Squeezing the fretboard?

lisaxy424

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Well, the title's weird but I don't know how else to explain it!

I've noticed some uke players will squeeze down the strings/fretboard in correlation with their strumming - almost like pulsing. Does this affect the sound, or is it just easier to play? Is it more common than not?

MUCH APPRECIATED! :)

Here's a great example of what I'm talking about (in case I'm speaking a different language above)
 
Usually people do the opposite: they lift their fingers up a little to mute the strings and create a percussive "chunk" sound. But I can see why it looks like squeezing the fretboard a little.
 
Ooooohhh! :) It must be hard to time? How do you practice something like that - trial & error?

Thanks for your response! :)
 
Well, as a recent example, I've been learning how to play Bandito Tyler. During the intro, the parts Dom indicates as "x", you supposedly lift your fingers to get the muted note, to fill in space, then press them back down to play the next notes....
Is this the right example?
 
Cool! Is that the same effect/marking when people put their pinky down to "mute" the strings - or is that something different too?
 
Cool! Is that the same effect/marking when people put their pinky down to "mute" the strings - or is that something different too?

I think it's similar - I've seen "I'm Yours" tutorials using both types of mutes. But technically, the squeezing way will only mute the strings you have your fingers on. So if you play the C chord you will only mute the last string and not the other three, whereas pinky mute gets all of them.

EDIT: Warning - I'm new at this too so I might be talking out my a$$ here. But this is just from what I've observed. ;-)
 
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who is that?

She's the "5 girl." As in: In the last 5 days that video has gotten 5 times as many views as all 20 -- which is 4 x 5... I'm keepin' the theme goin'! -- of mine put together over the lifetime of my YouTube account.

Yeah, it's cognitive dissonance time. It's true I'm a little jealous but at the same time I think that's fabulous. Luckily I'm a Gemini and have no trouble keeping two or more opposing viewpoints at the same time. :rolleyes:

Oh... and on the subject of this post...

You can do that "relax your hand" bit to mute chords that aren't covering all four strings. It doesn't work on everything, the 0003 C chord being a good example, but if you're playing... say, an F (2010) you relax your hand and roll it a bit so that the finger on the G string touches the C string and the finger on the E string touches the A string.

Playing a G chord (0232) is easy because you only have to worry about one extra string.

It works on a lot of different chords.

Assuming my explanation is at all clear, give it a try.
 
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She's the "5 girl." As in: In the last 5 days that video has gotten 5 times as many views as all 20 -- which is 4 x 5... I'm keepin' the theme goin'! -- of mine put together over the lifetime of my YouTube account.

Yup, that vid rocks. I like the bushman ukes, played one once, really punchy. Where u been Hobbit?
 
Cool! Is that the same effect/marking when people put their pinky down to "mute" the strings - or is that something different too?

You're going in the right direction. Khrome is absolutely right. Bandito Tyler's intro is picking, and the pinky mute would work for it, but just lifting your fingers is much quicker, and since I'm already using a tremolo, (is that what it's called if I'm using my pointer?) much easier. It's a fast song so it just works better.
 
Well, I can't do either :( but I assumed that a picky mute would work better with something like C that only has on string, whereas lifting your fingers might be better for something where there's too many strings to really get your pinky over there easily. But it's pretty much the same effect. Is that right?
 
I would like to add that if you played a chord with your pinky in it, you couldn't do the pinky mute whereas you can lift the fingers slightly.

plus it's simply less movement sometimes. if you want to make the sound of them chords shorter to put in some extra spicy rhythms, just lift 'em and there you go...
 
Well, it can be more than a pulse.
It's a way to vary the way you do a strum to give it variety by essentially creating negative spaces. Makes life more interesting than just strumming up and down in fours.
 
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