ripock
Well-known member
Nothing new to really report. I have just been making planned progress.
I have been cementing my understanding of the first seven frets by using the Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes. All I am doing is playing mindfully. With the ukulele it is easy to be unmindful. It is easy to learn a pattern and to learn where to start it in order to play it. However you don't really know what you're playing. So, as I'm playing these patterns, I am paying close attention to where my finger is and what note it is. Sometimes I even say the notes out loud to reinforce it all.
So, as I said, I'm playing from the G string the G# Phrygian, the A Lydian, and the B Mixolydian. From the C string in the same general vicinity I have the C# Aiolian, D# Lokrian, and E Ionian. When I'm playing my Yorkie, I can switch back and forth...since that's the beauty of the linear tuning.
Speaking of my Yorkie, my mind has been much occupied with it lately. First of all, it is beautiful and who wouldn't contemplate it:
However, I have been focusing more on its sound. I designed it to be quite un-ukulele-ish. It is very warm...even murky. I sometimes forget (or grow accustomed to) its voice. It isn't until I play it back-to-back with the Kamaka that the point is driven home. The Kamaka with its spruce sound board
is meant to be very uke-y. And it is. It rings and echoes and chimes like a bell. The key is to love each instrument for its own merits instead of trying to tweak it to change it into something it isn't. And speaking of its own merits, I love my Yorkie's fretboard. If you look closely you will see that it is unencumbered with fret markers. Again, that is by design. The Yorkie is all about me and since I cannot see the markers, why should they be there? For an audience's sake? Since I play with a strap, all I see is the back of the neck. It is a lovely sight being English walnut, but there's no need for markers.
Since I'm talking about my wonderful Julius Medina straps (maybe some day my wife can take a picture of them for me to upload), it reminded me of a certain thread that is current on the forum devoted to the question of "how do I hold my ukulele tightly?" I haven't contributed to it because my contribution would undoubtably be somewhat trollish since my response is "why on earth would you want to tightly hold an instrument?" That physical tension translates into a musical tension. It muffles the sound...not to mention all the ergonomic problems. And ergonomics and the over-all experience of the body playing music is important to me. When I am lazy and don't use my strap my body is hunched over the ukulele. When I use the strap, my posture is good and if I want to see the fretboard, then I have to either tilt the instrument up or bend at the thoracic spine and crane my neck.
Since I have been a little more visual today, let me try an experiment. Let's see how it looks if I import a table from a word processing program to represent fret board fingerings of, e.g., the Aiolian mode.
well, it did work but it is rather huge, isn't it?
That's a little better. It is a representation of the Aiolian mode played from the G string. It is of course movable so that if you play it starting on the first fret you're playing the G# Aiolian. However, if you start from the 6th fret, you're playing C# Aiolian.
For the curious, here's the same mode played on a re-entrant tuning:
As you can see, it is the same pattern as the linear pattern except that you need to slide your hand up a fret for the E string.
Okay, this is kind of time-consuming, but I can see that it has pedagogical value. I could very easily map out my modes and major/minor pentatonics.
Speaking of which, I need to brush up on my major pentatonics because they will be the key to transitioning between pentatonic stuff and modal stuff. That's because the major pentatonic, as the name suggests, contains notes from the major scale. Those notes are common with the modes--all of which are comprised of the same notes. And the connection betwixt the major and minor pentatonics are the tonic and dominant, the E and B. All this is predicated on smooth transitions. However, I can just force a transition wherever I want. Just do it twice and it is no longer a mistake but a pre-meditated purposeful dissonance (1st principle of jazz )
I have been cementing my understanding of the first seven frets by using the Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes. All I am doing is playing mindfully. With the ukulele it is easy to be unmindful. It is easy to learn a pattern and to learn where to start it in order to play it. However you don't really know what you're playing. So, as I'm playing these patterns, I am paying close attention to where my finger is and what note it is. Sometimes I even say the notes out loud to reinforce it all.
So, as I said, I'm playing from the G string the G# Phrygian, the A Lydian, and the B Mixolydian. From the C string in the same general vicinity I have the C# Aiolian, D# Lokrian, and E Ionian. When I'm playing my Yorkie, I can switch back and forth...since that's the beauty of the linear tuning.
Speaking of my Yorkie, my mind has been much occupied with it lately. First of all, it is beautiful and who wouldn't contemplate it:
However, I have been focusing more on its sound. I designed it to be quite un-ukulele-ish. It is very warm...even murky. I sometimes forget (or grow accustomed to) its voice. It isn't until I play it back-to-back with the Kamaka that the point is driven home. The Kamaka with its spruce sound board
is meant to be very uke-y. And it is. It rings and echoes and chimes like a bell. The key is to love each instrument for its own merits instead of trying to tweak it to change it into something it isn't. And speaking of its own merits, I love my Yorkie's fretboard. If you look closely you will see that it is unencumbered with fret markers. Again, that is by design. The Yorkie is all about me and since I cannot see the markers, why should they be there? For an audience's sake? Since I play with a strap, all I see is the back of the neck. It is a lovely sight being English walnut, but there's no need for markers.
Since I'm talking about my wonderful Julius Medina straps (maybe some day my wife can take a picture of them for me to upload), it reminded me of a certain thread that is current on the forum devoted to the question of "how do I hold my ukulele tightly?" I haven't contributed to it because my contribution would undoubtably be somewhat trollish since my response is "why on earth would you want to tightly hold an instrument?" That physical tension translates into a musical tension. It muffles the sound...not to mention all the ergonomic problems. And ergonomics and the over-all experience of the body playing music is important to me. When I am lazy and don't use my strap my body is hunched over the ukulele. When I use the strap, my posture is good and if I want to see the fretboard, then I have to either tilt the instrument up or bend at the thoracic spine and crane my neck.
Since I have been a little more visual today, let me try an experiment. Let's see how it looks if I import a table from a word processing program to represent fret board fingerings of, e.g., the Aiolian mode.
o | o | | |
| | o | |
o | o | | |
o | o | o | |
| | | |
well, it did work but it is rather huge, isn't it?
| G | C | E | A |
1 fret | o | o | | |
2 fret | | | o | |
3 fret | o | o | | |
4 fret | o | o | o | |
5 fret | | | | |
That's a little better. It is a representation of the Aiolian mode played from the G string. It is of course movable so that if you play it starting on the first fret you're playing the G# Aiolian. However, if you start from the 6th fret, you're playing C# Aiolian.
For the curious, here's the same mode played on a re-entrant tuning:
| G | C | E | A |
1 fret | | o | | |
2 fret | | | o | o |
3 fret | | o | | |
4 fret | | o | o | o |
5 fret | | | o | |
As you can see, it is the same pattern as the linear pattern except that you need to slide your hand up a fret for the E string.
Okay, this is kind of time-consuming, but I can see that it has pedagogical value. I could very easily map out my modes and major/minor pentatonics.
Speaking of which, I need to brush up on my major pentatonics because they will be the key to transitioning between pentatonic stuff and modal stuff. That's because the major pentatonic, as the name suggests, contains notes from the major scale. Those notes are common with the modes--all of which are comprised of the same notes. And the connection betwixt the major and minor pentatonics are the tonic and dominant, the E and B. All this is predicated on smooth transitions. However, I can just force a transition wherever I want. Just do it twice and it is no longer a mistake but a pre-meditated purposeful dissonance (1st principle of jazz )
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