Finger picking

mangorockfish

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
608
Reaction score
23
Location
Arkansas
I got my uke the 2nd of this month and have been working pretty hard. I have a ready-recollectiom of about 12 to 15 chords that I can execute pretty accurately and fast. I've learned the In-to-out and Advanced Picking Aldrine showed in Uke Minutes. Now for the problem. As far as the picking goes, I don't know what, when, where, or how to pick something in a song. How and what do you pick and where do you get it? Do you pick the notes of the chords in the song or notes from the scale of the key of the song. I'm talking about an intro, short lead, or an outro. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?
 
..

Well ive only been playing for around 2 monthes and i can pick quite alot of songs but i mean when it comes to that stuff the great thing about the ukulele is it is all originality i mean play what you feel, but usually i must say intros most of the time are played like notes on the scale or whatever. But there are songs where you can pick inside the chord and that sounds nice too. If i did answer your question im very sorry :/
 
a lot of it depends on how the tabs are written, here's a tutorial on note lengths,
notes3.png

notes2.png


Depending on the song, it will usually have 3 or 4 beats to the measure, 3/4 time means 3 beats per measure, 4/4 means 4 beats (there's others but they're less common)

beyond that whole note = 4 beats half note = 2 beat quarter = 1 beat then it keeps halving from eight to 16th to 32 notes

notes that have dots on are 150% of the duration, so a half note is 3 beats. when you see tied notes, often they can be mixed up so that you might have a 16th then an eigth and another 16th all adding to one beat with 3 plucks.

Triplets are made with 3 beats to one quarter, it helps to think the word "trip-el-et" when doing it.
If your tabs are made without the beats above them (say php), then try to use the hyphenations as indication, more half notes means more distance between the notes.

of course if all else fails look on youtube for the song you're looking at and you can play what you hear.
 
Music is all about expression and feeling. I'm not the best player but there are times that I play pretty good. Those times are when I just let go and feel the song. I play it with passion.


agreed totally
 
I too agree!!:agree::agree: I am not a real good player....yet! But I always play the song the way I feel it and I like it.
 
Hi mangorockfish

I'm also trying fingerpicking and am in the same boat as you, I'm working on learning my scales at the moment in an attempt to get better at finger picking as when I freestyle it, none of the notes relate to each other as I don't know enough about how the notes are grouped.
this might help you also, I also wrote out all the notes on the fretboard as it helped me see how all the notes relate to each other and where on the fretboard they repeat.

good luck, have fun

zoe
 
Top Bottom