Otis Redding

mendel

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Having fun playing "Dock of the Bay". Strumming the first stroke of the chords, then playing around and fingerpicking to make the Uke "Speak" the words. Lovin' it, livin' it, feelin' it...

Anyone else like playing this song? How do you do it? Discuss.....
 
OTIS MY MAN..

Sorry, had to do the Animal House reference..

Otis fan here..
 
I wonder if "Chained and Bound" or "These Arms of Mine" would work for uke? I'll bet "The Happy Song" would. I have the ukulele chords for "Dock of the Bay" but I printed them out when I had first started, and haven't really revisited them much. Hmm... perhaps I will!
 
Aloha Mendel,
Used to play the song a long time ago...recently I noticed an excellent uke player on You Tube playing the song...he was awesome...I remember he was a young africian amercian guy....Talented as ever...MM Stan
 
Hey MM Stan-

I'll have to find that video. I'd love to see it. I'm excited be Ayer I feel like this was a breakthrough song for me. I was having great difficulty hitting the B chord, but I kept on practicing this song. It's still far from perfect, but I feel like I can at least recognize the song. It makes me happy... Also, I lived in San Fran for years during and after my Bachelors Degree, so the song evokes a lot of really powerful and positive memories for me.

Mendel
 
Having fun playing "Dock of the Bay".

Anyone else like playing this song? How do you do it? Discuss.....

Yep, I'm having a go at it in my own primitive way ;) It's one of the first things I tried with the eleuke 'Mini Hendrix'. As with all things, I go to pieces when I try to sing and strum at the same time, but hey, it can only go up from here as they say.

I printed out the words and chords from the ukulele boogaloo site. The chords are G, B, C, A E7 D and F. It's a great song to train with those chords as you can do it equally nicely with the open chords or as the boogaloo suggests with barred chords for the G B and C. To get around the sing/strum problem and to make the practice worthwhile, I strum a verse, then strum and sing, same with the bridge.

I'm having so much fun with this. My Aussie urban white-trash accent has to bend a long way to emulate the cool Mr Redding's voice, which adds a certain theatrical comedic element to it as well. It sounds awesome (well I think so) coming out of the practice amp, on a clean amp emlation with a touch of reverb. I may look for an mp3 later in that key so I can start to play along with it at 'proper' tempo.

I just do the chords, no lead.

Cheers
 
Hey Bruce-

Try holding the chords fretted, and then slowly fingerpicking from the bottom string (closest to your head) to the top string (closest to the floor). Just strum through it and fingerpicking lie I just said and before you know it, you'll be fingerpicking the strings for each word of the lyrics. I call it making the strings talk. Anyway, that's how I do it. I'm sure there are much better teachers out there.

How do you do a bar chord? I know it's a dumb question, but I haven't learned them yet. Any advice???

Mendel
 
Hey Bruce-

Try holding the chords fretted, and then slowly fingerpicking from the bottom string (closest to your head) to the top string (closest to the floor). I'm sure there are much better teachers out there.

How do you do a bar chord? I know it's a dumb question, but I haven't learned them yet. Any advice???

Mendel

Hi, I'll give that a go. I'm resting my left shoulder at the moment - I've been strumming so much on my days off I've got a bit of stiffness.

Oh, and I don't agree with you about there being better teachers, at least not for me. I respond to experiential, first hand sharing, and you're it as far as Dock of the Bay goes :)

The barre chords are probably best explained by looking at the sheet from ukulele boogaloo, but here's a one minute explanation. Let's start with the B and C. You use your left index finger to make bar across two or more strings, in this case the E and A. For the B chord the fingering is 4 3 2 2 . To make the C chord, instead of lifting the fingers off and fingering just the A string at fret 3, you leave the fingers down on the B chord and slide the whole thing up 1 fret, to 5 4 3 3. The G barre chord is the index finger bar across fret 2, and middle and ring finger on fret 4 of G string and fret 3 of E string, so 4 2 3 2.

I'm sure if I messed that up someone who actually knows will chip in ;)
 
I've played it though no fancy picking. It's a great song for working on your barre chords. Love working that barre-C down the chromatic scale to the A.

Thought about doing the song but I can't whistle for beans. :)

John
 
Chords: G, B, C, Bb, A, E7, F

Strum: Down, up, chunk, up

Barre the G, Bb, slide up to play the barred C, then slide back down to play the Bb, B, then open chord A. It takes some practice to sound smooth, but I think it adds to the song.

For the part that goes:" I'm sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away..", I use the open G chord.

I go into SF frequently. There is a dock called Fort Point Pier (or Torpedo Wharf) between the GGBridge and Crissy Field. I don't think there is a better location to play this song.:)
 
Fort Point is awesome. For my relaxing time, though, I head down HWY 1 to Half Moon Bay and El Granada. I like sitting on the Jetty Rocks watching the fishing boats come in at night... Awwww shucks... I just got all nostalgic.
 
Chords: G, B, C, Bb, A, E7, F

Strum: Down, up, chunk, up

Barre the G, Bb, slide up to play the barred C, then slide back down to play the Bb, B, then open chord A. It takes some practice to sound smooth, but I think it adds to the song.

For the part that goes:" I'm sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away..", I use the open G chord.

I love that descending run from C to A.

I'm going to try to use this to achieve chunking. That's my goal for the rest of this week, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, just like all of the above. Except the whistling, I can't do that either. I might hum.
 
Thanks for the ideas guys. I really like the strumming of that song too. I am going to try the finger picking tomorrow. rem
 
According to legend, the Berkeley pier is actually THE dock of the bay mentioned by Otis. I suppose it depends if you want to look east or west to see the bay. Fort Point is certainly more epic than Berkeley. I was always partial to the view from Grizzly Peak.

Totally agree that this song is all about the chromatic slide down the barre chords, C-B-Bb-A.
 
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