Week 7 - Lots Going On

11 May 2010 - Class Seven

This past week had been spent trying to get the triplet to sound right and be able to integrate it into a strumming pattern. I’ve got it to where it sounds fair to me, and isn’t too uncomfortable/awkward to do. Now here is something funny, since I learned what it is and how it sounds, I’ve actually been noticing triplets in the music on commercials, and have been trying to duplicate the strumming patterns.

As for the triplet strum, for the most part I’ve been using the index finger for the first part followed by the thumb for the rest. I do practice the 4-finger strum, but the index finger variant seems more economical and comfortable to me (maybe because I became aware of it first, on one of Ralph Shaw’s videos).

I’ve got to run after class. My friend Dave Koenig is in town for a convention. Dave plays the Jake character from the Blue’s Brothers at Universal Studios (as well as for the House of Blues clubs) and is the official trainer for this. He’s in town doing personal appearances and photos for the trade show. Tonight is our only mutually available night to meet up. On a side note, Dave’s son Matt is the bass player for the band Broadway Calls.

I just hope that I can make it through the night; something hit me about 1:00 PM. Bad ear ache, the whole right side of my head is hurting and I can barely see out of my right eye, and the neck is stiffening up, not good…

I’ll try to catch up and fill in what happens later on.

4 May - Week 6 of Class

4 May 2010

Ok, today I downloaded a recording that Betsy from our class made of the one class that I missed. I’ve listened to it twice so far. This is neat, and I wish all of the classes had been recorded. Being able to step through the classes again and rewind and re-listen to parts you may not have gotten are fantastic as a learning tool.

Class tonight was almost empty, there were about 6 of us, and as has been the standard for Tuesday nights this past month, it was pouring out. Danno made mention of the instruments sounding off because of the humidity.

Tonight we reviewed material from the previous couple of classes, especially the material from the week that I had missed. But thanks to listening to Betsy’s recording, I was not as far behind as I thought I was going to be. After that, we started working of 4 chord, chord progressions from the 50’s rock era. G, Em, C, D7 (1,6,4,5 progression). We also worked on minimizing finger movement when changing chords with proper planning, like adding the little finger to convert a G into an Em, and using the ring finger for the C so the index finger can be added to convert to a D7 when needed.

Ah, we spent a few minutes on the triplet tonight. Danno uses the 4 fingers for the first part of the strum, followed by the thumb, where I had been working on it just using the index finger for the first part. This is going to take some work, Danno is amazing.

I also made up a practicing tool for my chords. I took a box that used to hold staples, taped it shut, and drew in the frets (it is long enough to have the first 5), and I drew in the strings in the correct positions. So I have a small item that fits in my pocket, but can mimic the top 3rd of the fret board. This allows me to practice moving my fingers in and out of chord positions (a weakness I still have as I am very slow at changing chords). It seems to me that the back of a cell phone could be used the same way (just draw the fret marks and strings on a label and stick it on the back of the phone), but as I don’t use a cell phone this is not an option for me.

- I realized that a business card, although a little wider than the fret board makes an excellent tool and the first 5 frets will fit upon it.

Week 5 LOST

27 April 2010

So here I am, Ukulele class is right at the mid point (week 5).

I was prepared for the class when it began. My ukulele had arrived in early March and I spent a little bit of time getting ready for the April class. I learned what I assumed to be the first group of chords we would learn, and practiced them. C, C7, G, G7, F, D, D7, and A became familiar to me and almost comfortable. I was able to get into the hand positions and make a good clean sounding chord for each of these, and this held me in good stead for the first 3 weeks of class.

Week 3 introduced a few new chords, Am, and E7 to me, and the transitions between chords started to get quicker in the songs that were assigned.

I’ve been battling with the Bb chord, and have about a 40% to 60% success rate in getting it. It seems that I have either an issue with my ring finger making contact with the third string while pressing down on the fourth, or the index finger does not apply enough pressure to A string (number 1) while pressing both the first 2 string, creating a dead string. This chord came up in week 3, but I was and still am ready for it. Eek…

Health issues kept me from attending class number 4, and I knew I was in trouble. Class 5 was on April 27th. I was bright and early and to help me out a bit, I brought my tenor Uke instead of the smaller “Watermelon”, my thinking is that it would help me out a bit as it has more room on the fret board and allows for looser/less-exact finger positioning. My thinking was that I needed every advantage I could get.

This week’s class started out great; I picked up the handouts from the previous week, and then I looked at them... There were a few new chords, F7, A7, one of the songs transitioned from strumming (which is what we had been doing since the first meeting) to strumming and picking notes. I’ve been working on this at home on my own.

At this point though, I’m feeling a little lost. We have a handful of strumming patterns, 1 finger picking pattern, 20+ chords, and 18 songs.

Did I say “a little lost”?

Not a Good Day

26 April 2010

Not a Good Day.

I rushed home from work a little early today so I could head out to class. I’m really not feeling well, the whole body hurts, it’s been like this since Sunday, intense pain at the slightest touch. I tried to warm up and tune the uke before heading out, and could not hold the strings down. Added to this, I have to make pit stops every 20 minutes… It must be some kind of virus; I hope it runs its course quickly. So it looks like I’m going to have to miss class tonight, I don’t think I can get there, and if I did, I would accomplish anything. It’s 4:30 PM and I’m going to lie down.

As for the strumming dilemma I’ve been having, that resolved itself. Once I relaxed a little bit and stopped trying, it came. I was over doing everything in the process.

Week 3 Ukulele Blues

13 April 2010

Week 3 Ukulele Blues

Last weekend I watched the movie “Walk the Line” the Johnny Cash story. Having grown up in the 60’s and 70’s, I was very familiar with his songs and several were childhood favorites. The movie inspired me to attempt one of his songs. The strumming pattern seemed within my reach, in fact, they commented on this pattern in the movie (calling it a simple sound as they were not that good on the instruments). So I picked Folsom Prison Blues as the piece to work on.

Truth be told, I never realized this song had the word “Blues” in the title. When I realized that it was there, and the reason why, I became excited. This was actually a “blues” song, not something we associate with the late Mr. Cash. But it does make a lot of sense as, well according to the movie, he wrote this on his own as a beginner guitar player while in the Air Force.

A little back ground:
There is a pattern called the “12 Bar Blues” and this pattern comprises the rhythm/chord progression for thousands of songs. This pattern in it’s simplest form is 4 bars of the I chord, 2 bars of the IV chord, 2 bars of the I chord, 2 bars of the V chord, then 2 bars of the I chord. For example, in the key of “G”, G is the I chord (first note in the scale) C is the IV (4th note, G(1), A(2), B(3), C(4) ), and the V chord is D (5th note in the scale). So, in the key of G, your would strum 4 bars of G, 2 bars of C, 2 bars of G, 2 bars of D, and then 2 bars of G.

Folsom Prison Blues essentially fell into this pattern. In the written lyric/chord form it shows only one bar of “G” instead of 2 after playing the “C” and the “D”, but when Cash played the song, he played the 2 bars as in the standard 12 bar blues format.

Even the lyrics followed the standard blues pattern:

Folsom Prison Blues:
I hear the train a comin', it's rolling round the bend
And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin' on
But that train keeps a rollin' on down to San Antone


I’m Movin’ On:
That big eight-wheeler rollin' down the track
Means your true lovin' daddy ain't comin' back.
I'm movin' on, I'll soon be gone
You were flyin' too high for my little old sky
So I'm movin' on.


Mary Had a Little Lamb: (JC Style)
Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow
Every where that Mary went, that lamb was sure to go
He followed her to school, which was against the rules
It made the children laugh, to see a lamb at school


My thinking was, learn this progression, and know more songs than you can possibly name. So I began working on it in the key of “G” as I could make all the chords already.

Class that night was interesting; more chords, including the Bb (B-flat), a chord that has been giving me problems for a month now. We are starting to move along pretty quick in class. The chord changes are coming quicker and the strumming patterns more complex, plus there seems to be a never-ending supply of chords. The advantage I had from my advance self-study and practice is gone, I’m starting to fall behind.

On a side note, I spoke to Danno (the teacher) after class about 12-bar blues, asking if we would be covering it. He said yes, and that we already had. He then mentioned on of the songs we started that night. He asked me to name a blues song, I named CC Rider, and he played the song we had done that night and replaced the words with those of CC Rider, they fit. I had been so worried about making the chord and keeping p with the class that I had missed the pattern of the song.

I’ve got a lot to work on this week!

Week 2

6 April 2010

Week 2

Been working on “It A’nt Gonna Rain No Mo’”, but it isn’t helping. It is pouring out! Seem’s like Tuesday is rain-day. I spent the weekend working on the songs from last night, and even found recordings of some to listen too. I tried to play along, but could not keep up. Just 2 chords (C, which uses only 1 finger, and the G7), both chords that I have been working on for a while and I know fairly well, but I am slow. I’m concentrating on the strumming, trying to get it to sound right, but I’m just not getting something. Something is just no clicking. Going back and forward between using the thumb as Danno does in class, and with the index finger as Ralph Shaw and Jim Beloff use in their instruction videos.

Class was full, even though the weather is miserable, everyone made it. New chords today, the D7 to go along with Sloop John B. Another song I remember from my youth, as is Blue Bayou. The other song we got is called Apeman by the Kinks. I’ve never heard it before. My musical knowledge ends at 1982.

Class is picking up speed and a lot of fun.

Reminder to self, “Don’t wear a Hawaiian shirt to class again!”




On a side note:
The tenor ukulele I ordered came in this week and it is a thing of beauty. The strings are a lot stiffer than the watermelon; hopefully as it breaks in they will loosen up. I do love the sound; it has a richer and deeper tone.

It Begins…

30 March 2010

It Begins…

Back in February I signed up for a class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Ukulele for the Almost Musical. It seemed like a fun class, and “Almost Musical” sounds about right for me.

Danno Sullivan is the teacher, and we had the first class. He is fantastic, a fun teacher and really talented. We learned a few chord (C and G7) and worked on strumming our way through a handful of songs. This is going to be a blast!