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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.
Here’s the second raga I’ve learned, and this was a lot easier since I got the basic ornamentation techniques down from the first one. One benefit of learning this stuff is that you really practice your slides and slurs, and practice doing them in time. The other one is that it makes you think about fingering a lot. Since there are so many slides across two or three frets, the usual technique of “one finger per fret within a position” doesn’t always apply automatically. You always have to think ahead where your slide will end, and what note or slide will be next from there, to decide about the best fingering. Anyway, there are five ragas in total in this course, I’ll continue to learn the remaining three eventually, but for the purpose of this challenge I’ll call it a day.
Allright, so here’s my very first raga I’ve learned to play on the Ukulele. As mentioned earlier, the tricky part here is really to get the ornamentations (slides and slurs) down, which are the one thing that make it sound like Indian music. What makes it hard is that there are so many of them, and they have to be played accurately, i.e. in the correct tempo and starting and ending at the correct fret, to make them not sound off. And it can get really challenging when you have ghost-note-type slurs, which have to be played very quickly, and quarter- or eighth-note slides, which have to be played in the correct tempo, in quick succession. Takes some focus to avoid mixing them up. Plus there are no chromatic steps in the Indian scales, so all slides and slurs cross at least two, sometimes even three frets, which takes some practice to get down accurately. Ultimately there’s no one single part that’s technically really difficult or new to us western uke players, it’s really just the combination of everything together which takes some patience to master.
Anyway, here is my very first attempt. I’ll try to learn a couple more until the end of the month.@dianna Here are a few RC101 songs from various genres featuring lots of strumming with a swing feel, there’s pobably a lot more:
– Bad Moon Rising
– Five Foot Two
– Moondance
– Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree
– Tiptoe through the Tulips
– Wagon Wheel
– Yellow Submarine@avicularia I downloaded that exact app yesterday, works great with the Ragalele course. Regarding the difficulty, I can tell you already that everything except the ornamentations is beginner level by RC101 standards. Getting the ornamentations right ist the only tricky, but vital part to actually make it sound like Indian music.
I bought the Ragalele course from James Hill this summer, but never got around to actually start working on it. So now would be the perfect time, I guess 🙂
1.) Execution: I want to learn to play Indian classical music style on the ukulele. The specific sound is achieved by ornamentation techniques that can be done on the ukulele and mimic the sound of traditional Indian instruments. I will practice these ornamentation techniques, like slides, slurs, grace notes and double slides, along with the specific Indian scales (ragas).
2.) Application: I will learn to play and memorize one of the performance pieces of the course, a bandish (a song based on a specific raga), incorporating the ornamentation techniques I practiced.
3.) Evaluation: I will memorize and learn a section of the song every week, and will record myself playing the whole piee from memory and with all the ornamentation techniques applied by the end of the month,When I posted my entry for December earlier this month, I wrote that I really wanted to learn Rockin’ around the Chrsitmas Tree, but wouldn’t have enough time to finish by the early deadline.
I still started to learn it, and now I’m at a point where I wanted to share my progress before Christmas is over and the song becomes kinda pointless 🙂
I chose to tune the uke a half step up instead of using a capo, just so I wouldn’t have to relearn all the movements up and down the neck in relation to the fret markers. Also I dumbed down the intro and outro significantly.
My main reason for posting tis is really that I wanted to express my appreciation for the band and especially Evan, great arrangement and fantastic tutorial. Did I miss something, or was this Evan’s debut lesson on RC101.com? If that’s the case, congrats, HUGE reason to celebrate! Hope we see a lot more coming from Professor Evan J “crotchet hit” De Silva in the near future!
Hope we see this song in the December 2025 challenge again, and with a full month of practice I’m sure there’ll be a lot more takers. I loved learning and playing it, I think it’s super fun!
@The_Bumble_Bard: Sounds really good! The major difference in your version is that you’re playing halfbeat or half-time, i.e. you extend each original quarter meldoy note to a half note and each half note to a full note, and add the bum-ditty in between, while I maintained the original tempo and only added the bum-ditty between half notes in the original arrangement, otherwise I just added the thumb pluck between the original quarter notes. You just need to make sure to do your thing consistently throughout the full song, then it’s going to sound legit!
I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER
I planned to learn Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree for this month’s challenge, but as that was only released yesterday, and the dealine is already December 20th this month, I figured I need a safety net as I might be too busy around this time of year to learn that tune in just two weeks. So please accept the following atrocity as my official submission this month. If a song is really good, you can’t destroy it no matter what you do to it, they say. You can come awfully close though, I want to add 🙂
As act of repentance, I donated $20 to the UKC.I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER
When going through the etudes trying to decide which one to pick, number 15 immediately felt like the obvious choice after the Toccata and Fugue last month, with a similar vibe. My favorite part is the whole tone scale, that sounds and plays really cool, something different for a change. Here you go:
