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Holding the Uke
Roll up your sleeves for a little extra grip with your strumming arm 2 points of contact 1. Neck resting in fretting hand 2. Forearm of strumming arm making contact against sound board/lower bout. Adjust where your forearm makes contact for yourself to strum in the sweet spot, where the neck meets the body of the uke.
Fretting Chords
1st Finger 1st Fret 1st String/String 1 - the string closest to the floor Step One Apply a “feather touch” to the string, at this stage the string should be muted or dampened by this touch. Step Two Slowly add pressure until the note rings clear, be aware of the minimum amount of pressure required to allow the string to ring clear and always be aware of adding too much pressure as this can develop into a bad habit which can make playing difficult and even cause injury.
Little Drum
You can add another layer to the sound of this instrument by helping it pretend to be a little drum.
The size of the instrument also makes it’s Drum sounds accessible while playing harmony and melody simultaneously, with enough practice.
Snare
& Hi-Hats
Bass
Drum
The Sounds
On a full size drum kit, theres usually at least 3 main components, A bass drum "Thud thud", A high hat "Tss-t-t Tss-t-t" and a snare drum, BANG!
Sorry did that scare you?
With a little creative touch and strumming you can find sounds similar to the drum kit on your ukulele
Hi hats
Put simply the high hat sound is the beautiful sound of you striking the strings, whether they be allowed to ring open or fretted by a finger on the neck or dampened into a chuck (we love chucks!)
Snare Drum
The loudest most prominant sound of a drum kit is its snare, a nice way to play a snare like sound on the ukulele by adding a technique to our playing called chucking!
To chuck is one of the most fun things to play on a ukulele, it’s one of the key elements to adding dynamic to the rhythm. The feel of your music can enter another dimension when used effectively.
We chuck by dampening the strings with our fretting hand and striking the strings with our commanding hand, or alternativley using an area of our palm on our commanding hand to simultaniously dampen and attack.
Chucks love the limelight and like to be centre of attention on ukulele, practice giving them centre stage with no chords fretted or any open strings ringing behind them, just you them and their own regular beats in your song.
Try adding the chuck to beats 2 and 4 of your favourite chord progressions and feel that back beat start to drive. Try letting your finger nail go beyond the strings and make contact with the sound board for a little extra snap!
Bass Drum
If you strike the strings quite close to the saddle/bridge you can get a deeper sound from your ukulele. You can also add bass drum beats and other sounds by tapping the instrument in different areas.
If your ukulele has a jack input and pickup installed you can get a little more oomph in your bass drum sound. (A little reverb and you will notice a nice difference too!)
Its important to remember to practice all these elements gently! every sound can be acheived through the lightest playing and its better to be able to build up to a louder dynamic than be stuck up there with volume at 11 with no where to go. Remember, always practice ukulele gently!
Like playing the real drums although not as much heavy lifting involved, there's a lot to unpack here. Learn more about bolstering the percussive abilities of the ukulele in our workshops
C7
Set course for...
The 1st fret
Of the 1st string
with the 1st finger!
That’s where you’ll find C7!
Find and get the feel for the lightest amount of pressure to add with fretting finger to sound the "Bb" (B flat note), start with a feather touch and gradually add fine amounts of pressure till the note rings clear!
Have fun with plucking individual strings, strumming all 4 and everything in between!
As you begin to get a feel for holding your ukulele, apply slight pressure where the ukulele makes contact with your arm to hold the uke nicely against your body, again feel out the minimum required force to support the uke. Best to apply this pressure with a bare arm to gain some friction, roll those sleeves up! Buttons, watches and jewellery can be a hinderance on this arm. You might notice, when you apply this pressure to the bottom end of the uke, the top end sticks out a fraction. This works well to help fingers apply even less pressure while fretting.
Nails can be a hinderance on the fretting hand so best kept quite short. On the other hand quite literally, you will see many professional players with longer finger nails to aid their strumming/picking dexterity and technique.
Strumming while holding the uke like this minimises the amount your elbow joint moves, this is a good thing! While strumming keep everything loose and relaxed, everything! The pressure on your strumming arm, gentle as holding a baby. Your fretting fingers, lightest touch to enable to note to ring true, don't squeeze. Keeping these relaxed helps in so many ways and in particular your strum!
While strumming try using the combined movement of your wrist and 1st finger. Start by letting your wrist and hand go nice and loose. Allow your 1st finger to extend and let the others curl in towards your palm, or not, just try and keep them out the way of the strings for now! As you strum upward with your wrist curl this extended digit back towards your palm and make sweeping contact with the strings, gently brush the pad of your finger across them. While strumming downwards extend your finger out and make the same gentle sweeping contact with a small portion of your fingernail or fingertip, using your wrist to offer your finger more reach to beyond the string closest to the floor, back where you started, ready to strum up again.
Here's a song you can play using just 1 chord, the strumbelievable C7
Sea Seven,
They’re Lined up in a row right here, they’re called 1, 2 & 3
And 4’s a little neighbour, their happy as can be
They like to go to outer space, make music and explore
You got the fire and got the time, Then strum the strings all 4
I said (*insert group Members Names*)Robert!
Is there something I can do?
I said Colin!
To sail Sea Seven true?
They plot the stars they follow charts, the Strumming hand commands
There’s others too that live with thumb, They're On your strongest hand
They Bring the uke to life chuck strum, a sound you can't ignore
You have your own you know them well, You’ve played with things before!
I said John!
Is there nothing I can do?
I said Andrew!
To sail Sea Seven true?
I said Liz!
Call em up, Wake em up!
I said Christopher!
To sail sea seven true!
I said Tom!
To sail seven true!!!
