Here is the song “You Are My Sunshine” broken down into Chords and melody notes. I’m going to start calling this the “Chords+ Version” because we’re mixing melody with chords. pdf version
I asked ChatGPT for a description of the “Island Strum” for Ukulele. This is what I got: “The Ukulele Island Strum is a fun, upbeat strumming pattern commonly used in tropical, Hawaiian-style music and many beginner ukulele songs. The classic Island Strum follows this pattern: Down – Down-Up – Up-Down-Up (or written as: D –
Here is an outline of chords and notes for Ode to Joy in G. On the left it is all chords. On the right some chords are replaced with individual notes. The notes are indicated in lower case, e.g., “b1”. Image pdf
This version of Edelweiss is played in the key of G. In this version I combine melody with chords. Edelweiss was featured in the famous movie called “The Sound of Music”. It was a folky feel but was not a traditional Austrian song. It was written specifically for the 1959 musical The Sound of Music
In this video I add a bass pattern to the accompiament of “Waltzing Matilda”. I use all downstrokes in this example, but you could just as well use down-up strokes. The initial pattern is Bass-Strum-Strum-Strum (1-2-3-4). I then introduce variations like this: Bass-mute-Strum-Strum, and Bass-mute-Strum-mute. “Bass-mute” and “Strum-mute” actually amounts to holding the note for
In this video I demonstrate how relatively easys it is to play a combination of chord and melody of a familiar song (like “Jingle Bells.”) The fact that the ukulele has only three strings that can be used to play melodies is a bit of a limitation. The 4th string (high G on the uke)
Here’s what is often called the “Old Faithful” strum for guitar players. The version I describe here consists of Down-Up-Down-Up–Up-Down-Up. In other words, you miss the 3rd Downstroke. You may also hear a variation which does not include upstrokes for the first two beats. In other words, Down–Down–Up-Down-Up. The important aspect of this strum is
