Ukulele For Dummies (10 page)

Sitting down

If you're comfortable playing while standing up (as I describe in the preceding section), you can use the same technique when sitting down.

But sitting down also gives you the opportunity for some more stability by balancing your uke on your upper thigh. This position makes the juggling act much easier and requires much less contact with the ukulele (see Figure 3-3).

You still want to maintain the other three points of contact and you certainly still want to angle the uke away from your body as mentioned in the earlier section ‘Positioning yourself to play'. But resting it on your thigh means that each of these three points can support the ukulele more lightly.

Holding your uke left-handed

If you're left-handed, you don't need a special left-handed ukulele. You can just turn around a standard ukulele and flip the strings so that they're in the opposite order. You should end up with the g-string being nearest to you and the A-string being nearest to the floor so the strings are in the order I describe in Chapter 2.

Ukulele strings are so close to each other in terms of their width that you don't need to make any adjustments to your ukulele. Some people recommend that left-handers just play the ukulele exactly the same as right-handers (strumming with their right hand), reasoning that both hands are required to play the ukulele anyway. But I've never heard this argument from a left-handed person.

Developing Your Strumming

You use your dominant arm (that is, the right arm if you're right-handed) to strum. The fretting hand may get all the glory and do all the fancy work, but the strumming hand is most important: you can finger a few fluffed notes or wrong chords without anyone really spotting them, but everyone is sure to notice when your strumming speeds up and slows down.

An interesting and varied strumming pattern can lift an entire song. Strumming is such a fundamental part of a song that strumming patterns vary between genres much more than chord patterns do. Put down your ukulele for a second – I know you're going to miss it, but I promise you'll have it back in your hands soon.

Now put your strumming hand (right hand for right-handers, left hand for left-handers) in front of the middle of your body where your stomach meets your chest. Make your hand into a light fist so your fingertips are touching your palm but not pressing into it.

Now use your index finger to point at your left nipple (right nipple for left-handers) and rest your thumb between the first and second knuckle of your index finger. That's your starting strum position (see Figure 3-4).

Resting your thumb on the finger is important: it gives your finger an extra bit of stability so it makes a cleaner sound when you strum.

Strumming in the right spot

You can pick up your uke again now. Make the shape with your hand that you discover in the preceding section and position the ukulele so that your index finger is just above the g-string, where the neck of your uke meets the body.

This location is known as the
sweet spot
. Each ukulele has its own sweet spot where the strumming sounds best. For soprano ukes, this spot is around where the neck meets the body. For larger ukes, the sweet spot is between the soundhole and the end of the body. Experiment with your uke and see what feels and sounds right to you.

Strumming in the right way

The best advice for strumming – and life in general – is to stay loose. Tightening up is a surefire way to sound robotic and tire yourself out quickly.

The second-best piece of advice is to strum with your wrist rather than with your arm. If years of playing Whack-a-Rat at the fairground have taught me anything, it's that moving your arm up and down gets tiring very quickly. So you want to be moving your wrist and doing no more than rotating your forearm.

You don't need to strum much more widely than the strings. Try not to make your strums too wide because maintaining a steady rhythm then becomes harder and you tire more quickly.

When you strum down, your nail hits the string first. When you strum up, the pad of your finger hits the string first. This pattern creates a nice balance between a more forceful down-strum and a softer up-strum.

Stay relaxed, not only in your hands and arms but also in your whole body. When you concentrate too hard on your playing, you can easily tense up without noticing, which can lead to getting tired and achy. So every so often consciously relax your arms and shoulders before you get back to playing.

Refusing to use a pick!

At this point, I wish I had the technology to reach out of the book and strangle you until you promise not ever to use a pick on your ukulele. But until those far-off future days of hover-boards, moon-juice and literature violence, I have to resort to pleading. Please don't use a guitar pick to strum your ukulele! (This point is the only thing about playing the ukulele that I'm going to be an ogre about, I promise.)

Picks are designed to be used on tough steel strings, not delicate ukulele strings. Using one of those thick rhino-toenails on a ukulele creates a nasty clicking sound that spoils your ukulele strum.

Playing with a pick also restricts you when you want to move on to more complex strums that involve using your thumb and other fingers.

If you absolutely must use a pick – and I'm not accepting any excuse less than having had your hand eaten by bears – get a felt one. They're more delicate and suit the ukulele much more.

Pressing On to Fretting

When you're holding your ukulele correctly and comfortably as I describe in the preceding sections, you need to start pressing down on the strings with your fretting hand to produce different notes.

The pitch of a string changes depending on its length: the shorter the string, the higher its pitch. Flip to Chapter 2 for more info on pitch.

When you hold down a string (called
fretting
it) you make it shorter. The fret wire (the metal strip that runs vertically across the neck) is there to make sure that the string is exactly the length it needs to be to make the correct note.

You hold the string down, it gets stopped by the fret wire and it can vibrate only in front of that.

Positioning your fretting hand

Start by putting out your fretting hand (your left hand if you're right-handed) flat in front of you (palm up). Then put the ukulele in your hand so that the nut is pointing right at the bottom of your index finger, as shown in Figure 3-5. (Turn to Chapter 1 to discover the names of your ukulele's various parts.)

Now bring your thumb around the neck so that it sticks out above the top of the nut. The neck of the uke is now cradled between your index finger and thumb. This position provides good support for the uke and leaves your hand in the perfect position for fretting.