my ukulele progress

I've been playing around with dom9 chords and inserting them in I IV V progressions. At the end of the measures I was travis picking a little riff before moving to the next chord. It was real simple but it was all I was up to, having had a few beers.

I also have been practicing string bends and my fingers are raw. I had been bending my strings without any thought...just as a mindless adornment. Now I am trying to bend up a whole tone or a half tone, so that the bends are still in key and sound good. It is taking some practice.
 
Well, I spent a lovely afternoon translating some Latin poetry and playing my kamaka on the porch. I have never really appreciated the beauty of my kamaka, but today as I looked down at the wavy koa on its sides and the shiny grover tuners I was pretty happy.

I practiced bending today. I used to be a non-apologetic bender. I bended mindlessly, but now I am starting to see the big picture. I'm now bending into notes that are part of the scale and it just sounds great. It reminds that I once was listening to a broadcast of Woodsongs and the host was complimenting the performer on her sparse use of ornamentation saying that it was the shibboleth of a master. I prove the opposite. I'm not a master and I was bending too much. Same thing with the harmonica; I bend and overblow everything. Now I'm seeing the time and place for it.

My fingers started getting a bit raw, so I switched up to some clawhammer practice. I'm starting to see some light at the end of that tunnel as well. I'm starting to be able to reliably hit the string I want. For me it is a matter of being aware of the size of the claw--i.e., the distance between the thumb and index finger. A certain size hits the A string, a certain size hits the C string. At this point it is a bit robotic since I have to consciously make the big, middle, or small claw. However I assume with time it will become more intuitive.
 
It is kind of funny. I took an online test to see if I am a beginner or not. You were required to play natural major chords without looking. Not looking is my weakness. I'm always glancing at my left hand. So my chords were spotty. That makes me a beginner. However I would, and do, have the same problem when playing jazz chords like maj7 or dim7 or dom9 or even something like a m7b5. Those are things that a beginner doesn't have in his or her head.

I think the difference is my self-perception. I think of myself as a soloist. So I'm always practicing a wide array of voicings and scales for improvising. From what I've gleaned in conversations with other players, they are more intent on nailing down two or three chords and not worrying about all those other ones that they'll never use to play their song.

In short, that's why I am still a beginner. I'm on a totally different curriculum and therefore my progress is different from a strummer.
 
pursuant to my previous post, I have become a little self-aware, if not self-conscious, that I am lacking in certain fundamentals. Don't get me wrong; I fully believe that one of these days I am going to bust out of my chrysalis and all my far-flung practicings will all come together and I will make a quantum leap. However until that day I need to make some concessions to convention. So I've been practicing playing blind. I was watching a youtube video of Justin Johnson playing slide guitar on a guitar made from a skateboard, and I saw in the sidebar a related video that featured in the screenshot a 12-bar blues in A. It had a quick-change in the 2nd bar and the last four bars seemed different than what I'm used to, but I played it fine...except I muffed the occasional D chord.

I was practicing my blue modes today. Modes always have one fly in the ointment: only half of them work well in the tuning you're using. Obviously I can play all six modes in either tuning, but 3 of them work well and three of them require a shifting of the home row. Since I was using a linear tuning today I was using the easy modes, the ones starting with the tonic, the dominant, and the submediant. These work well since they remain on their home row and that allows for quicker picking. The thing that also is so wonderful is the fact that the tonic and submediant both have a root note on the G string, whereas the sebmediant and dominant also have roots on the A string. So it is child's play (unless the child is uncommonly dim) to link these modes up into one big, massive blues solo.

I also have changed the way I've played these. I have always just played the blues scales (minor pentatonic, plus the diminished fifth). I now see that there is a benefit to playing the pentatonic scales instead. With the blues scale, you finger all the notes. With the pentatonic scale you finger the five notes of the scale and bend into the diminished fifth for added flavor. It makes the blue-note more special.
 
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epiphany

I have had an epiphany of sorts. I went and purchased a six-pack of scottish ale from the local brewery and I was sitting on my porch looking across the street. There used to be three old houses there, until the slum lord, John Riddle, decided to demolish them. Quite a shame. Old houses are nice although those ones have housed many a heroin junkie. Anyway, the lots are now fallow with nothing going on there except for a little black cat chasing lightning bugs.

Somehow it occurred to me that I was being too restrictive in my approach, like the cat chasing elusive flashes of bug-asses. I had only been playing the blue modes which were easiest to play across all four strings. In linear tuning I can also play the 3-string modes of the re-entrant as well. So, it flashed upon me: do both. I can, for example, play the submediant mode from the g-string and when I end up on the A string I can switch over to a tonic mode a la re-entrant tuning. I can play it ascendingly and end up on the C string. From there, 5 of the 12 shapes have roots on the C string. I can now improvise endlessly--well, as close to endless as 12 shapes will allow.
 
String change. I haven't been too happy with my baritone strings. I had been using a set of Living Water strings. I didn't care for them because they were buzzy and because the name sounded like a non-denominational Bible-thumper sect. So I decided to get some Southcoast strings. After what seemed like clicking through a million screens on their website, it was determined that I should get the Light Medium Gauge Linear Set (LML-NW).

I put them on and I don't have much to say at this point. You know how new strings go. They won't they in tune...for a while. After they stretch out, maybe I'll have something to say. At this point, the only thing I think I noticed is that the bass string seemed dull. Somewhat quiet and subdued.
 
I haven't updated in a while because what I've been doing hasn't seemed too exciting. Of course I have been practicing pentatonic scales and worked out playing some Thelonious Monk, but the bulk of the practice has been doing rather mundane chord stuff. Today I was just practicing hitting with B chord without looking. I can always do it by touch (bouncing a fret down from the nut) but I don't know if that's cheating. Regardless it isn't the fastest way. If I don't use touch and just place my hand on the fretboard, sometimes I get a B, sometimes a Bb or C.

Tomorrow I plan on using the metronome and some random lists of chords and practice transitioning. I can transition between easy chords like A to F to C to G. However I'm not sure that I can follow suit with other chords. So I'm going to practice random intervals to ensure that I'm not just memorizing certain intervals and thinking that I am therefore good at transitioning.
 
I have to annotate a few things for the sake of posterity lest I forget them altogether. I did tinker around with becoming a more accomplished beginner by practicing chords with a metronome. However the thing I spent more time with was my blues scales.

I would swear with my hand on a stack of bibles that I prefer my low G ukulele. However today I pulled out my kamaka and played righteously on it. The 1st three strings have a certain advantage to them. I was playing with pentatonics and I can found that I can play continuously at will. I don't care what 15 year old keyboard warriors say on youtube; pentatonic scales are great. They are kind of like the bread and butter of music and someone like Matthias Jabs shouldn't be criticized for using them. That's like calling Robert Frost a one-trick pony because all he does is continuously alter vowels and consonants. Although I am firmly in the Uli Jon Roth camp when it comes to Scorpions imbroglios, I shall not suffer Jabs to be subjected to obloquy for simply using pentatonics.

I was using the pentatonic scales starting with the tonic note, with the supertonic note, with the submediant note, and the subdominant note. (I know guitar players have names like shape1 and stuff like that, but I don't know any of that stuff. So I just use my own terminology).

I started off playing G from the 7th fret simply because I can with a long-necked tenor. Now, when played on the 1st three strings, the tonic scale has a root on the C and the A string. The supertonic scale also has its root on the A string. Thus, one can ascend with the tonic scale, descend with the supertonic. Once you're done with the supertonic, if you go up a third on the C string you hit the root of the scale and receive some resolution. That root note is also the first note of the tonic scale so that you can now do it all over again! So you see you can do the tonic/supertonic loop with a lot of phrases, expressions, repetitions, etc and create an endless blues solo.

The other thing that is awesome is the submediant scale. It has a root on the C string like the tonic. Therefore once you get back to that root note from either descending on the tonic scale or re-arriving from the tonic/supertonic loop, you can then play the submediant.

Here's the last cool thing from the submediant, you can move from it to the subdominant shape with some difficulty. The submediant has a root on the C string. The subdominant has a root on the E string. Therefore I just switched root notes. I mean, the submediant is using the G note on the 7th fret and the subdominant is using the G note on the 3rd fret. To link up these two scales I just jumped from G to G and it worked really well.

Basically I was doing the tonic scale, moving up to the supertonic, then moving down to the submediant, then further down to the subdominant. If you're keeping score that is playing frets 1-13 in one loop. I feel pretty good about playing the fretboard. I may flunk Uncle Rod's online test for beginners because I still do not play chords without peeking at my hands, but I am doing well under my own criteria.

I know this may not be understandable to anyone else and I regret that, but this note is more to me so that I don't forget what I'm doing by tomorrow. And that's not as outre as it sounds. I am very much a zen player or a Dadaist. I really like some lick that I stumble upon and although I have sheet music, I never score what I'm doing and within 24 hour I can't remember what I spontaneously achieved briefly before.
 
Today was more basic work. My B chord is slowing me up. So I just played a lot of B. I formed the B without looking and transitioned to the D chord, the only that sounds good to me.
 
Today I practiced my chords. I played random chord progressions, and I was able to do it without looking and with speed. I was using my metronome and it was set to adagio, I think, and I changed chords every other chime. I am still getting over the bad habit I set for myself in holding the ukulele. I practiced standing today and the angle is very different with the strap. It is good because I cannot see anything but I am still re-learning the angles.

The same holds true of playing modes. My fingers tend to drift because my wrist is situated differently.

I also played around with my brass slide and an open C tuning. I played both a nice little shuffle as well played around the 12th fret, doing some stuff that I have culled from cigar box guitar videos
 
I have been having fun with some open-chord tunings. The latest I have been toying with is the A. I like it because it is orderly. Going from left to right (as any sane person would) the ukulele strings are the root note, the third, the fifth, and the root note, an octave up.

I have noticed that some people are obsessed with their strings and are unapologetic about their fickleness. I don't really understand it. To me that's my ukulele's voice. I would never change someone's voice; you just deal with the quirks. Same thing with the ukulele. I keep to the brand of strings that they first had because the change would be unsettling. You get used to a uke's voice. It is part of its personality and part of the thing you come to love. For example, my kamaka came with nylon strings. I prefer fluorocarbon, but I wouldn't change it because that's my kamaka. In a way, I wouldn't want it any other way. I like having to adapt and compromise. For instance, nothing sound more boring to me than the concept of the jihadist's reward in heaven of 97 virgins. That's too easy. Give me a spirited, sassy woman. I have changed strings on my Oscar Schmidt and it doesn't seem to have a personality anymore. I remember what it used to sound like and what it sounds like now, and those things aren't the same. Of course, my string-theory is predicated on having quality instruments which come with quality strings that deviate from each other only in nuances. I'm not talking about getting a crappy $50 ukulele that has intonation problems. I'm talking about getting, e.g., a Mainland mango tenor which come with Guadalupe strings, I think. Those strings would be different from my favorites, Brown Worths, but I would embrace that difference. Or, If getting the ukulele by mail, I would request that they put brown Worths on it before sending it.
 
today I practiced on the right hand almost exclusively. I worked on a pattern based on Elizabeth Cotten. It seemed well-suited to me because she picks like I do. I tend to use my first two fingers in the picado style, although it should be called pecado because of the sinful way in which I slaughter that flamenco style. Anyway...the Cotten picking didn't seem to click with me. It is somewhat syncopated and after an hour or so of practice I did make some headway, but I don't really know where to accent the phrase. I tried accenting different beats and none of it worked really well. I should probably just go watch some Elizabeth Cotten videos and copy what she does.

Okay, I watched a video and I wanted to update for posterity's sake. First of all, she is doing so much more with melody that it was hard to isolate what I wanted at this stage. However I did notice that I had misremembered. I was pinching the G and A strings whereas you're supposed to pinch the C and A strings. That will definitely make a difference when I practice again. For I was pinching the G string and then immediately going into a roll starting with the G string; it made things awkward.
 
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I did more right-hand practice today. I am getting along with the Cotten picking and for whatever reason my clawhammer technique is also working even though I hadn't practiced it for a while. Some of the notes were less than crisp, but I was hitting all the strings. I suffered for my art today. I practiced on the porch for a span of time that it takes to smoke two pipes. It must have been an hour or so. And my ankles are all bitten-up with mosquito bites.
 
I just played around today. I went to the brewery and had two stouts and read some of Aratos' Phainomena. I came home and played some clawhammer. I am up to the third song in my clawhammer book. Then I just played around with G minor pentatonic, playing between frets 1 and 13 with several shapes. G is my favorite because it starts in the middle at the 7th fret and then I can either work my way down to the first fret or play up to the 13th.
 
making progress in every direction. However I have been pre-occupied with certain strains of thought. Through inference I have ascertained that many people have song books which they compile. That underscores the great divide between myself and others very starkly because I find nothing more boring than learning songs. My basic viewpoint is: what's the point? Yes, I could go measure by measure and perfect my emulation of some other player, but then what? Learn another song. I need some bigger motivation for myself. I want to be learning something that I can apply to myself. I am studying clawhammer technique and some elementary jazz stuff. Eventually I would like to be able to take something jazzy like a minor seven flat nine chord and play a chord melody using clawhammer.

It is weird, but I don't want to write songs myself. I think I want to learn to improvise. I want to have more Dadaist moments when I create something with my ukulele, enjoy, and forget it as that moment passes like ripples in a stream. If anyone ever reads this, know that I am not being critical. I realize that I am the odd one here and that everyone else practically is of one accord in terms of learning songs.

I actually do have a book--only it isn't a song book; it is a book of things I want to remember in order to express myself. It is always morphing, but I'll list out what is currently in there just for giggles

1. a fretboard chart and a piece of paper with what looks like blues turnarounds with tasty chords (minor 7's, 9's dims).
2. charts of pentatonic scales in all positions for low and high G
3. dom9 chords with and without the root note
4. major and minor dom7b5
5. variations on the dom7 (sus4 and augmented)
6. maj7
7. add6
8. diminished and augmented chords
9. sus chords
10. add 9
11. modes
12. a couple of pages devoted to useful movable chords
13. a chart of major and minor triads as well as major and minor dom7
14. Then I have some sheet music that annotates for all keys some scales: chromatic, major, natural/harmonic/melodic minors, pentatonic major and minor
15. a few pages of strange scales that I found on a heavy metal website about twenty years ago
16. What appears to be my transcription of a Thelonious Monk song as well as a Beatles song

That was interesting in a way. It kind of encapsulated what music is to me--at least for now.
 
ukulele records and a tenor guitar

I purchased two ukulele records. One I liked and one I was meh about. First I suppose I should give some context. I don't like Jake's music. Don't get me wrong; it would take twenty years to even be in the same ballpark as him. However, I find him perfectly beautiful, perfectly flawless, and perfectly boring. It is like this: There is this absolutely gorgeous woman I know and she does nothing for me, because she is too perfect. When you start evaluating all her facets, it goes like this:

face 10/10
eyes 10/10
nose 10/10
hip-to-waist ratio ***yawn*** 10/10
hands ****stretch, stretch yawwwwn**** 10/10
neck ****I wonder if it will be humid today--what was I think of, oh yeah***neck 10/10
etc

it is just boring. If there were some flaws/deviations, then you could use your mind and higher faculties and counter-balance and adjust and amend your overall estimation.

So that's where I'm coming from. I need something with some raw patches and some quirks, and some individuality and risks.

With that said I bought Lyle Ritz's two albums and I was like "veni vidi vici"; next please! I mean, like the ridiculously gorgeous woman of my acquaintance, there was nothing wrong with Ritz. It was masterful, very appropriate, and not very exciting. Someone would probably like it if they like smooth jazz. I don't. In fact my wife's eyebrows were a bit raised when I played these. She knows me and knows my tastes run more along the lines of Coltrane, Monk, or even Captain Beefheart.

The other album I received was the music of Ben Carr. I actually had feelings about this album which was a marked improvement over the Ritz albums which I didn't like or dislike. Carr's music made choices and took chances. Some of those things I liked, some I didn't--but I at least had to respect the fact the music was an entity with defined boundaries that I had to accept. For example, he had some reggae songs which I found monotonous. However his whimsy also included some funk, some blues, some very buttery riffs put into relief with some discordant chord progressions and arrangements.


Lastly, I was stupid and bought a Blueridge tenor guitar. It was stupid because my wife is going to kill me. I don't really know what to do. At this point in time my plan is to get it before she sees it and hide it. I know that is assinine, but it is all I have right now.
 
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Oh my goodness. The sun is coming up. I have stayed up all night dinking around with the baritone. What have I been doing? Well, tonight it was primarily jazz progressions. I have Glen Rose's two workbooks and although I have cherry-picked from them in the past, I thought I should systematically go through them and cull from them everything I should. Anyone who has read this thread knows that I do not desire to play jazz standards, or any standards for that matter. However I do want to be able to have at my disposal the ability to improvise with tastier chords. So I am practicing some rudimentary progressions--or groupings. I am now comfortable with changing from min. dom7 to dom9 to maj7. The only thing that is noticably lacking is my understanding what key I am in. I understand the relative positions of the different chords, but I don't know what they are. I suppose the minor dom7 and maj7 won't be that hard since their roots are on the A and G strings, respectively. However the dom9 chord is rootless. You just have to memorize that s**. You have to know that E dom9 is on the first fret and then deduce the rest from there.

I am also playing "Sunshine of your love" just in time for the eclipse. The arrangement primarily uses the movable C-shape along with some riffing with the pentatonic scale.

I think what I'm going to do is drink a beer (I don't usually have them around but I'm on holiday) and have a pipe, let the sun lull me to sleep, and then go to bed.
 
I have been playing ii-V-I progressions. These jazz chords are pretty rough on the hands. I suppose it is what you are used to. However, I am not used to some of these barre chords and my hand is feeling strained.

I practiced some clawhammer stuff that I could already do, although I didn't actually challenge myself to move forward

I impressed my wife. She asked me if I knew that Joe Walsh song. I said I did and I just played the head of the song...guessing that it was just a pentatonic scale. So I have achieved one of my goals, which was to be good enough to impress people who don't play.
 
some updates. My tenor guitar came. Oddly enough, my wife didn't pitch a fit. I suppose at this point she has become philosophic about it all. She probably thought, "at least it wasn't a $3000 koolau or a $4000 Lichty ukulele."

I tuned it like a baritone and play it like a baritone. And I play the baritone like I play a tenor. I have had my baritone for quite a long time now and still haven't taken even a step to learn its chords. I just play it. If I think about it, I am conscious that the G chord I am playing is actually a D chord...however I don't think about it. So the tenor guitar is nice. It is rough on my index finger and the skin right above the cuticle of the ring finger of my strumming hand gets sore--I guess that is the place from which I strum. It does get loud though.

I saw a video that made me think. It had that young ukulele player that won that talent contest. Long story, short: she said that it was impossible to distinguish songs without their lyrics because all songs use the same chords. Allowing for hyperbole and for facetiousness, she's probably right. No matter what the song is, you can probably use a C-F-G progression to pitch the music up or down as you need. This is especially true since the voice is doing most of the work and the music is in the background.

That doesn't apply to me. That applies to songs--viz., things that are sung--and I never sing. I work on getting my ukuleles melodic. To that end, here's what I've been doing.

I have been working on what I generically call my Blue Modes. They are just scales made from the blues scale. What differentiates them is where you start on the blues scale. Obviously, there are six scales because there are six notes in the blues scale. To keep it clear (in my mind,at least) I refer to each of my blue modes by the name of their degree: i.e., the tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, and submediant.

I have been focusing on the blues in G as a case study because it work well with the fret markers. And I have been focusing on the tonic, supertonic, subdominant, and submediant shapes because they seem to work well together, having roots on the C and A strings. The obvious step to take is to work in the mediant and dominant shapes. The problem with them is that they work better with a low G. Since I have been enamored with my re-entrant kamaka I have been playing my blue modes with the first three strings only. I need to get my low G ukulele which can obviously play the first three strings as well as a different set of scales using all four strings. That is going to be key. I need to be able to shift from linear to re-entrant tuning to get the most out of all this.

An example, I could start of with a tonic shape (linear tuning) which has a root note on the E string. Other shapes with a root on the E string are supertonic (linear) or mediant, subdominant, dominant (re-entrant). So if I can switch my thinking from linear to re-entrant, then I get three more options.

This begs the question, why all this fuss about root notes? I have been told that root notes are kind of like end punctuation. It ends the phrase. To continue with this sentence-analogue: all my musical sentences are grammatically simple sentences. They have to be; I'm just learning. However, maybe I don't want to end my phrase. Maybe I want a compound or a complex sentence rather than a simple sentence. In that case, I wouldn't wait for a root note. I would just move from shape to shape at will. The danger of that is to appear to be rambling.

That's the state of my mind right now.
 
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