For The Love of Ragtime and Merle Travis

Annie Nakki

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Idaho, west of the Pecos
Hi Ukulele People,

I'm new here and I'm looking for others that love ragtime uke and Travis picking style songs in general. Before falling in love with my Uke and forsaking my guitar playing, my obsession was Travis picking songs for the guitar.

I love the sound of a good ragtime song on the Uke! And there is a lot out there, just for one example, David Beckingham has a bunch of rag/blues type songs available for free on Ukehunt...

http://ukulelehunt.com/tag/david-beckingham/

Not all the songs are rags, but his stuff is great!

Anyone else obsessed with or wants to be obsessed with rags for the Uke?

I'd love to chat!

Annie :)
 
David Beckingham is great. I love his take on Stardust.
 
Yes, that is a beautiful version of a great song! There is this girl on YouTube named Garam Jeon (not sure if it is her name or just the channel name) that does a beautiful version of that song, too...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FO4qaqIWc

As for Dave Beckingham, his ragtime picking is so flawless....I'm working on a song from the list above called Rag Pickin' that is so fun to play, I just need to work it with the metronome to get my tempo up a bit....

Annie :)
 
Yes, that is a beautiful version of a great song! There is this girl on YouTube named Garam Jeon (not sure if it is her name or just the channel name) that does a beautiful version of that song, too...

Garam Jeon is an excellent performer. Most of what she plays are jazz standards arranged by Japanese ukulele master Kiyoshi Kobayashi. He has several excellent books of his arrangements available, unfortunately all are in Japanese and rather difficult (and expensive) to find here in North America.
 
hello,
I really agree with all the good references previously given.
David Beckingham's tabs are really great and curiously they are easier to pick than they appear on paper.
On the other hand, I'd like to strongly recommend the Fred Sokolow's Ragtime collection, which is on the exact opposite : the tunes lokk easy to play on paper but ask for a tough technical work to sound with the ease they deserve. In two words : challenging, but rewarding. This puts his Ragtime collection in the league of intermediate/advanced player, but beginners will evidently benefit from studying such material with enough patience and commitment.
Anyway, Ragtime is not an easy music, all the more on the standard ukulele where we can't play these trademark "alternate basses", for lack of bass register... But trying to make something out of these boundaries is great fun !
 
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