Ukulele – JustFourStrings

Prize Quiz!

Ukulele

by Dr Gonzo on May 4, 2020 0 Comments

Hi guys,
in these weird times of lockdown, clean air, and nothing to do (well for some of us), I thought I’ll invite you to do a little quiz and learn something new at the same time. Here’s a transcript I did earlier:

It’s a piece I wanted to learn for a long time and I think it sounds great on the ukulele. The chords are for C-tuning. It’s playable with high and low key G-string. Go ahead and give it a try! It’s not that hard. Start slowly and then speed up. The target speed is around the 136 to 140 mark. Try not to plant a finger on the uke whilst you are picking. It’s easiest to use the “claw hammer method”: Pick alternately with thumb and index finger, one note at a time.

Leave a comment if you figured out which piece it is, but don’t name it! The first three people who solve the quiz receive a free bag of original Norfolk Ukulele Sand, if they send me an email with their address!

What have I done?

Ukulele

by Dr Gonzo on August 13, 2018 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, about 2km into my early morning running training, I was stopped by a well known local lady who waved at me from her car window. Somebody had told her that I was some kind of musician and “couldn’t I help her out at our local faire by playing a few songs in between to give their entertainer time for a drink and a trip to the loo”. Being who I am, I said “of course” and carried on with my workout. She actually stopped me a couple more times and now I am also helping setting up the marquee, doing some maître’d stuff (???), bringing my cargo-bicycle to do rides for the kids, and of course getting on stage to sing and play the uke. It slowly begins to sink in that this is going to happen NEXT SATURDAY (18th of August, also my wedding anniversary) and I haven’t stood on a stage on my own for about 30 years! I am alright playing with others, even singing a bit, even if I don’t really know the songs (I can always improvise and I can read chords from guitarrists hands rather quickly). All this doesn’t really bother me anymore. But this time it’s just me! I don’t know… where do these butterflies in my tummy suddenly come from? ARGHHHH… I better start practising….

Here’s the link, just in case you want to see me die on stage…

Review: Norfolk Ukulele Sand

Ukulele

by Dr Gonzo on May 19, 2018 0 Comments

Everybody who has played a Ukulele on a beach knows how much better it sounds in its natural habitat. Originating from Hawaii, it is perfectly understandable that the little things need a proper beach to sound their best. I first found this out on a holiday to the Algarve. I took the little Ovation to the beach and after playing a few chords everybody around us started to smile. It’s just lovely how the sound carries over the sand in a way it never does indoors. Never? Well, I played her a bit in the hotel after we returned from the beach and I swear she was sounding better than the night before. This carried on for a few days, but one evening I got annoyed with all the sand inside the uke. So I tipped it all out on the beach and went back to the hotel. That night the uke definitely sounded duff when I played her before going to bed. It couldn’t be the sand… or could it? Was it possible that a ukulele needed sand to sound well? Surely not!!!

The next day on the beach I poured some sand into the body. Back at the hotel I was amazed about the rich sound she was producing! There was no other explanation: a ukulele needs to be near sand to sound its absolute best! So I made sure she was well filled up before we took the flight home. Unfortunately the sand kept falling out of the sound holes and after a few months the Ovation was back to its duff land-locked sound. When I tried putting in some sand from the local sand pit, I made the next astounding discovery: it made the sound worse! Chords didn’t ring, melodies were scraping along, and the sand inside was rattling out of tune. Land sand apparently doesn’t do it for ukuleles.

Now that we live in lovely Norfolk we have a fantastic beach in cycling distance. So of course I took the little one out for a few tunes in the dunes. And guess what: the sound was back! Not quite as sun-drenched and smooth as in the Algarve, a bit sharper and saltier, but it nevertheless carried the proper Hawaii tone towards the sea. That evening I filled her up with Norfolk sand and tried her out at home. Let me tell you: the sand from Norfolk’s beaches works! Now I will never run out of ukulele sand again and all my ukes are kept according to the strict official rules of the Hawaiian Ukulele Association (HUA).

If you have problems finding proper ukulele sand for your little one, just drop me a message and I’ll pop a bag in the post for you!

PS: I would be interested to know how the folks from Brighton manage!

Learn backwards!

by Dr Gonzo on March 19, 2018 0 Comments

The other day I was trying to figure out a bass riff on a record by a rather obscure finnish band from the eighties (Bluesounds). The problem was that it was rather quick and only lasted for a few bars, and it drove me mad for a while because each time I was ready to try something new, it was already over. I figured out the first note and then …. nothing. I wasn’t quick enough. But after a few tries I remembered a tip I usually give to my students in such a situation: Begin at the end and figure it out backwards!

If you start with the last note, you are always ready for it when it comes. Once you got it, carry on with the second to last one, and so on. This way you always have time to get ready to play with the recording and check your notes/chords. Also you don’t keep repeating the stuff you already know over and over again and then fail at the first new note. If you learn in reverse order, the part you are learning gets easier the further you get through it. The hardest bit will always be the beginning of the piece and not the end. That makes it easier to relax once you played the first note and helps to store the piece in your memory.

This technique is not only great for figuring out a part by listening to a recording, it is also fantastic if you try to learn a difficult passage from scores or tabs. If you start at the beginning, you repeat the easy bit over and over again, but the hard bit (the one you WANT to practise) always throws you out and after a while turns into a real barrier in your mind: you start to fear this bloody note and therefore failure is a given (especially if you try it on stage)! But if you start at the end of the passage, you have time to prepare for the hard note and then afterwards it’s all downhill. Once you got it, the hard note joins the easy ones and the one before it becomes the new hard note. I hope that makes sense… Give it a try anyway!

Ukulele Chord Finder

Ukulele

by Dr Gonzo on March 9, 2018 0 Comments

I always have problems remembering the more complicated chords on the ukulele. You know, the ones ending in “aug”, “dim”, “7sus4”, etc… And it doesn’t help that my students prefer the c-tuning, whereas I rather like the d-tuning on my favourite uke. I keep a chord cheat slip in my uke bag, but that isn’t large enough for all combinations.
Also sometimes I accidentally come up with a fingering combination that sounds great, and then I start deciphering the notes and possible combinations to give that chord a name. With only four strings there are usually several possibilities to name that chord.

A while ago I found a great tool to solve these problems: An online ukulele chord finder! Here’s the link: http://www.ukulele.nl/chordfinder/
This great little app knows four different tunings (C, D, C / low G, and G), nineteen different chord options, and it can even play the chosen chord, so you hear how it should sound! You can also click on a virtual fretboard where you put your fingers and it will tell you all possible names of this chord. You want more variations in your songs: two blank buttons in the options section let you step through all possible variations of any chosen chord in the selected tuning.