Beginner uke (or guitar) program, 7 weeks

 

This is a slightly longer program for beginning stringed instrument players. To keep kids going thru a few more weeks of winter. 

(I do have a short 4-week program for beginners. HERE'S the link to it.)

Virtual, Zoom-based for families trying to keep distant from face to face learning during pandemic until the weather warms up and there can be more outside interaction.

It's colour-coded, coordinated to desk bells for frame of reference.

Can be used for ukulele or guitar.

It's also important for new (especially young) learners to work on finger strength, so each lesson 30 minute lesson dedicates 10 minutes to a fine motor activity. The two methods used here are clay play (with plasticine) and forming coloured yarn strands. I've created an online album that shows a map (overview or flow) of the program. Click HERE for the online album for the 7 -week course.

Materials needed: uke (or guitar), plasticine, clear plastic page sleeve, small balls of red, green & blue yarn, lucet or yarn corker. (If you are local to me and can arrange to pick up, I can provide you with most of these material. You will need your own instrument.)

Here's of guideline of the content for each day:

Day 1. Learn what a scale is. Finger warmup - Plasticine string snakes.  Learn what a scale is. Watch video of 'Doe a Deer' from Sound of Music (link to in on YouTube HERE). Look at set of bells to see where notes/colours of C major scale fall on a staff. Find corresponding notes on open strings (important for tuning). Sing/play Doe a Deer picking tonic note.

Day 2. Strings & tuning. Finger warmup - plasticine - start clay dot art piece (will continue working on this in next lesson).  Review Doe a deer song.  Tune ukes to note names. Review at bell colour notes on staff. Find corresponding notes on uke fretboard.  Isolate arpeggio (1, 3 & 5 notes). Prepares the ear for these notes together forming a chord.

Day 3. Find all 7 notes of scale on uke. Finger warmup - plasticine - clay art piece. Look at bells against a piano keyboard. This shows that not all notes have a half tone between them. On uke/guitar, this shows how most notes have 2 frets between them, but some are just 1 fret apart0. Student don't have to memorize this, just be aware of it. Find corresponding notes on uke fretboard. Play Doe a Deer using all notes.

Day 4. Form C chord.  Finger warmup - make red lace representing C note. On uke - go up and down scale. Review arpeggio.  (Can look at arpeggio song from Aristocats. Link to 'Scales & Arpeggios Song on YouTube is HERE.) Form C chord. Play silly 1-chord song. Vary rhythm. Try pluck, then strum pattern.

Day 5. Form partial F chord. Warmup - make yellow lace for E note. On uke - review arpeggio. Students are encouraged to manipulate yarn with the left hand (or less natural hand) as well as this will strengthen the chording fingers (alternately string plucking fingers). Play 2-chord song, Row your boat from Kids Uke book.

Day 6. Form partial G chord. Warmup - make blue G lace. Braid 3 laces together. This becomes a physical representation of the 3 notes together in a chord.. What a chord 'looks' like. On uke - review arpeggio. Form part G chord. (Try walking fingers analogy for how to play fingers. Gives students chord is more than 1 finger. If this is too hard, do 1 finger G7 chord). Play 3-chord song, Twinkle little star from Kids Uke book. 

Day 7. New 3 chord song.  Review relevant learnings to day. Introduce song such as On Top of Old Smokey (orig lyrics are refreshing. Revert to On Top of Spaghetti for fun.) With these 3 chords, new players can play a huge range of folk or pop songs.

Lessons aim to be 30 minutes long. I will tend to go slightly over to have a song to takeaway, rather than go strictly by the clock.

Cost: $20 per lesson. I can work out a deal for 2 or 3 children from 1 family or location on screen at same time. Total: $140 ($20x7). I'm offering the Pandemic Survivor discount on this  program of 1 free lesson, which is $20 off). So Pandemic Survivor deal is $120 in total. I can take etransfer or cash. Payment for this package is due at start of first lesson. Please give 24 hours notice to cancel or reschedule.

This is a rough outline. We can cover more or less info than indicated depending on interest level. (It's not a race. Getting thru it faster isn't the goal here. ) But we'll end up at the same spot by last lesson.

Hope that helps. Send me a message at email bottom of blog for more info. You can also reach out by DM on my FB, Instagram of Twitter pages.

Stay well, everyone. Six more weeks until spring. We got this!

Circuit-breaker Ukulele Program (4 weeks) - for beginners, young or old

Given the weird stop & go re-start to school in 2022 due to Wave freaking 5 of this pandemic, I've come up with 2 programs of lessons, 1 short (4 weeks) and 1 longer (7 weeks). The longer program can be found in a separate posting HERE.

This shorter program, I'm calling the Circuit-Breaker Program. If kids have to be home for symptoms or quarantine or a class infection, it's a little something for them to do.

This is not meant to take the place of a day of schooling. It's just something fresh to break up the day.  It's virtual. I know that small children don't  respond the best to online. But if there's no choice for them, again it's a  fresh activity. As for screen time, it's just a short time frame - 30 minutes.

The lessons are meant to be understandable for young children. By the end of 4 sessions, they will come away with 3 basic chords (most popular or folk songs can be played with these chords), and some songs. Baked into the lesson is some colour-coded, music scale based structure that will form a good foundation for later music lessons. 

I've put up an ONLINE PHOTO ALBUM that gives an idea of how we'll be progressing thru the course. It shows the book I'll be using, the relationships of the strings to note names and chords, etc. Click on link at start of this paragraph to see the online album.

A good chunk of the 30 minute time period is spent on finger strengthening. In this case thru plasticine play. I've found that small children have trouble getting a sound on their ukes because their wee fingers aren't strong enough. So finger strengthening will be about 10 minutes.

In the playing part of the lessons, students will tune their strings every week. (Tuning will be the main musical activity for Week 1.) And then we will work on a chord and song or silly tune to go with each new chord. By the end of 4 weeks, they will have a 3 chord song.

This program is totally adaptable to any age of beginner.

I can also adapt this lesson to guitar. I have a small scale 1/2 size classical (nylon strings) guitar here that can be tried. You can also walk into Long & McQuade's guitar room and test a 1/2 or 3/4 guitar.

Since it's virtual, you will need: a uke, plasticine, a plastic protector (see online album) and a computer or tablet for our Zoom lesson. These items can be found pretty cheaply on Amazon, some of them at a dollar store.

If you are local to me and can pick up, I can put a kit together with printouts and plasticine. You can also try one of my ukes on site. I'm just not lending them out at the moment. If you can borrow one maybe from a family member, that would be best. If the instrument was something you were interested to buy anyway, they can be found on Amazon. I also use Musician's Friend to order instruments online. Long & McQuade also ships online. They are around $50. (An instrument lending library would be great, wouldn't it?)

I generally go a little overtime. I'd rather the students have a song they can practice before they leave, rather than go just by the clock.

Cost. My base rate is $20 per lesson. (I can work out a deal for a family with 2 or 3 kids viewing at the same time). In the spirit of getting thru this together, I'm happy to offer $10 off (which over 10% off) for the package of 4 lessons. So $70. 

I take e-transfer or cash payable at start of first lesson. Please give 24 hours notice to cancel or reschedule.

Once the student completes the course, you'll be amazed at how many songs can be found online that use the chords we learned. If you just type into your search bar, Song, uke, chords, a ton of options will pop up.

It's pretty easy to learn new chords. Many books have a little chord diagram that shows where you put your fingers down to form chords in the song.

Contact me thru the email here (on footer of this blog), or message me thru Leathertown Guitar Studio's FB, Insta or Twitter page if you are interested.

We can get thru this. Six more week 'til spring!

Tip Jar - New!

Friends - I added a new element to the studio - a virtual tip jar.

Link here: Tip Jar/ Buy LD a Coffee

I took this idea from #SpiritoStrings.

I think it's a good idea. It gives folks a short sharp way to show appreciation for something the studio offers - a tutorial, playing tip, video posting, learning tip etc.

It's via the Buy me a Coffee app ( @buymeacoffee #buymeacoffee ). The tip goes straight to my account, no transfer fee to you.

Just lobbing that out there.

Stay well, my friends. Less than a week to Groundhog Day. That's half the way to Spring Equinox. We got this!

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.

Mystery object - Hint 1,2,3,5,6

 

While we're all memorizing different scale forms...

Give up?

Major pentatonic

:D

Geez i'm picturing a 3 strand cuff style bracelet i could make out of these....