Category Archives: Music

So you wanna play the ukulele

I’m still working on my ukulele skills when I’ve got the time. André and I went to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in concert last night, and that motivated me to try some new chords today. (Nebenbei, deutschsprechenden Fans des UOGB empfehle ich UOGB Fans. The site also has an English version.)

I have found that two things are hindering my progress: one, I used to play the guitar as a teenager and remember the guitar chords from then, confusing them with the uke chords, and two, soprano ukuleles come in two tunings, either g c e a or a d f# b. The first seems to be a bit more widespread, but the latter is used in the beginner’s book I’ve got. I know I should just stick to one of the tunings and memorize the chords in that tuning, but which one to pick?

In any case, I’ve found two websites that come in very handy if you’re a beginner on the uke:

The Ukulele Boogaloo Chord Charts show how to play all the chords, including which finger to put on which string, and they’re available for both tunings of the soprano uke and the baritone uke as well.

Sheep Entertainment’s Ukulele Chordfinder does not only offer different versions of each chord (for soprano, tenor, baritone uke), but also has a play-along feature. Pick one of the many songs available, listen to it, read the text and the chords and play along! The chords are also shown on a ukulele so you know how to play them. (Of course, you can pick which tuning to use.) Excellent!

Previous uke postings on Serendipita: one, two, three.

Uke!

Garret (of dangerousmeta! fame) links to a New York Times article about the comeback of the ukulele: Those four irresistible strings.

I’m actually a big fan of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (I wish they’d do more concerts in Germany!). André gave me a ukulele for my birthday this year, so Ukulele Hunt (site mentioned in the NY Times article) comes in handy. And speaking of handy: When I got my ukulele, I found a little film on Youtube that shows how to tune it: Ukulele Tuning – Beginner Lesson.

I taught myself how to play chords on the guitar and got reasonably good at it when I was about sixteen, but I haven’t played in a long time. Now that I’ve got a ukulele I agree with Jim Beloff:

“If you were a poor guitar player,“ he said, “you suddenly become a pretty good uke player.“

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

After posting about the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain a while ago, I happened upon them again today on MetaFilter. There are some great pieces of them on Youtube. My favourites: Fly me of the Händel, Wuthering Heights (Heathcliff!) and, of course, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s also worth checking out the video clips on their website to get an impression of the diversity of the songs they play.

Mit schönen Grüßen an den Schockwellenreiter und Craig!

How to play the piano

Ralf discovered Chuan C. Chang’s Fundamentals of Piano Practice. The book is also available at pianofundamentals.com. To quote the author:

“This web site provides free piano lessons, piano teaching material, and piano tuning instructions. You can learn piano up to 1000 times faster (!) compared to other methods (see Chapter One, IV.5). This is the first book ever written on how to practice at the piano. For hundreds of years, many teachers and other books taught you what techniques to acquire, but that is of little use unless you know how to acquire them quickly, as Mozart, Liszt, etc., did. You can download the entire book free using the links below.”

My last piano lesson was about 13 years ago… I’d really like to start playing again, but for now it’s not feasible to move my piano from my parents’ house to our current home. However, having a piano (or a similar instrument) at home is necessary in order to practise enough. I should really look into buying a used electric piano or something like that.