Strummin' and Hummin' - help needed!

[fretie]

So I'm probably going to feel like I'm taking a few steps back here, but, I need help with keeping a distinct strum pattern while singing lyrics!

You see for the past few years I have been attending some fair sized ukulele meetups around town here. The groups are always lively and so much so that at times I can hardly hear myself playing! This is great when it comes to disguising mistakes or just grooving in my own strum pattern.

On my own at home, I rarely strum and sing, I prefer to work on instrumentals.

However, this fall I joined Vancouver's first ukulele orchestra which is a 50 member group, all ukuleles, practicing in the Ruby Ukes ukulele school. We started out also with instrumentals but part way through our first season, this fall, we became to practice pieces that also had some singing sections in them. This is when it became shockingly apparent to me that I could not keep a set strum pattern and sing at the same time! I could do one or the other but not both at once! Ack!

Not only was this a bit of a shocking revelation to me but what's worse, I wasn't even sure how to go about developing this basic and, now, much needed skill.

Please help me out fellow uke'ers! If you too are not a natural at multitasking, couldn't easily strum and sing at the same time when you first starting playing the uke, please share any methods that you have found to be helpful to you in developing this magical skill.

 

[janeray1940]

I'm not much of a singer or multi-tasker myself, but I do remember years ago when I first began playing it took me three months of singing and strumming at the same time before I could do both to a simple 4/4 or 3/4 strum. To this day, some 6+ years later, I still can't sing if I'm strumming any sort of syncopated pattern!

As for developing the skill to sing and strum a simple pattern: no method other than practice. Every. Single. Day. One of those days, it will just "click."

 

[kypfer]

As for developing the skill to sing and strum a simple pattern: no method other than practice. Every. Single. Day. One of those days, it will just "click."

Absolutely ... you need to be completely familiar with both parts of the music (voice and instrument) so you don't have to concentrate on either.

Sing the song to yourself at every opportunity. Any hesitation as to "what comes next" means you don't know it well enough!

Once you can sing it through without thinking, start playing along, just one or two strums per bar to start with, to get the chord sequence totally automatic.

Now you can start thinking about a strumming/picking pattern.

I picked up a song I was basically familiar with about a week ago, specifically Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald". Five chords across two lines repeated four times per verse. Not a difficult tune to sing, but I needed to learn the words, so I concentrated initially on just the first verse. That took about two days. Then I learnt the chord sequence "off pat", another two or three evenings. Put the two together and superimpose a basic picking pattern ... then refine the picking pattern so's it's not totally repetitive. At the end of the week, I can just about play the first verse to "performance standard" ... I'm guessing another week or two to have learnt the song completely (seven verses).

This is after the best part of 50 years doing this sort of thing fairly regularly ... it does take time, which is why I never went "full-time professional", it's just too much like hard work

Good luck

 

[Rllink]

The more you do it, the easier it gets.

 

[fretie]

The more you do it, the easier it gets.

Simple. True.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions guys and gal!

Guess I better get practicing!

 

[ukuleleden]

The keys to success in this realm for me has always been to know the song thoroughly and to let the two acts of strumming and singing come together through feeling it, not thinking it. The repetition of playing it through over and over will eventually get you there. When you get to that "Aha!" Moment where you played and sang the song by feeling that you performed it without thinking about it, you then arrived.

 

[RickOlson]

It might help it you begin combining the strumming and humming by just using a DDDD strumming pattern on the beat. Essentially marking time like you'd tap your foot. I suspect you'll gradually add some strokes on the sustained notes at the ends of phrases. Then the others will come in, too. ... or maybe I'm wrong.

 

[fretie]

It might help it you begin combining the strumming and humming by just using a DDDD strumming pattern on the beat. Essentially marking time like you'd tap your foot. I suspect you'll gradually add some strokes on the sustained notes at the ends of phrases. Then the others will come in, too. ... or maybe I'm wrong.

That's definitely worth a try - thanks!

 

[Barrytone]

I concur fretie.
Noodling around over chords is a great way to find the key and the sound you are looking for.
Not only do you learn some of the fret board, you will also realise you can learn without tab.

Seasonal felicitations