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@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:
@The_Bumble_Bard: Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it. How’s your progress going with this one? I find this is one of those pieces that sound really intimidating, but are actually easier to play than they sound. Nowhere close to e.g. some of the trickier stuff from Evan. It’s really mostly basic chords, picking patterns and scales, just composed and arranged so ingeniously that it sounds like the greatest thing ever. Ironically, the one bit that Andrew didn’t adapt from Bach, but added himself, the descending diminshed run in the style of Steve Vai at the end of theme one, gave me the biggest struggle by far. But other than that, it’s quite uke-friendly to play, no crazy stretches, complicated chord shapes, tricky licks or weird syncopations. Really a good piece to nail down the basic playing techniques and, yes, focus on clarity.
I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER
And yet another Toccata and Fugue take. This has to be one of the most satisfying arrangements here on RC101. What surprised me most was how easy it is actually to memorize. Everything flows organically from note to note and from part to part, you never have to think what’s next, it just comes naturally. That’s the genius of Bach as a composer, I guess. And who would have thought it possible to take a piece form an instrument with a range of about a million octaves and create an arrangement for an instrument of little more than two octaves, even maintain the original key, and capture the whole essence without making he listener feel that anything vital is missing. What a great arrangement, and what pleasure to play. Of course this is one that is almost impossible to get completely right from the first to the last note, but here’s my best attempt.@dianna Thanks a lot! I got the clawhammer tabs from Aaron Keim at quietamericanmusic.com He’s got two clawhammer ukulele books out, an instruction book and a song collection book, which I can both highly recommend. He also has a few free tabs on his website, and performance videos of all the arrangements on his youtube channel. When I fell in love with the clawhammer technique (thanks to the awesome clawhamer course taught by Chris here on RC101) and was looking for more stuff specifically for clawhammer uke, this was by far the best and most comprehensive source I found.
Of course I had to learn the new clawhammer song right away when it came out, and when the information was leaked that this will be part of the September challenge, I recorded it and challenged myself to post it right away as soon as the challenge opens, just for fun. Otherwise I would have loved to learn and play the bass part as well, which I will most likely still do.Actually I’m not even sure why they call these things bass ukes, they don’t have anything in common at all with an ukulele of any kind, they’re really just super-short-scale bass guitars.
@annemarie Thanks! No, I play the theme as taught by Steven on my regular tenor uke, and the bass part I came up with on my new bass uke. The latter is quite fascinating, as it’s really tiny compared to a regular bass guitar, or even a double bass, but has the same tuning and same notes, so any regular bass instruction book or video tutorial can be used to learn how to play it.
Most bass ukes have these superthick rubber strings, but the one I picked up, a Fender Fullerton Precision Bass Uke, has metal wound strings (they call them nickel wrapped nylon core), which are thinner and feel more like regular guitar or bass guitar strings. Luckily I was able to try out both versions in my local store, and I liked the one with the wound strings much better than the thick rubber strings.@The_Bumble_Bard Thanks a lot!
Here’s my take on Hawaii Five-O, my pick for this month. Took the chance to break in this new toy of mine, which I got recently on a whim. Opens a whole new can of worms, I guess. Oh well.
Please exclude me from the prize drawing this month. Thanks!
I’ve never tried to write an original piece before, but I guess now that this was the challenge theme, I had to. Calling this a “composition” is a stretch, as really it is just a sequence of cliches that came to my mind as I was fiddling around. I guess one of the difficulties in writing original music is breaking out of the familar patterns and coming up with something truly original. But as this is my first attempt, I hope it still counts, goitta start somewhere 🙂
Please exclude me from the prize drawing this month. Thanks!
