Hey,
can anyone help me concerning improvising or accompaning somebody with the uke?
My problem is, that i just do not know which notes and in which order to play if i want to play along with a friend who´s playin the guitar. for example some blues songs or just some easy other stuff.
or what does it mean if somebody says "i´m playin that song in eminor (or other specific chords)?"
UkeApe
When someone says, "I'm playing that song in E minor," what they're telling you is the name of what's called a "
key."
Knowing what key you're in is essential to improvising. A key defines what notes one can play and establishes a song's tonal center. For example, if we're playing a song in the key of C major, we know that the only notes available to us are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B (There are exceptions to this rule, but we're keeping it simple for now), and the tonal center of the song is the note C.
How do we know this? Because we know how to build major scales. What, we don't know how to do that yet? Oh. Well, it's like this:
Building a major scale requires the use of a strict formula. Your ears know this already. It's getting your head and hands to know it that's the hard part. This formula is:
whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half.
Take a look at your uke. Each fret divides the strings into half steps. For example, the space between the 2nd fret on your C string (or any string) to the 3rd fret on your C string is a half step. The space between the 2nd fret to the 4th fret is a whole step.
Using the above formula, we can make a C major scale. Pluck your C string. That's our first note of the scale. The next note of the scale is a whole step above C, so we skip a fret and pluck the C string while fingering the 2nd fret. That note is a D. Skip another fret for the next note. Now we're at the 4th fret of the C string. That note is an E.
But wait, isn't one of our strings called an E already? Hey, yeah! It's the 2nd string, that's the E string. I wonder if we can play that string open instead of playing the 4th fret on the C string. Let's try. Yup, it's the same dang note. We sure are smart.
Our formula says to go up a half step to find our next note. This time we don't skip any frets, and pluck the E string while fingering its first fret. That note is an F. Go up a whole step for G, which is the third fret on the E string. One more whole step for A.
Ooh, looks like we found another cheat. We can play the A string open here, just like we did with E. One more whole step for the next note, B (second fret on the A string), and lastly, one final half step up from B gives us our lovely tonal center again, C, on the third fret of the A string.
Cool. Whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half.
The scale tabbed out looks like this:
Code:
|----------0-2-3-|
|----0-1-3-------|
|0-2-------------|
|----------------|
Go ahead and play it a few times. Isn't that nice? I told you your ears knew it already. Try it backwards! Sweet. :bowdown:
Okay, now that we know how to build major scales, what next? When do we get to start shredding? Well, now that we know how to build major scales, we can pretty much do that right now.
All we have to do is find out what key we're playing in, build its major scale, and use those notes to jam with. Once we do that for awhile, our ears tell us that some notes are better than others for certain chords. Dang, our ears are smart.
So what notes are good for what chords? Here are a couple of sure bets:
- By playing any of the three notes that make up a chord, we know we won't offend anyone. If we're playing a C chord, then we know that we can play the notes C, E, and G. If we're playing an F chord, then we know we can play the notes F, A, and C. If we're playing an Em chord, then we know we can play the notes E, G, and B, etc. We'll cover how to build chords later. I'm tired.
- For any major chord, we know that we can play the notes of its major pentatonic scale. For any minor chord, we can play the notes of its minor pentatonic scale. We'll also cover this later. My poor fingers.
For now, just get used to finding and playing major scales. When you get done mastering the key of C, try to build a D major scale, or a G major scale, etc.
When you're jamming with your buddies, try these scales out. See what notes work and what notes do not work. After a little while, you'll be able to see patterns on the fretboard.
Hope this was helpful!
