my ukulele progress

I've been practicing the problematic strums: clawhammer and travis.

I made a bit of a discovery. I can now play D minor in the regular fashion. I had always played it by playing an F but flattening my ring finger so that it spread over the G and C strings. The problem with this technique is that it is very tempermental. Depending on factors which I am not quite aware of, somedays it works and somedays it doesn't. Because of gaining competency in other areas, I now have, unbeknownst to me, the ability to play it with three fingers, which is an improvement because by playing it that way no string is ever muted. I never would have guessed at this kind of cross-over. Oh well. I wonder when the m7#5 chords will magically appear in my repetoire.

There have been some fussy threads around here lately. Fussy sounds bad. Let's call it exacting. I haven't taken part in them because I don't really feel I have anything to add. They don't seem important to me. To wit, they are which A to tune to and at which fret do you tune. These topics do nothing for me but cause me to shrug. I can't even say that I am overly fastidious in my tuning. On my tuner, the pointer points straight up at 12 o'clock when it is pitch perfect. But to be honest I don't even fuss with the pegs as long as the pointer is somewhere between 11 o'clock and one o'clock. As for the 432 A...I think it is mainly psychological. If it floats your boat, go for it. We all do things that are negligible or even untrue because it makes us happy. I have some idiosyncratic views on strings that someone could probably scientifically disprove, but they organize my outlook and make me happy to follow them as precepts. Live and let live.
 
In an old steno notebook I found some investment notes and chord progressions.

There are two versions of what appears to be 12-bar blues in Bb. It also contains what I recognize as a Be-Bop version of the same. I scratched that out because it is too busy for my tastes.

What follows is somewhat puzzling. The first thing, at least, appears to be a turnaround. It is an 8-chord progression which could be used in the final two bars of the blues if you gave each chord one beat. Here it is:

I /\
vi -7
ii -7
V 7
iii -7
VI 7
ii -7
V 7

That seems a bit rococo, but I played a blues in C that I know and inserted that progression into the final bars and it works, especially since it has the ii-V-I built into it. It is a bit desultory but it does work.

Don't ask me what's on the rest of the page because I couldn't say for sure. It is all nice in a listless jazzy kind of way but I don't know if they're turnarounds, intros, free-standing songs, or what. For example, at the bottom of the page there is a 10 chord progression:

C/\, C7, F/\, F-7, E-7, A7, D-9, G13, C6/9, C/\

Play it. It is nice. Admittedly I dislike the finger-spread of the F-7 and I actually had to consult my binder to refresh my memory regarding a D-9. Aside from that it is a pretty little progression. I don't know why I wrote it down but it was fun to find it and play it.

Tomorrow I think I should have a right-hand day. I am feeling like pulling out the re-entrant Kamaka and practicing some clawhammer as well as some arpeggios.
 
I've been getting lazy. I have just been sitting down and playing without a strap. For me that isn't too good because when I do that I tend to tilt the fretboard up so that I can see it. That, in turn, is bad because it then prevents me from playing by touch. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that, except that it is one of my goals not to do that. Therefore, for me it is bad. Plus, playing while standing is better. We sit down way too much--so much so, that our hip flexors and back muscles get contracted and cramped. And if you ever play in public, it will probably be whilst standing, so it is better just to get used to it. In fact, the custom ukulele I commissioned doesn't even have fret markers because I shouldn't be looking at them anyways. I could go on for an extended period of time about what I like about straps, but I will just end with saying that I also like the rhythm of moving and playing.

Life derailed this, the penultimate day of my holiday weekend. Instead of practicing as I had hoped, I just squeezed in some wanking around with augmented chords and in narrowing down a list of turnarounds I found. Some of them were impractical, or too blase, or not to my taste. I kept four of them.

1. iii7 VI7 ii7 V7 that's a good, solid turnaround
2. I/\ bIII7 II7 bII7 this one is a bit goofy with that descending chromatic sound
3. I/\ bII0 ii7 V7 this one's the same as #1 except the 11th bar has that nice diminished chord
4. I/\ bII/\
 
I just bought a brand new Blackstar amplifier and it is completely awesome! It is 75 watts and totally solid state. You pick from six tubes to get the head-room, sag, and bias of that tube. Of course, I stuck to the EL84 and 6L6 because they are so traditional to the blues. To be honest, there isn't a lot of difference in those settings. It is more of a tonal nuance. It also has built in distortion, overdrive, reverb, phase, flang, delays, and chorus. In fact, the only things I could possibly want that isn't in the amp is some fuzz and maybe some boost. For my purpose, being a bedroom-practicer--although I never play in the bedroom--this thing is excellent. Maybe if I were allowed to turn the volume above 2, to play a gig or something, then I would hear some flaws...but as it is, it is perfect.

I played around with the amp for a spell, playing stuff I normally play but with obscene levels of gain, overdrive, and flange. I tuned my uke to an open C and practiced a ton of slide.

That was the fun stuff, then I had to get back to basics: I did an hour of re-calibrating practice with standing practice. I need to re-train my muscles because the angles are different. So I just played four fret blocks trying to actually hit the strings. Once I nailed that, I practiced the phrygian mode. This is going to take a while.


Now that I have an awesome amp, I need a totally electric instrument. I am about to order a 4 string cigar box guitar, tuned like a baritone ukulele. I have to special order the fret markers because this luthier is a guitar maker and they have that inexplicable perversity of putting a dot on the ninth fret! Have they no sense of history?

The sequence of open, 3, 5, 7, 10 is the most essentially American sound that exists. It is the minor pentatonic. The sound the Africans brought with them and which captivated their captors. It is the backbone of the blues, jazz, R & B, and rock and roll. It is the sound that skiffle bands such as the beatles, rolling stones, and Jimmy Page all sought and which they used to invade the airwaves of the United States.

And it is American, or at least something outside of the European experience. I remember many years ago reading a R.L. Stevenson novel--I think it was Black Arrow--and in it a character was described as a generally good person although when he whistled it was a bit too negroid. And what is negroid? It is having that good old flatted third and seventh that is so much a part of the pentatonic. I had a similar personal experience when I visited a friend for a PhD study group, he had a harpsichord. I sat down and improvised a bit and shocked my friend. Apparently, I use a lot more black keys than he does in his lessons, which undoubtably were along European lines.

So we need to stand up for the ten-spot! Just play the dots using the 10 (flatted 7th) and then the 9 (sixth). That 9 is so meh. So mayonnaise.
 
I kind of fell off the grid for a while. I have been playing, just not annotating.

On Monday I expect the arrival of my new "baritone." It is an electric cigar box guitar with a humbucker pickup and the strings tuned like a baritone, DGBE. However, the last communication I had with the builder indicated that he couldn't tune it that way. I don't know what that means. Does that mean with the strings he had on hand that the Chicago-tuning wouldn't work? Surely one can get DGBE, or any other tuning for that matter. We'll see. I am fussy with my instruments voice. I don't like it to change once it is established. I bought some Martin strings, MLJ13 (Retro medium/light). I hope they'll work. They are apparently acoustic guitar strings, but they are nickel and steel and I assume they will work with the magnetic coils. If not, I'll get some bona fide electric strings.

I have been occupying this space for almost a year now and I looked back at my goals. I am making progress on most of them. Every day there seems to be a new ukulele distraction, but I have been relatively faithful to my goals. The exception to that is my mastery of the fretboard. In my conception of what a musician should be, knowing the instrument is essential. And I don't really know my instrument despite how much time I have spent with it. For example, if someone said play the Lokrian mode in C...I know that I need to do the Lokrian pattern starting on the fifth fret (in linear tuning). However if halfway someone said "Stop! what was that note?" I wouldn't know. I could probably use the pentatonic markers on the fretboard to figure out the note, but I don't actually know it. To address this shortcoming I have been playing the blues modes in Ab, my favorite key. To do all five modes requires the entire fretboard, frets 1-14. And I am being hyper-aware of the note I am playing, so that when I am done doing this I will then know those notes. Combining these notes with those of the marked frets, I will then know the majority of the places on the fretboard for the first 15 frets. I suppose if I wanted to...after I am done with Ab, I could just go up a fret and do the A minor pentatonic from frets 2-15. That would give me a different set of notes to memorize throughout the fretboard. That being said, I just love Ab. It is a scale of all black keys: Ab, Cb, Db, Eb, Gb. I like it because it is the lowest key that doesn't use open strings. I hate open strings. You cannot bend open strings or mute them. Open strings screw up the patterns. Plus, the chords in an Ab blues progression are easy, as long as you mute the 4th string on the Ab.
 
I have Arpeggio Meditations For Ukulele and it got me meditating about arpeggios. I was thinking why can't I arpeggiate extended chords? In this fashion I can play things that I cannot usually play because of having four strings. It is actually an awesome idea (I am sure--absolutely sure--it has already been done but I came up with it as I sat in my library).

So I took a crazy chord: dom7b5#9, and mapped it out. What's nice is that it is, of course, moveable so that you can play progressions with it. It is also great for improv because you can bust that little five note shape out anywhere. You can also compose with it, as if it were a little scale by using those notes with repetitions and phrasings.

It is pretty fun and I was about to map out some more variations when I thought: s**, I can't flawlessly play all my first position chords without looking and I don't know my fretboard. I have to get back to some basics.
 
Upon waking up I followed up on my observations of yesterday. I practiced some "fly aways," an exercise I remember from the late Ukulele Mike in which you practice chording by making the chord and then send the hand away from the neck and kind of shake out the muscle memory and repeat. I focused on the white-key chords. The E isn't quite there and there's no need to even talk about the B. Ignoring that praeteritio I think I will note that if I practiced making the A with the middle and ring fingers, then I could slide it down and have my B and Bb. I could do that but it is kind of cheating. It is like using a capo: it is fine if it is an artistic choice, but if it is a necessity, then you suck and need to practice more.

I then played around with m7b5 arpeggios. I think I've found my sound. I really like these, and by 'these' I mean these non-central chords in arpeggio form. I guess it is kind of jazzy. I like the way the notes almost sound random but with an ever so slight peppering of intentionality. I also like how it doesn't really sound like anyone else (perhaps for a good reason). The challenge, to my ear, of the ukulele is that everything sounds the same. It is as if Nickelback invented the ukulele. Maybe it is because of the timbre of the ukulele or maybe there is an accepted circle of chords and shapes that most arrangers use. I don't know. All I know is that when I hear regular ukulele music I immediately think I am in an elevator. That's one of the motivations for why I do what I do. I fingerpick and focus on techniques borrowed from blues guitar just to exorcise the ghosts of George Formby and Tiny Tim.
 
I mapped out more arpeggio patterns. The major and minor triads in arpeggio form are nice, but nothing to write home about. It is easy to use them. I played a blues progression in Ab using the arpeggios instead of strumming. Some of the more heavily stacked chords don't lend themselves to my style. For example something like a m11 with its six notes require sliding up the A string after you run out of space (especially on a re-entrant tuning). This is obviously doable and I've seen people like Guthrie Govan use legato to hit those 9 or 11 notes with his picking hand. However cool it looks, I just don't want that right now. I am looking for things that are within the span of a hand so that I can use them as building blocks, like scales. My favorite is still the one I started with originally, 7b5#9. The #9 is the thing I like the most. Without it, the 0 chord is just kind of there. I like the dim7 a little more than the 0, but it still doesn't hold a candle to my favorite.

I think I suffered some PTSD today. I was playing around with my 75 watt amp and tenor guitar. I accidentally twirled my master volume knob instead of my effects knob, and I initiated the loudest sound known to man. At least it was the loudest sound my wife and cats have ever heard. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I'll swear that the sound waves actually moved my hair like a stiff breeze would. At least I now know that my fuzz pedal and amp might have something to say when my drunk neighbor starts singing Bob Seger.
 
It is nearing the one-year anniversary of this ukulele thread and I have to surmount a few obstacles soon (skin cancer surgery, taxes, etc). So I don't think I'll make any more progress toward my goals. I may as well admit it. In fact, I cannot really say that I met any of my goals fully. I made progress both toward them as well as in other unexpected areas. However, none of them get checked off the list. So, in order not to be a failure, I am making the executive decision to make these goals the end-point for a two-year effort. In that way, I haven't failed after one year; I have made significant progress and am halfway done with my plan. Let's get concrete about what we're talking about:

1. continue perfecting the basic chords: all major and minor triads, as well as their corresponding 7 and m7 versions. By "perfecting" I of course mean knowing how to fret them. Moreover I need to do it without looking. This will involve not being lazy. My nice ukuleles are in their humidified cases. Rather than get them out and strap them up, I grab my desk-side baritone and play it on my lap. When I put things on my lap, I tend to tilt it up to see what I'm doing. Furthermore, lap angles are vastly different from strapped angles. I need to stick to the latter.

2. I really need to continue finding a way to know the fretboard. My Kamaka and baritone have 19 frets and I need to learn them. Something that didn't work was learning the frets with flash cards. I memorized the notes on all four strings for the first 12 frets, but that information doesn't unpack. I can't break the unit of the fret in my mind. What I mean by that is this: I can tell you the four notes contained on the 9th fret, but if someone says where's the C on your E string, I don't know. I think I have found a more profitable exercise in playing pentatonic modes thoughtfully. So that I remember the notes of the fretboard. I am going to keep working that angle and see if it doesn't stick this time around.

3. I need to finish some books that I acquired in quest of forging my style.
a. How to Play Blues Ukulele
b. Clawhammer Ukulele
c. Fingerstyle Ukulele
d. Arpeggio Meditations for Ukulele

Those books are in a descending order of needs, based on how long I've been dilly-dallying with them. It is noteworthy to see that all the books have to do with style more than content and that reflects my interests. I recently also order James Hill's new book, Duets For One, to make some progress on fingerpicking.

4. Speaking of which, I should say that I am still committed to developing fingerstyle picking. As the books above indicate, that means clawhammer and Travis picking.

5. I want to continue perfecting my use of modes, especially the five modes of the pentatonic minor.

I think that should be all that I commit to, especially since I need to get to bed. It is 0430 and I need to meet someone at 1200 to pick up my cigar box guitar and my tenor guitar which were being repaired. The cigar box I had re-wired and the tenor guitar (it turns out) had nothing wrong with it. The luthier thinks it must be my cable. So I bought an obscenely expensive Mogami cable. It is weird but my two cheap cables work on my Oscar Schmidt and my Cigar Box, but with my blueridge it only picks up chords and not fingerpicking. I could obviously participate in some Ed Sheeran strum-along--but what kind of friggin' life would that be? It reminds me of those Paul Simon lyrics:
Oh, oh, what a night
Oh what a garden of delight
Even now that sweet memory lingers
I was playing my guitar
Lying underneath the stars
Just thanking the Lord
For my fingers,
For my fingers

6. Okay, I just added this goal. I want to stop being sophmoric with my slide. I need to hunker down and practice some basics whilst standing and get natural with that tool.
 
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I learned a few lessons this week...which cost me some money as most lessons in life do.

1. I received my cigar box guitar back from my luthier all re-wired and sounding great. I was re-tuning it and snapped the G string. I think I was trying to get it to a G one octave higher than it was intended for. I'm just used to our ukuleles and I was shooting for that customary pitch not remembering that it was a guitar. I use Martin Retros for the cigar box and I think those run around $7, if memory serves me.

2. I also sent my tenor guitar to the luthier to get "fixed" because it wasn't picking up my finger picking on the amp. However, the luthier said there was nothing wrong with it! He said to try new cables. So I bought an expensive hi-grade cable--I think it was called Mogabi or something Japanese-sounding. I was still having the symptom. Then it dawned on me: I was the problem. Here's what I figured. Electric instruments are different than acoustic. On the electric instruments, a certain threshold of vibration must be met in order for the sound to register. So I just plucked harder and it worked. I suppose the problem was intensified because I never have and never will use a plectrum. So that new elite cable was for naught, but since I have a great cable, I'll just keep it.

On to what I've been doing. To practice what I consider the foundational chords (maj, min, dom7, min7) I started doing that old jazz chestnut, the 2-5-1-6 progression. The voicings I use are ii min7, V7, i maj7, vi min. Therefore this progression practices everything I want except for major chords and if I need help with major chords at this stage in the game, I may as well sell the ukuleles.

I noticed that in some keys this progression doesn't sound so good. I suppose it must be because of the inversion of the chord that our ukuleles use. I suppose I could try to find a different version of the offensive chord, but then the pitches would be out of synch. That's fine when it is intentional, but when it is compulsory it doesn't sound so hot. More likely than not, I'll just except it as-is. I will say that I really like the progression in F...or whatever the key is on a baritone when you think you're playing F. Isn't the formula to go up a 4th to get the real key name? If that's so, then I guess that would be B. I'll have to try it on my tenor ukulele and see if I still like it. Anyway, this progression in "F" sounds really warm unlike, say, E where the notes are a bit more strident, or what people who prefer their non-linear tunings call bright.

This made me think, instead of playing this progression chromatically through the keys, why don't I do a progression of the progression? For example do the 2--5-1-6 progression in C, and then F, and then Bb, etc? It could make a little song, especially if I repeated or returned to certain keys periodically--kind of like resolution. I would think it would sound like when you travis pick or clawhammer a blues progression.
 
I've been playing around with my 2-5-1-6 progressions in my spare time.

I've actually found a chord I really like. If you play this progression in G you need an Am7. I have never liked the standard Am7 with all the open strings. I have never liked the sound. Plus I don't like the lack of control that open chords possess. In the context of this progression, the standard open Am7 chord did not sound right. So I just took the standard Abm7 (1322) and moved it up a fret. Now I have an Am7 that sounds right. Even though this is an elementary concept, moving a movable chord, I have to give credit to Glen Rose's ukulele jazz workbooks for putting this thought in my head. In those workbooks he uses this movable chord which I have only previously used for my Abm7.

The only other thing I learned recently is to use the rootless version of the F#maj7 because the version with a root is impossible to play. Even James Hill, as erudite as he is, calls this shape the hardest one in ukuleledom. The rootless F#maj7 is just a Bmin. It sounds okay as long as you don't linger too long on the chord because...well, you know how rootless chords sound: they always seem a bit lifeless. Take, for example, the island D7 which is played instead of a real D7. It always sounds so meh. So the F#maj7 is less than optimal but if you just play it and move on to the next chord in the progression, it isn't very noticeable.
 
I noticed something today. After playing around with the aeolian mode today, I looked at youtube which offered me a video based on my ukulele interest. It was an evidently popular ukulele channel and the person was filming herself trying to learn to strum faster by watching James Hill. Obviously she was hamming it up a bit, but she isn't a very good musician...at least, by my definition. And that's the interesting part. It is easy to parse what being a musician means in so many ways. That person is patently a successful tutorial-maker and therefore is proficient at cowboy chords and singing even though her technical skills stop very shortly after that. I wonder if she can even play individual notes. However, I'm not here to cast aspersions; I would be equally unsuited to playing a 21 Pilots strum-a-long. I merely wanted to annotate how vastly different our definitions of musicianship can be. It makes me reflect on what is my definition and am I accomplishing it, or even approaching it? I'm not prepared to answer.
 
There's a thread going on which seems to be up my alley. It is about the circle of fifths. However, I am not stupid. That is just a flame-war trap. Here on this thread I feel I can be a little more forthright since I am not responding to anyone. I love my circle of fifths. When I travel all I bring with me is a ukulele in a hard case and my circle of fifths. I remember being mystified my musicians when I watched The Blues Brothers long ago. They were stuck in that country bar in Kokomo and they improvised. Someone said something like "we're playing in A" and everyone knew what that meant. Now that I have my circle of fifths, I know what it means. It means having a D and an E for the IV and V chords, and possibly the F#min for the vi. I use my circle all the time for composing and practicing...even for thinking about music.

However I am a little bit bigoted on the subject because I really, really dig music because it is so mathematical. That has always been my obsession: to understand the logic behind music and accordingly behind reality. For example, if someone plays an F, I can possibly know where the melody will go. There are many options, but they are after all finite. If someone really knew his or her scales and modes, it could be possible to say "after an F, the melody will have to go in one of seventeen directions." That has always been my idea. I suppose it is somehow related to Plato's Music of the Spheres. Regardless I do think music's logic is grand--like the progression of the seasons or the rising and setting of the sun. I have always thought that music should be a mandatory class in school because it is applied mathematics. Now I know people like to reject this idea and say that the music is all about the soul and personality and creativity. I don't think I am disagreeing with that. All I'm saying is that the circle of fifths is a grammar book of the soul. It can tell us why the song the soul came up with works for our ears.

I understand that this approach doesn't work for many. It shouldn't. It should all depend on the goals, I remember this from studying historiography. At the time I was wondering why are previous historians so stupid and why do we always have to be amending their ideas. Eventually I came to realize that neither we nor our forefathers were right or wrong. We just asked different questions. 100 years ago, people asked History to answer certain questions, and it did. We do the same. We have different questions because we are different. So...whether or not the circle of fifths is the answer to music for you, depends on the question you ask it. If you want to be a strummer and have the most fun with the least effort, the cicle of fifths isn't going to answer your question.
 
As an addendum to my previous post on the circle of fifths, I just found another cool thing about it. The VII chord of any key is diminished.

Like many other people, I never play a diminished chord. Rather I always play the diminished dom7 because they sound pretty much the same (except for C#) and the dom7 requires only one shape: I barre a fret and on the fret above it I fret the C and A strings with my middle and ring fingers. For convenience I call it #1 when the nut is the barre (e.g., G) and #2 when the first fret is the barre and #3 when the second fret is the barre.

Anyway, what's cool about the circle of fifths is that the VII chord cycles very systematically. If we start with C, as we always do, its VII chord is a #2. The next note in the circle is G; its VII is a #3. The next note is a D and its VII is a #1. You get the picture, all the VII chords go in a pattern of 1 then 2 then 3.

Just another sweet thing about the circle
 
Another addendum to my love-affair with my chord wheel (that's what I call my circle of fifths).

I have the bad habit of calling black-key notes by the name I first learnt them by. For example the note between C and D is always C# for me. I actually get confused by Gb...until I realize, 'oh you mean F#!'

So I am looking at my chord wheel and it tells me what I need to know as to whether I should use flats or sharps.

Starting at C, as usual, we have
C with no accidents
G with one, F#
D with two, F# and C#
A with three, C# and F# and G# (note that in the past I would have said Ab)
E with four, F# and G# and C# and D#
B with five, C# and D# and F# and G# and A# (n.b.: this scale could also be conceived as Cb but that requires 7 flats as opposed to five sharps, and we always go for less accidents)
F# with six, F# and G# and A# and C# D# and E#
Gb with six flats, Gb and Ab and Bb and Cb and Db and Eb (sc., Gb is the same as F#)
Db with five flats, Db and Eb and Gb and Ab and Bb (Db could be C# but that would require more accidents)
Ab with four flats, AB and Bb and Db and Eb (G# is theoretically possible as a key but it requires 6 sharps and one double-sharp)
Eb with three, Eb and Ab and Bb
Bb with two, Bb and Eb
F with one, Bb

There. That's that. I now can see how I was perceived as perverse in expressing some music. Jim Yates, I believe it was, gently prompted me toward Db versus C#. At the time I was "whatever" but now it isn't whatever; Db requires 5 flats and C# requires 7 sharps. It is needlessly complicated to talk of this scale as C# because who needs to remember more accidents than necessary.

On a related note, I just looked in my musical notebook and I had a sticky note listing the notes of the Ab minor pentatonic. It reads Ab, B, C#, Eb, F#. Why am I complicating matters by using both sharps and flats. Fretboards are visual insofar as you move up a fret to sharpen a note or down a fret to flatten it. It makes sense to ingrain the pattern of flatting OR sharping...but not both. Look at what I had written as I had written it: to play this pentatonic scale play an A but flat it, play a B, play a C but sharp it, play as E but flat it, play an F but sharp it. There is kind of a see-saw motion. It is so much better to list correctly Ab's notes: Ab B Db Eb Gb. Now, although it is the same thing, it is simpler; the hand it always going down a fret to flat. Now the note reads: play an A but flat it, play a B, play a D E G but flat them.

So, intellectually I am a new man. It is proven that I have been wrong. However it is still a major hurdle for me to jump. I have been incorrectly calling Db C# for over twenty years. It is going to be hard to re-conceptualize it.
 
I'm back from a 48 hr. trip up to Elderly instruments in Michigan. It is funny, but I spent almost no time with the ukuleles. I knew what I wanted a coffee-colored cedar-topped baritone. So I grabbed one, played a Bb major on it, and gave it to the guy to take to the techs to set it up. Meanwhile, I was more interested in the mandolins, the hybrids like the banjoleles, the double basses, and this thing that looked like some mixture of a bass guitar and a banjo whose tuning pegs were so large that you could have used them as pitons for mountain climbing. I suppose my thinking--if you want to call it that--was I play ukuleles; I know what they sound like: I know what they feel like. I don't need to strum a Kanilea because it is pretty much the same as any other ukulele--once you factor out some nuances and variables.

I did get a Kala baritone which I wasn't so keen to do because Kala is just so ubiquitous. However, once the disdain for the hoi polloi abated, I had to admit that it was a nice instrument. Since this is a new instrument I am going to try to stick with wound strings this time around. I currently dislike them very much. The D string isn't very bendy and my style is. And the treble strings are nylon. UGH! I've ordered some Guadalupe strings as I've heard good things about them. I am going to try to work through the disgust because, let's face it, after a while what is, is right. At first Low-G seemed weird. But nowadays re-entrant tuning sounds really tinny to me. Worst-case scenario: I cannot warm up to the wound strings--in which case, I just have to go back to my unwound string sets that I used with my previous baritone.
 
played around more with the baritone. It is a bit smaller than my previous one, although it is heavier and more substantial. The 15th fret is the highest position from which I can play a scale, and that's with the treble strings. If I start from the 4th string, the 15th fret is very awkward. So it is tight, but I can squeeze in the dominant shape of the pentatonic in the keys of Db, D, Eb, and E. The F is possible but it is such a stretch that it isn't really feasible under regular playing conditions.

The one thing I am noticing is that the surface of the fretboard isn't really designed right. Most baritone string sets include some wound strings. However the surface of the fretboard isn't smooth enough to allow wound strings to employ bends or vibrato without a scratchy sound. My tenor guitar has, of course, all metal strings but it has a glassy surface that allows the strings to be manipulated without the scratches. I will reserve judgment until I get my guadalupe strings and see how they perform, but the scratchiness is yet another reason to go back to unwound strings. All fluorocarbon strings also have a sound that I have grown to prefer. Most people say they sound "dead" but to me it is just more mellow or buttery. I like it better than the tinny, echoing sound of regular strings. Again, that just shows that we get used to whatever we do, so that maybe if I can just get used to wound strings, their tone will become the default sound to me and it will melt into the background.
 
Heck, I'm just trying to sort out basics like why notes on music don't seem to match strum patterns. For example "down in the valley"
I can see the single notes in some of the measures and a single strum for each, then I see three notes in a measure and it is also played with one strum. Makes absolutely no sense. I'm following the way it was played in Ukelele Way.
I can't figure out any kind of strum pattern for things I haven't heard before.
I don't want to just sit and strum random chords printed on the sheets. Besides, I really want to do picking, but figure I need to figure the basic stuff out first.
Making me nuts and I want to give up or figure I need a music theory class before I can play
 
Heck, I'm just trying to sort out basics like why notes on music don't seem to match strum patterns. For example "down in the valley"
I can see the single notes in some of the measures and a single strum for each, then I see three notes in a measure and it is also played with one strum. Makes absolutely no sense. I'm following the way it was played in Ukelele Way.
I can't figure out any kind of strum pattern for things I haven't heard before.
I don't want to just sit and strum random chords printed on the sheets. Besides, I really want to do picking, but figure I need to figure the basic stuff out first.
Making me nuts and I want to give up or figure I need a music theory class before I can play

Hello. Thanks for stopping by. This thread is usually just me rambling about me. I have a few things to say...as I always do! First of all, don't worry about theory. I dabble in it because that's my personality. However, I know money-earning musicians that know nothing about theory. So, I would advise learning about the theory that immediately involves what you're doing (if that's what you want) and not get bogged down with everything you don't know.

As for strumming, I would advise having more fun. It seems that people are kind of anal about strumming--which is necessary if you're trying to replicate the music from an arrangement. But I like to play more. I'll take something very essential, like a I vi IV V progression (C Amin F G7) and then just make my own strum...usually something rather long like DDDDUDUDUDU and then I'll add some pauses in there or add dynamics by playing certain beats louder or softer. So I'll just play this improvised strum pattern over the progression and make my own song. It is kind of a physical thing with you strumming toward yourself or away from yourself. What I find is that when you play from the heart like this, you learn certain things...things which can be combined with the things you learn from being more disciplined and playing arrangements.

For finger picking, I can tell you what I did. First, I learned to play scales. Second, I learned certain techniques. Third, I messed around with the techniques. For example, I learned about Travis picking patterns then I just picked the patterns over familiar chords like C F G. At the same time, I'm practicing the songs in the technique books using the techniques. So, just like with strumming I am being disciplined, but also learning from just improvising.

Lastly, for those specific questions you have about the Ukulele Way arrangement...isn't there a forum devoted to that? I haven't been there, but I hear there's a whole Ukulele Way website and I assume you could get help there. Don't get me wrong. I'm not just dismissing your problem. If you could forward the sheet music to me, I could tell you what I think is going on, but it would only be my interpretation. It seems it would be better to get the information straight from the horse's mouth...if it isn't too disrespectful to align James Hill with a horse.

So give yourself some slack. Do pursue your course, but have some easy fun. Play F and C7 back and forth using your own strum and rhythm and get into it and know that it sounds good (and there's no way that an F and a C7 can't sound good), and let me know if there's anything or any information I can provide you. And please excuse this wall of words; I was reading a book and had four beers (it is my vacation), and I may have been a tad prolix therefore.
 
I am going to be spending a LOT more time with my Kamaka because I just got rid of all my low-G ukuleles in anticipation of my new custom ukulele which I should get some time in late summer. It was a concession to my wife who felt things were getting a bit cluttered.

I am going to have get used to that re-entrant sound once again...and the strings. The Kamaka came with nylon strings which I decided to keep. I felt it would be more like a real relationship if I just took my partner as she were, without changes. Aside from the more esoteric philosophizing, the nylon strings are good for me as a player because it is a challenge to play with a set-up other than what I prefer.

The playing will be easier because I only have one set of scales. With low-G ukuleles you can play scales with all four strings as well as the three-string versions that exclude the G string. Now I only have the latter. That will simplify matters. On the other hand, it will make things a little more difficult. I have noticed that about half the modes work better starting with the G string, half with the C string. With re-entrant tuning the Phrygian and Aeolian modes are a bit of a challenge because of slightly altered finger patterns.

In terms of my pentatonic modes, the subdominant and dominant shapes are a bit shifty. I sure am going to miss not having access to the G string, but it will be good for discipline.

So bring on those fat, stiff strings; I am ready. I am also ready to make some progress on my finger picking that is more closely linked to the re-entrant tuning--viz., clawhammer. Another great thing about the Kamaka is that I can play scales starting on the 16th or 17th fret (depending on the scale), and I can do it much more comfortably because of profile of the upper bout (my custom uke is going to be a cutaway!).
 
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