acoustic music Archives

June 19, 2022June 19, 2022

4 Good Reasons to Tune Your Soprano Uke in 5ths, and 1 Great One

Fun factoid…. Avocados are not a vegetable. They are a berry. A single seeded berry. So if an avocado ain’t gotta be what it (obviously) is, then a ukulele can be a mandolin! That is to say that a soprano ukulele can be tuned in 5ths, just like a mandolin or violin with some help from a custom-gauge set of strings.

BUT HOW?

Since a ukulele isn’t specifically engineered to be tuned with the tension required for 5^th tuning (E-A-D-G) you absolutely have to get your string gauges perfect to adapt the machine that is your ukulele to a more high-tension tuning. Aguila is one of the companies that makes a custom gauge set of string for 5^th tuning, and they are fairly easy to find. SO please start by restringing your uke. As a note, it really doesn’t work well to tune the 5^th tuning gauges to a standard tuning, so… you hear it coming… maybe you need to get another uke just for this experiment. I have a couple soprano ukes so I was set to go.

BUT WHY? (Here are 4 good reasons and 1 great one)

1: It gives you another voice to layer into your ukulele playing. This sounds nothing like a uke, more punchy like a mandolin, but kinda harsh like plucking a violin with a pick.

2: You will get to explore learning something new. If you don’t know anything about a mandolin, you should grab a chord chart, and maybe some tablature for some old fiddle tunes. Mando lin tablature is written on just four lines, so you wont have any trouble using it for a 5^th tuned ukulele.

3: Very few other musicians, especially folk musicians, take this approach… So that means you aren’t copying ANYONE! That also you can’t do it wrong… In fact, you are the trendsetter. Getting on at the ground floor is pretty cool.

4: It is really fun to be the unique musician in a jam session, and this will a but assure that will be the case. Just before writing this blog is the first time I have tried tuning a uke in 5ths, and I can’t wait to give it a more public premier.

5: You will develop new techniques that inform and influence your playing on other instruments. This could be the best reason of all. I found that when tuned in 5ths, my soprano uke would kind of “wolf note” on any open string when soloing. So I tried to palm mute everything. This ended up sounding pleasantly “pizzicato” (when a violin is being plucked instead of bowed). After doing this I started trying to incorporate the pizzicato effect into playing the mandolin. I have always palm muted the mandolin, but not so much that the notes sounded super plucky. So, my mandolin playing evolved as a result of playing the uke tuned in 5ths.

MOVING FORWARD

If you would like to try this approach, please please please visit your favorite local music store first and pick up a set of ukulele strings designed for 5^th tuning. Shopping local first is the best default strategy anytime! Please support your neighbors.

If you need to shop on the internet your favorite string shop probably has them available, and if you are an Amazon shopper, I have a link below to the strings I bought.

Also, I have a little YouTube of my 5^th-tuned-uke experiment below. If you watch the video please watch through to the very end… I just really like the little cartoon of me on the very end of video – no other reason – just want to share the funny.

https://youtu.be/WADAwqm-bGY

FREE stuff!

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get a FREE get started e-guide to learn the 5-string banjo! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, and fun old tunes on the instrument that launched the ship that Earl sailed upon. (I hear angels singing.) Please subscribe!

Take a leisurely look at my general store where I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<<

Thanks for stoppin’ by today! Ya’ll come back and we’ll do some pickin’.

November 30, 2021November 30, 2021

Pickin’ in Open D and DADGAD Guitar Tuning

Spice it up a notch

Sometimes, my guitar pickin’ all sounds the same, and sooo… “predictable.” At least it sounds that way to me, and that ain’t no fun. A quick way to spice it up is with a new tuning. I often turn to the open D tuning and DADGAD to add the flavors I have been missing.

Open D Tuning

Drop your first string to D, second string down to A, third down to F#, leave the fourth as D, the fifth stays at A, and the sixth string tunes down to D. At first, it’s fussy with all the button turning on your tuning machines, but it’s worth it. And since you are taking tension off the strings and the neck it is a very stable tuning. I use open D to add something fresh-sounding to my repertoire without having to learn something new. For instance, I can take a song that I play in open G and directly translate that to open D by moving my fingering up a course of strings. (A melody line played on the third string in open G is played on the fourth string of open D tuning) With very minor modifications, I have a great old familiar song, in a new key, and in a fresh-sounding timbre.

DADGAD Tuning

DADGAD – named for the notes of the open strings, is only different from open D by how you tune the third string… An open G note versus an F# is open D. This makes the open strum a D sus 3^rd. This change in timbre and tuning ‘plays’ more radical than the simplicity of the tuning would lead you to believe. This is a great tuning for composition and experimentation.

Below is a diagram of how the simple 1 – 4 – 5 chord progression compares between the open G, open D, and DADGAD tunings.

Below is a link to my video where I am demonstrating my approach to the Open D and DADGAD tunings.

Can I gitcha some FREE stuff?

I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog. That way you won’t miss any of my acoustic and traditional music ramblings. When you subscribe to the NekkidMusic.com blog, you get FREE get-started e-guides to learning the 5-string banjo AND the ukulele! You will learn the basic blocking and tackling to get you started playing chords, rolls, strums, and fun old tunes. Please subscribe!

Also – take a leisurely look at my general store where I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<<

Thanks for stoppin’ by today! Ya’ll come back and we’ll do some pickin’.

March 9, 2020May 17, 2020

Two Fun Banjo Songs I Learned To Play WRONG

Not how J.D. played it

Being an individual is a beautiful thing. Yet it seems that being a banjo picker has one overriding motto. “Always be yourself, unless you can be J.D.*, then always be J.D.” *Actually, you can insert any icon’s name for ‘J.D.’ – Earl, Ralph, Sonny, Bela, or Allison, so on. It always hurts a bit to hear “that ain’t how J.D. played it” as a commentary to your carefully crafted, totally unique, jazz fusion solo to ‘Old Home Place.’ In this post, I am actually headed somewhere else, though. I learned these songs “wrong” because I picked them up on the wrong instrument, but then ended up loving to play them.

I’ve looked at bluegrass from both sides now

I picked up an LP copy of ‘The Earl Scruggs Review, Live at Kansas State’ and heard Randy Scruggs play a wonderful version of the Joni Mitchell classic ‘Both Sides Now.’ I had to learn it… Like ‘right now!’ I didn’t have a guitar available, but there sat my trusty old banjo. An hour later, I had a fun little version worked out. Inspired by, or better an homage, to a foundational folk/pop songwriter and a late great guitarist. Both true favorites of mine. Hats off Joni, and Randy. It was all wrong but really felt right. That was years ago and I have never forgotten a lick.

But what does it all mean?

OK, I am a huge fan of the viral video from Yosemitebear. For the Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg classic, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ I immediately knew the answer to the question, ‘but what does it all mean?’ It meant that I needed to learn it on the banjo. In fact, I learned it as an instrumental version of a standard crooning ballad, and breakdown style. My friends would ask me, “Have you heard Tuck Andress? Have you played it on your ES335?” The answers, yes of course, and no – I don’t wanna. I wanna play it as I learnt it… “WRONG.”

Being musically unique

I do enjoy learning the note-by-note versions of banjo solos from the masters. In fact when a friend shared the TAB for a note-by-note transcription of Allison Brown’s mind-blowing ‘Leaving Cottondale,’ I thought I would wet myself with joy. (I didn’t, thank goodness, but it was close, very close.) But I have to say, I find the better angels of my instrumental covers to be found dwelling in the versions that are more uniquely… ‘me.’

How to catch a one-of-a-kind rabbit… Unique up on him.

So be yourself. Pick up your banjo, and figure out that swing-chord version of Sally Goodin. I swear Earl will smile down on ya, and J.D. will at least give ya an approving wink. And – ‘I’ WANT TO HEAR IT! Sally Goodin is doggone hard to play, and western swing fiddle versions are my favorite.

Listen up

Below is my video so you can give witness to nekkidly true confessions about my song learnin’ wrong-doin’.

Also, do yourself a favor and crane an ear to these great albums that influenced me, and so many of our contemporaries. These are really different genres, but as my old Dad used to say… “it will stretch your ears out somethin’ fierce, but it’s good for ya, we call it growth.”

Amazon links to:

Live At Kansas State / Earl Scruggs Revue / Rockin Cross The Country

Tuck Andress… Over The Rainbow / If I Only Had A Brain

FREE stuff!

Also please take a look at my general store when I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<<

As always, ya’ll come back and we’ll pick a spell.

February 18, 2020May 17, 2020

Thee Insanely Cool Ukulele Chords

Yookin’ good!

I love playing acoustic string instruments, and I am simply infatuated with the ukulele. I come from South Carolina, where we call this little instrument, a yook-LAY-lee. I know that’s not the correct pronunciation, but we also consider pimento cheese and shrimp-n-grits the two food groups that make up the base of the nutrition pyramid. It’s a Southern thing.

One of the things I like best about the ukulele when played in American folk music, even in hillbilly music, is that you can vamp really cool chords and bless a song with something totally fresh and jazzy that other instruments may need to stray way outside of their traditional space to accomplish without distraction. Three of these favorite insanely cool “blessings” are: the root 6^th chord, root augmented chord, and second diminished chord. I LOL’d writing this. I was just remembering my old Dad calling them “augminished and demented chords…” I miss ya, Pop.

Let’s Look at the chords

A major chord has a root note, a third note, and a fifth note. In the G chord, for instance, that is G (root), B (third), and D (fifth). Think of the “numbers” in terms of the major scale… Do (G – root), Re (A – 2^nd),Me (B – 3^rd), Fa (C – 4^th), So (D – 5^th), La (E – 6^th), Si (F sharp – 7^th), Do (G- octave).

Root 6^th

G 6^th would simply be adding a sixth note (E) to the G chord shape.

Root augmented

In the root augmented chord (in the example G augmented) we just replace the fifth note with a sharp fifth note – or D sharp note.

Second diminished

The second chord in the key of G is A major. We use the diminished shape of the second chord. Which will have us flat the 3^rd and the fifth note of the A major chord. So the A diminished chord triad is A, C and D sharp (E flat).

Chord shapes in standard (my dog has fleas) tuning, and slack-key tuning for baritone ukulele.

Note that the Chord symbol for augmented is a little “+” sign, and diminished is a little “o” shape.

Now the cool stuff

As an example, we will use the G augmented chord as a transition to get us into the C chord and the A diminished chord to transition us from C back to G. The G 6^th chord will simply be the root chord that we resolve into and finish with. Try this progression…

G /// G+ /// C /// Ao /// G/// D7/// G6 ///

Note that these chord shapes work the same for soprano or tenor ukuleles, however, when playing the soprano or tenor ukulele these shapes will be the key of C. ( C C+ Do G7 C6^th )

Please take a look at my video demonstration of a couple of examples of the ukulele applying these cool chords to a standard folk song.

So when you pick up that ukulele, spice with augminished, demented, and 6^th chords to taste… and enjoy some insanely cool pickin’.

FREE stuff!

Also please take a look at my general store when I keep some links to important things that you can buy to help your pickin’. >>> Link to NekkidMusic.com general store <<<