Next Level Ukulele

INTRODUCTION

Hello and welcome to Next Level Ukulele!

If you want to take your ukulele skills to the next level by being able to hear and understand more about the music you play, especially when playing with others, then this book is for you.

The ukulele is a very sociable instrument. There are many ukulele groups out there to join, and no matter where in the world you live, there is likely one near to you. These provide a great opportunity for people of all ages and musical backgrounds to get together and have fun making music.

The thing is, as the leader of one such group, I’ve seen how easy it is for players to get stuck in a ‘rut’. They become totally dependent on a chord sheet or songbook. In fact they’re unable to play without it, let alone spontaneously ‘jump in’ and play along with others when the opportunity arises.

Friends in the group often tell me how frustrating this is! Perhaps you feel the same way? You've learned a load of chords, you can strum and change between them, why can’t you put them together ‘on the spot’ to play along with other musicians at open-mic nights and other musical gatherings?

The good news is you can learn to do this - all it takes is a bit of knowledge, patience and practice. I aim to give you the knowledge in this book, patience and practice is down to you!

In my ukulele group I often hear the comment:

I can hear the chords changing but I don’t know where they are going!

It’s exactly this problem that we are going to address in Next Level Ukulele. With an understanding of some basic music theory and by practicing the right things in the right way, you’ll be surprised to find you can overcome this problem. You’ll also be amazed by the difference improving your listening skills, even just a bit, will make to your all-round ability as a uke player.

By giving you straightforward explanations, exercises and examples, I hope to provide you with a ‘roadmap’ for building a connection between what you hear in the music you play and how it relates to the ukulele.

If you follow the method in this book, then your musical ‘ear’ and your listening skills will improve dramatically. This will help you follow and remember the chords in the songs you play, recognise common chords and progressions, and play along with other musicians more confidently and more easily than ever before.

Eventually, you may even feel confident enough to jump in and play with others whenever you want to, even if they’re playing music you haven’t played before! This might seem like a terrifying scenario right now, but with what this book teaches you, it’s something you can learn to do.

GET YOUR FREE ‘PLAY-ALONG’ TRACKS!

The aim of this book is not to teach you music theory - I already did that in my Music Theory for Ukulele book, so see that for more in-depth music theory lessons. Although we will be covering some important theory topics, Next Level Ukulele is more about playing and listening than it is about reading.

Play the practical examples, listen carefully to the sound of them, and explore the material I show you using your ukulele and your ears – it’s not just about me giving you information.

Make working through Next Level Ukulele a practical, ‘play-along’ process!

Do this, and it can have a big impact on your playing skills. You see, you’re not just reading about the ukulele, you’re actually working on building your practical skills.

To help you do this, I’ve created audio demonstrations and play-along backing tracks for you to use.

These will help you to hear what various concepts and exercises sound like, but they’re also designed for YOU to play-along with on your ukulele. This will do wonders for your ukulele skills because you’ll be growing your chord shape vocabulary, strumming, changing between chords, keeping your place in a piece of music... and much more besides.

Most of the tracks have a ‘live band’ feel, making them a lot of fun to play along with. They also give you a great way to realistically simulate a musical environment where you might play, for instance a ukulele club or band.

You need these audio tracks to get the most out of the book, so go to the following webpage and tell me the email address you’d like them sent to.

Get your FREE Play-Along audio tracks here:

headstockbooks.com/uke

On many tracks, you’ll hear me playing the exercise a few times over the backing track. Then I drop out, leaving you to carry on alone (this is great practice for you!).

Don’t forget these tracks, they’re an essential part of the musical journey we’re about to go on together, so go to the webpage given and grab them today.

HOW SHOULD YOU USE THIS BOOK?

Follow these 6 simple tips to get the best possible results from Next Level Ukulele:

Start at the beginning and work through the chapters in order. I’ve tried to build the content chapter by chapter - going through each one in sequence will make sure there are no gaps in your knowledge

Test yourself with the quiz at the end of each chapter to make sure you’ve understood everything. Then check your answers alongside those given and go back over anything you are not sure of

As I said earlier, this book is teaching you a practical skill, so make sure to do all the practical exercises I give you. Most of these can be played along with the downloadable audio examples

Take your time with this material. There's no rush, so go back over anything as many times as necessary. Some of the concepts and skills outlined take time to absorb and learn. You’ll need to put a bit of time in before experiencing the ‘light-bulb moment’!

Listen to the well-known song examples I suggest throughout the book. Leave aside your musical preferences for the moment and treat them as part of a learning process. I've selected them because they demonstrate something which we’re discussing. Just a note about these suggestions, the original recordings may not always be in the same key as the examples in the book, sometimes I’ve chosen to move things into ‘uke-friendly’ keys

All examples assume you are using the standard ukulele tuning G-C-E-A

One More Important Tip: Listen and Hear!

To get good at playing along with other musicians you need to practice LISTENING and HEARING.

Sounds obvious doesn’t it?

Here’s the thing though - I don’t just mean ‘hearing’ the sound you’re making on your uke in a passive kind of way. I’m talking about really listening in a more focused way than you’re maybe used to, so that you really start to absorb the sounds you’re making on the instrument. Doing this will strengthen your musical ear, and with practice you’ll be able to recognise and understand more of the music you play just from the sound of it.

To help you do this, try my ‘PLAY, LISTEN, HEAR’ method for the exercises and examples in this book:

PLAY the exercise on your uke

As you do this, really LISTEN to the characteristic sound and features of the example

Now without playing it, try to HEAR the sound in your head. Imagine what it would sound like if you were playing it

Repeat over and over!

Experiment with this approach for each exercise, it’ll help you to focus on the sound instead of just what your fingers are doing. With time you’ll be amazed how much your ‘listening powers’ grow, and how much this benefits you as a player.

To repeat what I said earlier, this is the main difference between this book and many other books out there. You see, I don’t just want to give you more information, I want to help you learn to notice and recognise the things you hear in the music you’re playing. Using this simple practice approach will help you to do this.

Ok, I think we’re ready to get started…

So grab your uke, get in tune, and get ready for Next Level Ukulele!

CHAPTER 1

MELODY, HARMONY, CHORDS AND MORE!

To start with, we’re going to cover some simple ideas to do with playing songs and chords on the uke. These concepts are important, and will help you to understand and get the very most out of this book.

If you know this material already, then great, it’ll serve as a useful reminder of some basic but important musical knowledge. If you don’t, then this chapter will help you to fill in some of the knowledge gaps you have as a player and musician.

Note: We’re not going to go really deep into these concepts, so if you’re completely new to music theory and how it relates to the uke, then you might also want to check out my Music Theory for Ukulele book for more information on the basics. This is the perfect way to fill in any knowledge gaps you might have.

So grab your uke and we’ll get started...

The Basics

When we are strumming along to a song, we are basically providing a background to a tune or melody. It may be a vocal song or an instrumental piece, it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that the background and the melody work together to produce the desired sound. The idea of notes and chords all working together is called harmony. In most music the notes in the melody and the notes in the background chords ‘belong’, or are ‘in harmony’ together because they all come from the same ‘family’. We’ll look at this in a moment - just remember for now that chords and melody tend to work together well when they are somehow related to each other.

If notes and chords are used together randomly, the result is usually uncomfortable to the ear and we’d probably say the music sounded ‘out of tune’.

So, knowing how chords and melody relate to each other is kind of important, and that’s exactly what we’re going to look at next.

THE MUSICAL ALPHABET

It might look like you can play loads of notes on the uke, but there are actually only 12. Amazingly, all the songs and tunes we play come from just these 12 notes! They can be used in different sequences to make melodies. They can also be grouped together in different combinations to make chords.

Understand that these same 12 notes are just duplicated all over the uke fretboard. You can see this in detail in the fretboard diagram at the end of the book (Appendix 1) but for now, just be aware that these twelve notes are all we need to make music and that each one can be found in several different places on the neck of the ukulele.

Let’s call these 12 notes the musical alphabet. The musical alphabet looks like this:

Notice how some notes have been given a ‘#’ or ‘b’ symbol. These are the ‘sharp’ (#) and ‘flat’ (b) notes. Each sharp/flat note has two possible names and can be described using either, depending on the situation.

Scale Basics

Any one of the twelve notes can be used as a starting point for building a set of notes, or a scale. The starting note is referred to as the tonic or root of this scale. The two most common scales are the major scale and the natural minor scale. Now, because there are 12 possible notes to start our scales from, it means that there are 12 possible major scales and 12 possible natural minor scales. Make sense?

All major scales use seven of the notes in the musical alphabet.

For example, the C major scale contains the following notes:

C