretend to strum a ukulele.

Give the up strums equal value to the down strums so that the timing of your down-up-down-up goes: da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. This is straight playing. Now try strumming again. But this time hesitate briefly after each down strum so as to make each up strum come slightly late. It should sound something like: daa-da-daa-da-daa-da-daa-da. The down beats are all right on time, but the up beats are a little late. This rhythmic feel is known as swing.

Most songs we tackle are played either straight or with some degree of swing feel. But as you listen to any recorded piece you’ll notice that, as well as the basic feel of a song, other rhythmic nuances can also be added to the mix. So the question becomes: How do we retrain ourselves to strum in new and interesting ways?

I teach many different strumming patterns in The Complete Ukulele Course DVD series. But the drawback to teaching specific rhythms is that it’s often necessary to get quite analytical, even mathematical, about the structure of each strum. This can be helpful to a point, but a more natural and effective way to develop new strums is simply to listen and copy. And you don’t even need a ukulele to do this.

Air strumming could work, but you can improve on it by making your strums audible. One way is to strum the seam of your trouser leg with a pick or a finger while sitting.

Another way is to strum on a paper bag or a piece of light card. If you’re using a bag, scrunch up one end and hold it in your left hand while your right hand strums the body of the bag. There’s a wonderful old YouTube video of British ukulele entertainer Two-Ton Tessie O’Shea at the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. She uses this technique to great effect as she leads the audience singalong using her paper bag. Alternatively, get a small (playing card–size) piece of flexible card or stiff paper. Hold the card parallel to the floor in your left hand at about the position where your strumming finger makes contact with the strings. Every time you strum, your finger brushes the edge of the card. The card is a good approximation to ukulele strings because as well as audibility, it offers a feel of resistance to the finger.

STEP #1 First, just listen. And I really mean that. One of the reasons beginners get stuck in the rut of a single strum is that they don’t actively listen to what they are strumming along with. Put all your focus into listening to the rhythm and beats of the music. When you feel ready, then and only then, pick up your paper bag or piece of card and start to strum along.

STEP #2 Get the feel. While still listening, allow your finger to strum your paper to match the feel of the song. Focus on the listening, and let your strumming hand discover its own way to find the groove of the music. The feel may be swing or be played straight—or be mostly straight with perhaps a flavour of swing in it. Any combination is possible. Let your innate musicality find the rhythm. If you find there are too many rhythmic elements within the music to fit your strum, try doubling the strumming speed and see if that helps.

STEP #3 Put in extra beats, missing beats and other variations. Once you’ve settled into the feel of the song, it’s now time to add or remove any other beats you can hear. There’s no rule for exactly how to go about this. Keep listening to the rhythm section—usually drums, bass, piano, guitar, but there could be other instruments too. Remain intent on the listening while you allow your finger to put in extra accents (more pronounced strums) or miss out certain beats altogether by deliberately missing the paper on the beats you don’t want to hear. Then take it a step further: Include variations to the basic strum while still being faithful to the song’s feel.

Using a paper bag or cardboard rectangle in this way removes us from all the parts of ukulele playing that aren’t related to strumming. It helps us to break old, unhelpful patterns while creating new ways to play.

And, should you arrive at your gig to discover you left your instrument at home, you can always take a tip from the great Tessie O’Shea and entertain the audience using only a paper bag. Who knows, they might enjoy it even more than your uke playing!

Picking Your Ukulele

Using a pick to play ukulele can change your sound, and you have several types of picks to choose from.

Back in 1990 when I started playing ukulele I was told, by everyone who knew anything about ukulele, that I’d need to get a felt pick to strum with. I never questioned this advice and spent a good couple of years using a felt pick. And I don’t regret it either. My granddad used one back in the 1920s. It’s a chunky little chappie that’s easy to grip and flail away at your strings with, and it does so without your fingers getting hurt: a bonus for beginners who want to develop their strumming technique and chording without the misery of torn cuticles.

But generally, picking, plucking and strumming using your fingers and thumb is the superior way to play, as it offers a greater variety of sounds than can be achieved with a single pick. That said, picks are cheap and they may have a surprising effect on your sound that could benefit certain songs or parts of songs, so I would definitely encourage you to try some out.

Some ukulele purists respond negatively to the idea of playing ukulele with a pick. But exactly how an instrument is played shouldn’t matter. Music is about sound, so whether you use a finger, a thumb, a pick or boxing gloves, it’s all in the choice of the musician.

Here are my thoughts on some picks that I have tried or heard about over the years:

•Large felt pick. This is the one mentioned above. Approximately 2 inches long and ¼ inch thick, it emulates the action of a strumming finger. It’s great for beginners because it’s easy to keep hold of. Get one that’s as stiff as possible but with a little flex to it. Avoid felt picks that look okay but which turn out to be too weak and pliable.

•Small felt pick. Useful for soft picking, where the attack of a hard plastic pick is somewhat harsh.

•Jim Dunlop USA Nylon .60mm grey pick. I like these picks because they are cheap, have a sound I like, never break and are available everywhere. Their textured grip also makes them easy to hold. I’ve used these picks for years. However, I find them slightly too pointy, so whenever I buy a new one I trim the point with nail scissors and a file to make it more rounded. These picks are great for making your uke strumming noticeably louder. You gain volume and a sharper attack but lose the softness that finger-playing gives.

•Moshay nylon pick. These are a handmade, more expensive cousin of the above. They have a nice hole in the middle to aid grip or for tying a string through. They are slightly more flexible and therefore kinder on the face of your instrument.

•Small plastic guitar pick. I’ve never been happy with these for strumming. They are harder to keep hold of and eventually crack and break. They can be good for melody picking though.

•Larger plastic guitar pick. I’ve often seen uke players use these for melody picking. They are easier to hold onto than small picks (and easier to find when you drop them).

•Felt-plastic-felt sandwich pick. Personally I’m not a fan of these, as the felt part of the sandwich seems to wear out quickly. Thus you soon lose the softer felt sound and end up with more of the clack of the plastic.

•Fingerpicks. Fingerpicks are usually made from steel or plastic and are great if you’re a skilled player. They make every note sound loud and clear, but beware that they highlight your mistakes too. For most beginners I would not recommend them and instead suggest using your fingers to pick the strings. But if you want to see how finger picks can really be used to great effect, do check out the work of resophonic ukulele maestro