Uke Minutes: Advanced Golpe

Love Craig Chee's video! I've been humbly trying to copy some of James Hill's percussion tricks for a while now, so naturally was blown away by the Advanced Golpe Uke Minutes video.

When I try to do it, my main issue is not enough volume. A few questions:

I'm not "holding" my fingers back when I do the golpe, and I can't tell whether Craig is or not. If so, does he hold his fingers back with his thumb or does he tuck them into his palm (does that make sense?)?

I also have slightly long fingernails, and wondered if for this technique that would hurt volume?

I play a longneck soprano, solid zebrawood. I assume the small body is hurting volume, and wondered if the density of the topwood affects volume much?


Thanks! As I said, really amazing video!

John

Hi John! Please send me an email at craigchee@me.com , i'd love to help in any way that i can! Just like working on getting a clean sounds from every time you hit the strings, you have to focus on the most direct contact between your nail and the wood. Even with longer nails, you want to focus on the using the fat part of your nail to make contact, it's more of a flick than anything else. I do use my thumb to build up tension before release the fingers for a hard hit but a lot of the times i want to keep the thumb free to be able to hit or strum the strings while i'm coming down with the nails.