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@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.
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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!I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER
Axel F. Not much to say about this one, except it was tons of fun to learn and is tons of fun to play.
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I’ll always jump at the chance to play with a backing track, so it had to be Going to California this month, plus of course it’s a super fun arrangement of this iconic song. My problem however this month has been that I really only had this past weekend to learn and practice the song, plus a couple of short evenings maybe. I’ve been busy with no practice time throughout the first half of the month, and I’ll go on vacation tomorrow for the rest of the month, not to California, but to Madeira, which isn’t too bad either.
Anyway, my main focus was to play the riff as clean and as locked in with the second uke as possible, which has always been my weak spot, and it was harder than it sounds, it took my quite a while to “feel” the rhythm, but I think I managed ok for the most part. Everything else, the interlude and especially the outro, didn’t really get enough practice time, I played them kinda sorta, but really sloppy. But yeah, I’m out of time, so here you go.I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER
Of course I had to pick The Aching Waltz this month, as Gipsy Jazz belongs to my most favorite styles of music, and I love practicing and playing with a backing track, and we got the advance notice, which gave me some much needed extra time to practice the tune for this month 🙂
Still wasn’t enough for me to get it clean at 100% speed, so I cheated and slowed it down to 90%.
This is such a fun tune to learn and to play, and a real labor of love by everyone at RockClass 101. Thank you so much to everyone involved, Adrian for the lovely composition and the willingness to share it with the RC101 community and re-record it for us, Evan for the fantastic Uke arrangement, Andrew for the (as always) brillant tutorial and the ingenious rhythm/solo combination, and last not least Christopher for the competent contribution of the crucial bass part.I joined RockClass101 back in October 2020, and that was my very first challenge participation back then, with the melodic triplet etude from the triplet strum magic course. Now I’ve finally come full circle, completed the course and am happy to enter the challenge this month with the capstone performance piece, three and a half years later.
Please exclude me from the prize drawing this month. Thanks!I picked Spanish Nights as my challenge for this month, that tune appealed to me instantly as I was listening through the potential candidates. I have to admit it was trickier than I thought it would be. Hardest part was not cramping up from all those continuous barre chords. And boy is it hard to get a clean take of that one without major slip up, especially as the left forerarm gets more and more tense with every repetition, which makes it increasingly difficult to stay relaxed and play cleanly. So I had to force myself to take breaks and overcome the urge to try just one more time for a clean take. Still didn’t manage to get one I was totally happy with, but this is as close as I got.
Please exclude me from the prize drawing this month. Thanks!
@leb397 and @The_Bumble_Bard Thanks a lot, really appreciate it!
