What I am doing

What I am going to be blogging here is my efforts to go back and—as my coaches used to say in high school—work on the basics.

Like a lot of people who take up the ukulele, I have purchased some books and DVDs and learned a certain amount. And now I've realized that isn't good enough. Mostly because, despite a lot of learning, I'm not very good. I'm better than I used to be. I can now sing a song more or less on key and strum along as I do so. I can also pick out a melody so long as it isn't too complex. And that impresses me subjectively. I am amazed that I can do this. But I don't impress anyone, including myself, objectively.

As often happens, I didn't figure out what I was doing wrong until I saw it in someone else. I have a friend who has been wanting to learn guitar for years now. But he always goes straight for the end result. He wants to be able to pick up a guitar and play and sing. What he doesn't want to do is break that act up into a series of separate tasks and practice them in a disciplined way. He doesn't want to work on the basics.

This really shows up with singing. There is a massive amount of art ranging from literature to movies dedicated to reinforcing the fantasy that singing is just a matter of letting what is inside us come out. A big part of the problem is that we can't see our vocal cords. With the ukulele we can see that we have trouble holding a particular chord down or keeping a particular strumming pattern. Singing feels like it just happens magically so it feels like it should just happen if we want it badly enough. It won't.

The problem is not desire. If losing weight was about really wanting to, everyone would be thin. And if playing and singing were just a matter of really wanting to, a lot more people would be able to do it.


And that does carry over in a  sense with playing too. We imagine that we have the music inside us and all we need to do is learn the techniques to get it out. But learning music is actually about getting the music inside us. The technique is what puts music into us and not what lets it out.

A tune

One of my favourite ukulele sites is Humble Baritonics. What he mostly does is put up lots of Baritone Ukulele videos. I won't even try to match his pace but I'm going to put a couple of videos a week up of people playing ukuleles tuned ADF#B. And I think this is great one to start with. It is Aaron Keim playing while Scott McCormick and Char Mayer sing.

And that is what it's really about, singing and playing.

Music theory?

Music theory sounds scary. And a lot of it is.

It also sounds speculative. But it isn't.

At a most basic level, here is what music theory is. Imagine you pick up an instrument you don't know how to play or just open you mouth and start singing sounds, making it up as you go along. As you go along you suddenly make some really cool sounds you like. So you do it again.

But what if you wanted to be able to come back tomorrow and do it again? You might remember exactly what you did and how you did it but more likely you wouldn't. And even if you remember it tomorrow, you'll probably forget by next week. What you need is a way to describe what you've done so you can repeat it. Make a note and stick it in a drawer. Or you could do make the sounds and record them or have someone take video.

That's all music theory is. It is a way of describing music so we can remember what we did last time and so we can describe it to others so they can do it with us. It can get really complicated but it doesn't have to. You only need to learn as much theory as you find useful. No one can ever make you do anymore than that.

Some basic assumptions

This is my first post and will serve as a, well what shall I call it? It isn't a FAQ file be cause no one is asking me any questions. How about we call it an assumptions file? These are the assumptions I started from.

I've set it up as a series of questions from me to me. Some of the questions are snarky and so are some of the answers. I can't help it; it's just the way I am.

Why D tuning?

Because I like it that way. I've tried other tunings (C, Bb, G and even A) and I like them too. I just like D the most. It's bright and "ukey" to me. And it brings the smaller ukes—that is the standard and concert size— to life.

I discovered that there are some other things about D tuning that are also good as I have come along and I'll write about them further down.

What is D tuning and why is it called that?

D tuning is a tuning in which the strings are tuned to A, D, F# and B. That is if you start from the top.

It's a re-entrant tuning. That means the D string is the lowest one on the ukulele. I'll put a graphic up to show the notes some day but for now:

• The top string is tuned to A, the second space on the treble clef. 
• The next one down is tuned to D, the space below the staff. 
• The next down is tuned to F sharp, or the first space on the staff. 
• The bottom string is tuned to B, the third line on the staff.

It is called D tuning mostly because it is called D tuning. Other possible reasons include:

• Because the easiest key to play in is the key of D.
• If you strum the ukulele with all the strings open, that is without pushing the string down on any of the frets, you get a D6 chords.
• They needed to call it something.
• Because it has a D in it.

What is Canadian tuning?

Canadian tuning is D tuning with the A string tuned an octave lower. It's called Canadian tuning because it is used in a lot of school programs developed by a Canadian named Chalmers Doane. (There is a website connected to the Chalmers Doane approach to teaching music here.)

Doane was interested in a  teaching program that would prepare kids for music generally and he found the ukulele was a good instrument for that purpose. One of his big goals was to teach kids how to read music off the treble clef and tuning down to low A gives the ukulele a good range that will cover about 99 percent of the tunes written on the treble clef.

I have Tenor ukulele in Canadian tuning that I occasionally play with.It's good for plucking out melodies I don't know yet. It doesn't sound as good as re-entrant D tuning to me.

Isn't C tuning the original?

No it isn't. You can find lots of sites that will tell you otherwise but it isn't true. D tuning isn't the original either.

The original ukulele tuning was DGBD. There is a Brazilian instrument called a a Cavaquhino or Machete that is tuned that way. Odd as this may seem, that instrument is much closer to the instrument that Portuguese immigrants brought to Hawaii than anything called an ukulele today.

At some point the tuning was replaced with the tuning for another, five-stringed Portuguese instrument called a rajao was applied to the ukulele minus one string.

Okay, so now all we have to do is find the tuning of the rajao and we will know what the true original tuning of the ukulele is right? Well, sorta. Because the rajao had two tunings:

E A D F# B

and

D G C E A.

In other words, both tunings have been around since the very beginning.

As long as we're talking about tunings ...

In one sense, the really odd thing is to have one fixed tuning in the first place. You can test this for yourself by buying a capo (a mandolin capo fits an ukulele nicely) and stick it on any fret and then play something you know—anything at all, some notes a sequence of chords from a song. Whatever it is, it will work so long as your ukulele was in tune to begin with.

The really important thing is that the strings be tuned in tune with one another. You can tune an ukulele by tuning one string until it feels right and then tuning the other ones until they work respective to that. For most of history that is probably how most ukuleles were tuned. If you had two that had to play together or you wanted to play with another instrument, they either tuned to you or you tuned to them.

Have you got another reason to go with D tuning?
 These days almost everyone starts playing in C tuning. Most books available for learning are for C tuning. So it looks like learning in D will put us at a disadvantage. And it will. But sometimes a disadvantage can turn into an advantage.

A lot of people learn how to play music sort of like learning to paint by number. You are given instructions and you follow them. With D tuning one of the things we have to do is learn how to figure out a lot of stuff for ourselves. And in order to do that we have to learn music theory. and that way you don't get trapped in play by numbers.

Go to You Tube and notice how often the first comment on some Uke tune is, "Have you got tab?" An awful lot of players can't play anything at all unless someone else tabs it out for them first. Because we have to figure so much out for ourselves in D tuning that will never happen to us.

Any more?

Well, there is always the easy keys. I mentioned above that the key of D is really easy to play in D tuning. In any tuning some keys are going to be easier to play in than others and some will be a real pain.

For D tuning there are three dead-easy keys: G D and A. (I'm leaving minor keys aside for now.)

Three others that are easy but not quite dead easy are the keys of C, E and B.

Any beginner can probably get good enough to play and sing songs in C, G, D, A, E and B within a year or two.

These easy keys, by the way, just happen to overlap pretty well with the keys that are easiest to play on guitar. That's a useful thing because you're going to want to play with other musicians at some point and guitarists are as common as dirt. An awful lot of pop songs are written for guitar too and you will find that most of them are written in the easy guitar keys.

Even more?

D tuning was very popular in the days of Tin Pan Alley. If you like buying vintage sheet music you will find that chords provided on it will be for D tuning more often than any other option.

Come on, you can come up with at least one more?

Although we speak of different tunings, D, C G, Bb, A, Eb and G tuning all work more or less the same. Once you've learned one, you can switch to any other and master it within a month or two.

Pardon me, did you say Eb tuning?

I know it sounds crazy but Eb is really just another way of saying D tuning with a capo on the first fret. Do that and the easy keys for that tuning are Db, Ab, Eb, Bb and F. Meaning that if you learn to play in D and then buy a capo you've got all the keys you'll ever need to play covered.

Isn't it better to be able to play all the keys in the same tuning?

Says who?

Well it is if you want to play in a symphony orchestra or a jazz group. The conductor or leader of the group won't even consider hiring you if you can't. You'll notice, however, that there are shockingly few openings for ukulele players in those sorts of musical ensembles.

And the truth is that very little music is written for some keys. Most musicians will go their entire lives without ever playing anything in the keys of Cb, Gb, Db, F# or C#. In fact, you could play your entire life in a handful of keys and be perfectly happy. An awful lot of pop musicians seem to be able to play in only a few keys. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, for example, seem to know exactly three major keys. And even musicians who say they can play in any key tend to be a lot better in some keys than others.

In any case, when we're learning, we'll start out with a few easy keys and if that goes well, we'll learn more.

What's the one thing I can do that will make my ukulele sound better?

Improve your singing.

I know that doesn't sound like the answer to the question you asked but it is. Of all the things the ukulele can do, the thing it does best is accompany the human voice. My main purpose in learning the ukulele is to improve my singing and I suggest you make it yours too.

But I can't sing!

You're probably wrong. I didn't think I could sing either. Luckily for me I'm married to someone who is smarter than me, especially when it comes to music, and she told me I could. I didn't believe her because I never had been able to and I was over forty at the time.

She was right and I was wrong. You can sing. And it takes work but you can figure out how to sing well enough that others will be willing to listen as you do.

But isn't it enough work just figuring out how to play the ukulele?

Everything to do with music is hard. There are some people—and we hate them—for whom music and musical instruments are easy. For us ordinary mortals it is hard to learn to play the ukulele and it is hard to learn to sing. But it isn't that much harder to learn to sing and to play the ukulele than it is just to play. And it is a easier to sing if you can play and you can learn to play better if you can sing.

Got any more reasons smart guy?

Yeah, I do. Singing and playing songs gives you something to do with your ukulele and you aren't going to want to put all this effort into learning if you can't do much with it.

Why can't I just play the songs?

No reason but the chances of your getting bored go way up if you can't sing.

Check out the popular music charts someday and notice how many instrumental tunes there are. You won't find many. Most people get bored of instrumental after instrumental. They'd get bored even quicker if those instrumentals were always on the same instrument. That is also true of the person playing the instrumentals.

The human voice is an exception. People will cheerfully listen to even a mediocre vocalist for hours whereas they'll get bored of most instrumentalists, even brilliant instrumentalists, pretty quickly.

Sing. It's more rewarding.


To be continued ...