Roy Smeck's "Figure 8" a la Petey

I decided to revive a few ukulele showboating techniques/tricks (called exhibition strokes) from Roy Smeck's ukulele method book from 1928. This video shows how to do a Roy Smeck "Figure 8" ukulele stroke and albeit modified zigzag stroke. I then go into other unrelated techniques: a pseudo guitar whammy bar vibrato effect, and how to flip the bird (your uke) during a song. hehe It ends with some Strauss on the uke arranged by Petey using the aforementioned techniques and called "Thus Uked Zarathrustra." I hope this gives you some musical inspiration on the uke!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58temYGU38A

Petey

Nice little tips, very well explained. Not sure Id use the whammy stuff, as I think over time this isn't going to do your Uke any good. Will be flipping the bird a figuring of 8. Thanks for sharing.

UkuEroll said:

Nice little tips, very well explained. Not sure Id use the whammy stuff, as I think over time this isn't going to do your Uke any good. Will be flipping the bird a figuring of 8. Thanks for sharing.

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The whammy isn't putting that much pressure on the uke but I understand your concern since it is at the bridge. I got that whammy idea from the Mel Bay book "Hints and Tips for Advanced Ukulele Players." Great book. I highly recommend it. The hardest part is figuring out how these tricks work from only words and a simple diagram on a page. One doesn't want to wreck one's fav. uke indeed. The Figure 8 was a challenge since I had nothing to go on except a diagram that seemed to indicate starting from the wrong direction. I had to recreate the experiment like the scientific method... and no actual live Martins were harmed in the filming of my uke stunts! hehe LOL Anyway, I wanted to crack the code to share it with others and I did. Anyone can go virtuoso now.

Petey

Another fabulous video Peter, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the video, Peter.

You're both welcome. I forgot to mention that the Finger 8 strum works best when you are starting at the 4th fret on a soprano, concert, or tenor. It is very tricky to do it higher up the frets like I was doing in the final song due to lack of space. I only decided at the last minute to do that Strauss song with those techniques in it. It more or less made it through, but the Finger 8 is best started lower.

cheers,

Peter

Thanks for clarifying that, I was having a nightmare trying to do it of my Tenor.

UkuEroll said:

Thanks for clarifying that, I was having a nightmare trying to do it of my Tenor.

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Not a problem. I actually started learning that figure 8 on the tenor back in March 2013.

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I noticed something very interesting today at the music store. I saw the Mel Bay reprint of the 1928 Roy Smeck method. It didn't contain the 100 Jazz strokes at the end of the book, but it had everything else that I could tell upon a quick once over. The exhibition strokes were better explained and did what I had figured out! I.e. 1) Do the Figure 8 with an up-stroke first 2) Do the zigzag with 5 and not 6. That's hilarious!

That would have SAVED ME from working through the errors in the original! Man, oh man. I'm glad to see I was right! hehe Maybe that's why many of us trying to work from the 1928 edition got frustrated and didn't bother. Glad to see Mel Bay updated it! Though, I don't know why they left out those wonderful 100 Jazz Strokes.

Petey