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As mentioned in my initial posting, I worked on improvising all parts (rhythm, bass, lead) of a simple chord progression borrowed from the Dire Straits song Six Blade Knife. As I’ll be on vacation starting next week for the rest of the month, this is where I am. Still a work in progress, but this has to do for now:
I’ll take the chance this month to explore something I otherwise don’t do enough: improvisation. So instead of doing what we usually do every month, pick a piece, learn to play all the parts, memorize everything, repeat the same thing a million times over again, I’ll do something completely different:
1) Execution: improvise all parts (bass, rhythm, lead) of a simple three chord progression. Come up with as many variations as possible within this very limited frame without sounding wrong.
2) Application: the three chord progression I’ve chosen is Am (four beats), C (2 beats) D (two beats), which is deceptively simple, but also happens to be the chord progression of one of my favorite Dire Straits songs, Six Blade Knife. So I’ll call this the Six Blade Knife jam. I’ll practice all parts separately with an iReal backing track, and then try to put it all together.
3) Evaluation: I’ll record first the bass part, then the rhythm part, then the lead part, and review each part until I’m happy with it and ready to continue to the next one. At the end, I hope to have something that sounds remotely like the Dire Straits song.When trying to decide which song to choose for this month’s challenge, I was going through the list looking for something that would 1) be a decent uke workout 2) still allow me to add a noob baseline 3) help me practice my timing in particular. Johnny B Goode ticked all the boxes, so here you go:
@gi_gi_ Thanks! Looking forward to your rendition.
@The_Bumble_Bard: Thanks! No, that was not in the lesson, but I couldn’t resist. No Star Wars tribute, no matter how small, would be complete without the Imperial March 🙂
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I was excited to see an arrangement for solo U-Bass in the mix this month, and such a cool one at that, so it was a no-brainer to go with the Star Wars theme. It was a lot trickier than it sounded at first, especially for someone still new to bass playing. The biggest challenge was to avoid unwanted noises of all sorts and mute everything all the time that was not supposed to vibrate at that exact moment. And I had real issues with string noises, which you can still hear in the video. So there’s still a long way to go until I get a nice clean bass sound, but practicing this one definitely helped getting closer.
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I picked concept lesson ep. 8 Bossa Nova for this months challenge, and did all three parts: solo uke, rhythm uke and U-bass. Thanks Andrew for providing the percussion-only backing track. This was truly a 360 degree learning experience of almost Katazumiri-esque dimensions. Not just learning the different parts, each of which posed its own unique challenges, but also learning how to record and put everything together.
Solo uke part was first take btw, which is kinda rare for me, so it deserves to be mentioned 🙂
Here you go:
Here’s my second take on Santa Fe four yeas later. Quite an interesting experience for me to listen to both versions back to back. To be honest, when I started this project a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t expect that much of a difference between the two takes, so I kind of surprised myself.
One of my very first submissions for a monthly challenge on RC101 was “Santa Fe” back in January 2021. I’ve been wanting to re-learn that tune for quite some time, now I finally got the perfect excuse. My main goal is to play it with a steadier groove this time. But I’m just curious to see and hear what effect the four years of taking on RC101 monthly challenges have had on my playing in general. As I got into bass playing recently, I might also try to lay down a very beginner friendly bass line, if I can come up with something that doesn’t suck completely. This should actually be a good tune for that, as it’s a very straighforward progression of vanilla chords without quick mid-bar changes, so let’s see how that goes. Here’s my original take from four years ago:
Here’s my rendition of the Magic Ukulele Waltz. I learned it on my regular uke, but then thought it sounds cool on the Bajolele, kind of adds to the vintage-esque vibe of the tune. I also felt like playing it somewhat slower and adding a light swing feel, just liked how that sounded.
Please no giveaway entry for me this month. Thanks!@The_Bumble_Bard Sure, I can post them in the Showcase Your Playing section once I got them down. Five or six concerts – I think I’ve already managed to do that in one day 🙂 I go out to see something (music, theater, orchestra, opera, ballet) pretty much every night. Luxury of living downtown in a big city, there’s a million things going on all the time, and most of it within a 10 minute bike ride. Sometimes I wonder how I even manage to practice playing anything at all on the uke.
@gi_gi_ Wow, that’s exciting! Instrument suggestion? How about a set of bansuri flutes? Should be quite affordable, luggage-friendly, and can sound really magical if you know how to play them. Check out the vidoe below. If there are no volume and/or cost limitations, my favorite would probably be a sarod.
For those completely unfamiliar with Indian classical music, here’s an example of what the real stuff sounds like when done properly by masters:
@The_Bumble_Bard The scales seem to be mostly pentatonic, there are strictly no half step intervals, all notes of the scale are two or three steps apart. So it’s really very close to our bread-and-butter pentatonic scales. What makes it soud so different is probably first the order of the notes, second the ornamentations, and third the fact that there is no chord progression behind the melody, it’s just the melody accompanied by a drone. I actually do attend concerts with Indian classical music regularly, and typically when they play a raga, they will start with just the solo instrument (plus tanpura drone in the background) playing by itself, introducing the scale in a slow free-floating very rubato-like tempo without any particular rhythm for quite a while, before the tabla kicks in later and the tempo picks up and it gets very rhythmic. So yes, it does not only come across without accompaniment, it’s actually how it’s designed to be played, first solo and then with tabla. That however is true for the real masters on the traditional instruments. Playing the ukulele part of these quite simple ragalele arrangements as written without accompaniment probably doesn’t sound too interesting. At the least, they would have to be played very rubato to make them sound like anything at all. But I focussed on practicing the correct timing along with the ornamentation techniques. Playing them as written, in very strict rhythm, but without the tabla in the background, would probably sound a little strange.
