Silent Night - fingerstyle guitar workshop

A student and I workshopped an ultra simple version of Silent Night to have a few more fingerstyle elements, and work as a solo piece for a potential Christmas recital.

Our original is from Steve Kaufman's Smokey Mountain Christmas. (This is a great collection. It has 2 versions for each tune, 1 is chords with melody and tabs. The other version is a more complex fingerstyle solo version.)

So the chords in the no frills version give an idea of direction for fingerstyle.

I've transcribed our workshop result on to old people 'large print' staff paper. I'm not using the most official RCM guitar  notation style. The idea is to give clues to the student/player about how to get the fingers ready for upcoming moves.

Incorporated here are elements from our lessons: note reading, hammer ons, pull offs, identifying notes within chords, slides, walk downs, walk ups, harmonic. 

Note: the harmonic near the end is artificial. This allows you to maintain chord position, since the same one comes up again right after the harmonic. Holding position gives less chance for error. But the student can also just do the slide in the bar previous and omit the harmonic.

Here's the link to an online album that has the original and then workshopped sheet music pages. As well as a short video of the piece played thru.

Wassail and merry Christmas!

Fingerstyle Yule-kulele, Part 2 - Coming up with your own arrangement with fingerstyle embellishments

The peculiarity of the uke is the re-entrant tuning, meaning what would be the lowest sounding string on a guitar, ie closest to your thumb, is not the lowest sounding on the uke.

The banjo also has re-entrant tuning. Likely that's why the banjo uke was such a perfect hybrid when it emerged in the 1920s. 

The drone effect of the banjo's, well, drone string gives an idea of how we can use the high G string on the uke to enhance the drone effect.

However I personally don't feel the vibe of stunt uke or George Formby banjo uke. Obviously Formby types gravitated to the instrument for its big sound projection in small package capability.

The vibe i do feel, tho, is sort of Pa Ingalls/post US civil war era tunes.

I looked for a Christmas tune in the Pa Ingalls fiddle songbook. But  it seems holiday tunes as the time were more serious hymns. (Found some - see Postscript.)

I had the image in my mind of Mary and Laura getting so excited about the piece of candy in their stockings, and their amazement at seeing a Christmas tree. Garth Williams' illustrations were simply the best!

In my simple Snowman uke Christmas tunes book,  pretty much all the tunes are in C and F major, so no need for the low g tuning. In that book, Jolly Old St. Nicolas jumped out. So I went around this tune 3 times, first in  full pinch mode, next in a  pinch and pick out mode, finally in a slowed down simplied pick out of the arpeggios. So that's to show the girls' excitement Christmas eve in 2 phases then slowing down before bedtime. Here is a link to my sheet music. You might need to download and enlarge in a photos app.

Similar to in my previous post on reading fingerstyle: 1. Play the melody in notes, 2. Play thru again with chords, 3. Make note of which notes within the chord you NEED to bring out the melody, and which notes within the chord you can DROP to simplify and gain nimbleness. Here's a little video clip.  In this case i think the flubbs work with the tired Christmas vibe i was going for (that's my story).

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. Happy holiday & best of the season. Have fun and keep improving your chops!

Postscript. In the collection of Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas chapters, there are mentions to songs Pa played on Christmas eve.  There are also verse excepts & a full  piece, Merry Merry Christmas at the end. Here's the link to a little online album with some pages relevant to this from that picture book. I'll make a note of songs and first lines Pa played on Christmas eve for future reference:

* Nelly Gray...

* Money Musk

*the Red Heifer

*Devil's Dream

*Arkansas Traveller (baby bumblebee tune).

* Oh Charley he's a fine young man

* Twas a calm still night...Lily Dale

*Polly put the kettle on

*Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines

*Merry Merry Christmas

Fingerstyle Yule-kulele, Part 1- Working thru a fingerstyle piece

For anyone wanting to work up a little bit special ukulele piece for the holidays -

There are lots of fingerstyle pieces for ukes tuned to low g. If you go to a sheet music site and search uke, fingerstyle, christmas, there are quite a few choices. The one here is from Musicnotes. com, i think. But my other go-to is Sheet Music Plus.

So let's look at First Noel used here. Step 1 - pick out the notes of the tune on your uke. Step 2 - Now go thru the song using chords. Remember that chords are just arpeggios. So the chords for a certain section will have the notes for the tune in that measure in it.

Step 3 - have a pencil ready and a flat surface. You're going to mark up your sheet music as you go with  tips to yourself about how to finger the chord so that you can emphasize the note and be prepared to have an easy fingering for the next note that's coming. This is a very wordy way of saying it, whereas the exercise of doing it isn't that hard.

Simplified - Identify the notes you NEED to hit the melody. Peel off or SUBTRACT the fingers from the full chord that you don't need. You rarely need the full chord.

Here's a link to a jpg of the sheet music.

For instance, at Bar 4, we have a C chord with notes C, E & G indicated. Well, I felt I need the G for the tune. For the chord effect, i don't need the whole chord and to twist my fingers up like a pretzel. Need G, so cant also have E on string 2. We can get a 2 note harmony from C on the low string at 5th fret. Like a double stop in violin. And the lower C doesnt dominate like the high C would over the G. Finger this stop in the F chord shape formation.

That's just one example. I'm not going to take your fun away and make all the suggestions for you. The main points are, you don't need the whole chord - subtract from it the fingers you really don't need.

Since we found a fairly complete arrangement, i played pretty much as written. Here's the link to a short VIDEO CLIP. (Be kind. I'm just a part-time uke player  - Chet-Knopfler joke.)

In the next post, Part 2, we'll take a look at how to come up with the barebones of your own fingerstyle adaptation or arrangement.

Simple Gifts

This finger-style variation is from the RCM Gr2 curric for classical guitar.

A pretty version with drop D tuning. Satisfying to play, but can break your heart with its deceptive simplicity. To extend the piece, it works to just go back to the top and run thru again. Or you can asterisk the chorus, and just go back there. It seems to work to start slow top to bottom, then do a more lilting rhythm for the chorus repeat.

I wanted to post this in time for Easter, because of course this is also known as 'Lord of the Dance.'

The recording is a bit fuzzy, but hey, i'm lucky to get a minute in the studio without dog waterbowl slurping noises in the background.

I noodled around with a strumming line. It works to do D, D, G, A, D, D, G, A, D-A-D for both the verse and chorus.

Since you're in drop D, you need a different fingering for G chord. Since you will have dropped your lowest note E string a couple of semi-tones to G, that means low G note will be at the 5th fret. That can be a bit rough to form. For these tracks, i went with bass note E at 2nd fret, 6th string. So for G chord (without changing the drop D tuning), do index and  tall boy fingers on 2nd fret on strings 6 &5 with pinky finger on 3rd fret, string 1. Or standard G formation avoiding playing the lowest string 6.

So there are 4 tracks in total: 1. picked only, 2. strummed only and 3. pick with strum so you can see how the tracks sound together. Picked and strummed are synched, 4. is an extended pick + strum version with strum added in as a 2nd variation type of thing. The miracle of Garage Band, I tell ya!

Happy Easter friends! Keep the faith. We will get thru this - and maybe even become slightly better guitar players by the end :)


LINK

Guitar, fingerpicked only

Guitar, pick + strum

Guitar strum only 

Guitar pick + strum extended