Chords - down down up?

owada

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Hi fveroybody, I just bought an ukulele and am trying to play 'Somewhere over the rainbow'.
I don't understand, how many times sgould I play the C chord,and then how many times the Em Chord and so on?
And also How should I play each chord? Would down-down-up ge good? Or what would ou suggest?
Thanks so much inadvance!
 

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Thanks a lot! Uhh pretty tough with the chunking hehe, gotta practice!!
 
Thanks a lot! Uhh pretty tough with the chunking hehe, gotta practice!!
Are you a beginner? Because if you are, maybe it would be wise to pick something a little simpler and straight forward and build on it, before you tackle Aldrine's strum pattern there.
 
Wish I had youtube when I started learning guitar 35 years ago. Back then we had chord books usually in the wrong key. At least I can now learn by ear I guess from playing songs over and over, winding back tapes over and over trying to figure out strumming and picking pattern of the original songs.
 
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OK, the first thing to decide, which isn't actually written there, is how many beats per bar your going to play. 4 beats per bar i(per chord change) is "standard". I did a quick test and this fits the song so 4 beats per bar it is. Sometimes in simple song annotation such as the example you may see one chord written that lasts 2 bars or so. You will just have to get a feel for this when the songs are written simply like this.

A simple chord strumming pattern is one down strum and one up strum per beat. So for one bar its down,up, down,up, down,up, down, up. Keep it even as you can. Now when I play this I would put a rhythm accent on one of the beats but for a beginners learning exercise try and keep it even.

After some practice you will get a feel for putting an accent strum in.
 
I recall reading an interview with a famous guitarist who talked about hearing young guitarists copying his solos "mistakes and all". While Iz had a beautiful voice and was a good uke player, he did screw up the words badly to this song.

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high,
And the dreams that you dream of once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly
And the dreams that you dream of, dreams really do come true.
as Iz sings make no sense.

The words of the song written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg make much more sense. I don't believe that Iz changed them on purpose, but just sang whatever came into his mind. Unfortunately, many folks were unaware of the original song , written for the movie Wizard Of Oz, and assume that Iz's version is the correct one.

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high,
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.


You must admit that these words are far better than Iz's mangled version.
Don't get me wrong. I love his voice and uke, I just refuse to sing his words.

At the end of the song, Harburg wrote:

Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh why can't I?
 
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Thanks for mentioning that. I did indeed notice that the words were different, and I was wondering why. Now we have clarity!
 
Our ukulele group does that song. We do the island strum - down down up up down up. Twice for each chord.

Iz does a variation of the island strum.

There was a very nice fingerpicking version posted here a while back.
 
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And to try and answer the question you posed in the title.

What is down, down, up..... Down, down, up......... lives within the framework of down,up, down,up, down,up, down,up. Your hand is ALWAYS going down,up. Always.

Sometimes however you can miss a strum by raising your hand a fraction and not hitting the strings. Sometimes you can hit the strings just partially or lightly on a stroke or dampen the strings with the chording hand and make a percussive strum..

So, Down, down, up.... is really just lazy musical annotation, and what it really is is down, (miss), down, up.................

Practicing an even down,up, down,up, down,up, down,up for a while will help you develop a good sense of rhythm.
 
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