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I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER
What a lucky coincidence this month’s theme is mini lessons. As I will be out on vacation travelling for pretty much the rest of the month, I would not have had time to tackle another one from the Ascent category, but the Rhythmic Blues mini lesson was just right for me this month. Here you go:
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Here’s my take on Cissy Strut. Kind of faked my way through the last two bars of the solo. Not sure I’ll ever be able to play those cleanly.
In my opinion, what makes a Ukulele player great is the same thing that makes any other instrumentalist great: their own unique sound. The fact that you instantly recognize them after the first few notes, and the first thing that comes to mind is not the instrument, but the player. Like when you turn on the radio in the middle of a song and know right away – ah that’s Miles Davis, not – that’s a jazz trumpet. Or yeah that’s J.J. Cale, not – ok that’s some rock guitar. And I picked those two examples because they’re both not particularly known for their super-virtuosic crazy out-of-this world playing, but for their instantly recognizable sound.
I’ve never had an issue like this, but if it happened to me, I’d check the saddle and nut, particularly the nut slot of the A string, for any rough or sharp spots. That’s the only places I could imagine where a new string might possibly take damage and snap while being fastened. If you still have the three snapped strings, can you check where exactly they snapped? Was it always the same spot, and if yes by any chance in the vicinity of the nut or saddle? Or did they snap at some random places in between? If the latter is the case, I’d guess something was wrong with that particular batch of strings. The tuning peg shouldn’t matter, nor the order in which you change the strings. Also there’s not really anythig you could do wrong other than overtightening the strings, which you ovioulsy didn’t if they snapped while still an octave below target.
Also, did you make sure the strings you used were actually tenor sized strings? Maybe they were also mislabeled, maybe the manufacturer ended up putting soprano or concert strings into tenor labelled packages. That might also explain why all A strings snapped when put on a tenor uke, and why the Aquila didn’t snap.
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I decided to take on The Ascent, even though my practice time was kind of limited this month. I have some serious trouble keeping a steady and consistent timing and groove. I tend to rush through some of the passages and play them too fast, and when I consciously try to slow down, the timing starts falling apart. So as I’m out of time, I guess I’ll just have to post what I have so far, but I will definitely keep working on this one.
Here’s my take on Adelita. Not completely there yet, but getting closer. I played the A melody a litter slower and the B melody a little faster, kind of liked the contrast that’s added by the change of the tempo in addition to the major/minor change.
(Please no prize drawing entry for me this month.)@katazumiri kindly listened to my entry and suggested a chord progression that actually works and sounds like real music, as opposed to the simplistic one I put together in a hurry.
So if anyone is interested in the details, I played the riff over A/A/A/D/D/D/A/A.
Katazumiri suggested A/E7/A/D/A/G/A/A. This works much better, particularly the G chord in bar 6 over the out-of-key note. If I had to take a guess I’d call it the secondary subdominant.Anyway, here’s the katazumiri version. Fear not, this time it’s only one style, not a dozen.
Here’s my take on the country riff, or shall I say my 12 takes. I had some fun with iReal Pro, created a backing track and played around with some of the many styles they offer. Of course I played the exact same thing in the same tempo over and over again and let the AI do all the variations. I had a lot of fun doing this, hope you have some fun listening to some of it. I won’t blame anyone for not listening to the whole thing though.
Once again, please exclude me from the prize drawing this month. If anyone wonders why I ask for being excluded so frequently, I live in Germany and already have enough ukes, so there’s really no point in shipping one overseas to me in case I’m the lucky winner. I particpiate in these challenges mostly because they’re fun and help me improve my playing.I went with fingerpicking etude no. 6 this month. After recording my take I listened back to the original for comparison and realized I misread the ending lick and memorized it icnorrectly, I skipped a few notes. Anyway, I’ll leave it like that since it doesn’t sound entirely wrong, just different.
(Please no prize drawing entry for me this month.)
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I’ve donated $20 to the UKC in honor of RC101.
Here’s my take on the Waltz of the FLowers. Thanks for yet another year of amazing lessons and arrangements. Looking forward to 2023.
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Here’s yet another Zelda’s lullaby. Ok, moving on to the Waltz of the Flowers. I have a feeling it might be one of the selections in the December challenge 🙂
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Back in the day when I started getting into classical music and became a symphony orchestra season subscriber for the first time, Mozart’s requiem was one of the very first works I got to listen to live, during my first season as a subscriber. Besides being deeply moved of course, what I remember from that night is that the name of the conductor was Bernard Labadie, and that he conducted the whole thing from memory, without a score in front of him. I found that quite impressive at that time, and even more impressive now when I try to memorize a piece of two minutes for one voice, as opposed to 60 minutes for a few dozen voices. Reminds me of the quote “you should have the music in the head, not the head in the music”, though I can’t remember for the life of me where I got that from.
I agree with Andrew’s recommendation to watch the Mozart movie, it’s brillant. The other classical music themed movie I’d highly recommend to watch is “The Concert” by Radu Mihaileanu. It’s bascially the classical orchestra version of the Blues Brothers. Both heartrending and hilarious. It evolves around the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, one of my all time favorites and the one piece of music that infallibly gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. Maybe we can get a piece of that arranged for solo Ukulele as well sometime?
Anyway, enough rambling, here’s my Lacrimosa.Here’s where I am with Bodysurfing, very much still a work in progress with lots of practice left to do, but as I’m running out of time I guess I better post it now to keep my streak of two uninterrupted years of monthly member challenge participations alive 🙂
I chose the Uke 1 part and slowed the backing track down to 90%.Thanks once again for a brillant ukulele arrangement and the equally excellent tutorial. I guess I sound like a broken record, but this is the good stuff that’s hard to find on the Internet and really helps me to become a better uke player.
(Please exclude me from the prize drawing this month. Thanks!)
As I’ve already done The Explorer for the March challenge this year, I picked the Moon Waltz this month. I felt like playing it on my high G soprano which I pulled out of retirement for this one. Also I used a thumb only approach.
(Please exclude me from the prize drawing this month. Thanks!)
