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Authors: Alistair Wood
Ukulele For Dummies (2 page)
Ukulele For Dummies
®
by Alistair Wood
Ukulele For Dummies
®
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John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
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ISBN: 978-0-470-97799-6 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-470-97910-5 (ebook), ISBN 978-0-470-97911-2 (ebook), ISBN 978-1-119-97604-2 (ebook)
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About the Author
Alistair Wood
is a ukulele enthusiast, arranger, and writer. He first picked up a ukulele at the age of 16 and spent five years working out which way round the strings were supposed to go. Once that hurdle was leapt, he quickly became a devote and launched the website
UkuleleHunt.com
in 2007.
Since then,
UkuleleHunt.com
has gone on to be the most popular ukulele blog on the net, attracting over 6 million views and becoming the online hub of the ukulele scene. His expertise on the current ukulele boom has lead to his opinions being sought by
The Guardian, The New York Times,
and BBC News.
If you have any questions or comments about the book, or ukulele playing in general, you can contact Alistair at
[email protected]>
.
Dedication
For Trefor Wood (1940â2009).
Author's Acknowledgments
If you find this book helpful, grammatically correct, and not at all offensive, that outcome is entirely due to the skill, patience, and hard work of the team at Wiley. I'd like to thank Mike Baker, Steve Edwards, Jen Bingham, and Rachael Chilvers for all their work. And thanks to Arch Larizza for ironing out the technical foul-ups.
I owe more thanks than I could possibly say to Mum, Dad, and Gaz, who've supported everything I've ever done â even my bright idea of packing in a steady job in favour of writing about ukuleles on the internet.
Huge thanks go to Jenny Sokol (who has been a rock of support) and to Armelle Aaserod, Lou Armer, and Lorraine Bow. I'd also like to thank my fellow ukulele bloggers Gary Peare and Craig Robertson at Ukulelia, Mike Dickison at Kiwi Ukulele, and Bertrand Saint-Guillain at
Ukulele.fr
for their help and encouragement when I started out. My thanks also go to everyone who has supported me with kind comments and emails.
Finally, thanks to all the musicians who've made the ukulele an instrument worth writing about.
Publisher's Acknowledgements
We're proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at
www.dummies.com/register/
.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Commissioning, Editorial, and Media Development
Project Editor:
Steve Edwards
Commissioning Editor:
Mike Baker
Assistant Editor:
Ben Kemble
Development Editor:
Andy Finch
Copy Editor:
Kate O'Leary
Technical Editor:
Arch Larizza
Proofreader:
Charlie Wilson
Production Manager:
Daniel Mersey
Cover Photos:
© iStock/David Cannings-Bushell
Cartoons:
Rich Tennant
(
www.the5thwave.com
)
Composition Services
Project Coordinator:
Kristie Rees
Layout and Graphics:
Samantha K. Cherolis,
Lavonne Roberts, Corrie Socolovitch
Indexer:
Potomac Indexing, LLC
Special Art:
Alistair Wood
Interior Photographer:
Max Cisotti
Proofreader:
Jessica Kramer
Special Help
Brand Reviewer:
Jennifer Bingham
Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies
Diane Graves Steele,
Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies
Kristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe,
Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies
Ensley Eikenburg,
Associate Publisher, Travel
Kelly Regan,
Editorial Director, Travel
Publishing for Technology Dummies
Andy Cummings,
Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User
Composition Services
Debbie Stailey
, Director of Composition Services
Introduction
I
'd like to share with you the best piece of ukulele playing advice I ever read: âmake a joyful noise . . . make a loud noise.' The aim of this book is to help you do both these two things. (In fact, the quote comes from the Bible (Psalms 98:4, King James Version), which I think proves beyond doubt that God plays ukulele.)
Most people who pick up the ukulele don't do so with dreams of rock-star fame or recognition as a virtuoso, but simply to have fun making music. This book doesn't go deep into the theory or insist on you practising endless scales. Instead, you get the confidence and knowledge you need to start enjoying making music as quickly as possible.
About This Book
Ukulele For Dummies
doesn't have to be read dutifully from cover to cover. Think of it more as a reference that allows you to dip in and find the help you need at the time and focus on the parts that interest you most. So if you don't have a ukulele yet you can skip straight to the buying section in Chapter 17. Or jump to Part IV if you want to start with the musical genre that gets you most excited.
To take full advantage of the book, use all the following methods:
Read the charts.
Songs in this book are presented in chord charts, which are a simplified way of presenting music that's much more immediate than standard musical notation. The charts indicate how to play the chords in the song and the strumming rhythm.
Copy the photos.
The position of your hands and fingers is really important for getting a good sound from your uke. The photos give you a better idea of what your fingers need to look like than just using the chord charts.
Listen to the audio tracks.
Grasping what something should sound like from the written word alone is difficult, and so I include audio tracks to demonstrate the examples. I recommend listening to each exercise a few times before trying it yourself.
What You're Not to Read
Throughout the book, some parts are marked as Technical Stuff. You don't have to read these paragraphs in order to play, but they do give you a better understanding of what's going on under the bonnet.
Similarly, the sidebars (shaded in grey) are extra titbits that give you a bit of background knowledge or information to impress (or perhaps bore!) people at parties.
Conventions Used in This Book
To help you spot what's what more easily,
Ukulele For Dummies
uses these conventions:
I usemonofonttype to indicate website addresses. Some such addresses may be broken across two lines of text. If that happens, rest assured that we haven't put in any extra characters (such as hyphens) to indicate the break. So, you can just type in exactly what you see in the book, as though the line break doesn't exist.
I use
italics
for new words and phrases that I define.
I use the terms
up
,
down
,
higher
and
lower
to refer to the pitch of a note. So if I ask you to move a note up or to make it higher, that means higher in terms of pitch (that is, towards the body of the ukulele). And if I ask you to move the note down or make it lower, that means lower in pitch (towards the uke's headstock).
I use the American terms for indicating the length of notes, with the British terms in parentheses (for example, in Chapter 7). Therefore, I refer to
whole
notes,
half
notes and
quarter
,
eighth
and
sixteenth
notes. These US terms have a logic and clarity to them that's easier to understand than the UK equivalents (which are
semibreve
,
minim
,
crotchet
,
quaver
and
semiquaver
, respectively).
Foolish Assumptions
The only large assumption I make is that you're using a standard tuned ukulele (soprano, concert or tenor) rather than a baritone ukulele. The baritone ukulele is a very different instrument.
Other than that, I don't assume anything else about you, including whether you have any knowledge of ukuleles or music theory in general. I don't assume that you're a (take a deep breath) heavy-rock grebo, pierced punk fan or grizzled bluesman with no soul left to trade; a Hawaiian surfer with only vowels in your name, a cool jazz hepcat, a dreadlocked reggae follower or a tuxedoed concert-going classical aficionado (gasp!). That's more than enough stereotypes to be going on with . . . but the great thing about the uke is that it can be used to perform all these genres (if you don't believe me, take a look at the chapters in Part IV).
How This Book Is Organised
Each chapter in
Ukulele For Dummies
covers a specific playing skill or area of uke knowledge. In turn, they're grouped under six parts so that you can jump straight to your place of interest.
Part I: Introducing Ukulele Basics
Part I covers the fundamentals of ukulele playing. Chapter 1 takes a look at the ukulele itself â its features as an instrument, how it can be played, the music played on it and its development â and guides you through the language of the uke, including the names of its parts, the sizes and some basic musical terminology. In Chapter 2, I give you the lowdown on the ukulele's unusual tuning and several ways to get in tune. Chapter 3 takes you up to the playing stage, covering the fundamentals of how to hold a ukulele, how to strum it and how to fret the strings.
Part II: Starting Out With Chords and Strumming
In Part II, you get down to the nitty-gritty of uke playing. Chapter 4 introduces the first few chords and starts you playing songs with them right away, and Chapter 5 covers strumming patterns and rhythm. In Chapter 6, I lead you through building up an increasingly impressive arsenal of uke chords.
Part III: Picking and Single-Note Playing
Part III covers playing single notes. Chapter 7 introduces tab and playing melodies whereas Chapter 8 looks at fingerpicking patterns you can use to accompany your performances. In Chapter 9, I discuss ways to accompany your own playing so that you can play tunes by yourself. Chapter 10 looks at techniques you can use to add flavour to your playing and step into the limelight for a solo.
Part IV: Discovering Genres and Styles
Each chapter in Part IV takes you through playing a different musical genre â from the rock and punk riffs and licks of Chapter 11, through the ubiquitous 12-bar blues of Chapter 12, to Chapter 13's Hawaiian trip that uncovers the roots of the uke. Chapter 14 takes the ukulele into the jazz age, looking at some fancy jazz moves and ways to make your chord progressions more interesting, and Chapter 15 island-hops to introduce you to the Jamaican/Hawaiian hybrid of Jawaiian music. Things are a little more sedate in Chapter 16, which covers classical music and the campanella style of uke playing.