Here is a fairly easy version of the 1960’s song “Wipe Out”. Composed in the form of twelve-bar blues, the tune was first performed and recorded by the Surfaris, who became famous with the single in 1963. This version is meant for “level 2” guitar players – not raw newbies, and not semi-professionals. Among other
Here is a simple “Chords+” version of “Every Breath You Take” in G. The original, a song from the British group the Police, was written and sung by Sting, and released in 1983. In the 1983 Rolling Stone critics’ and readers’ poll, it was voted “Song of the Year”. The original was released in Ab,
You can easily make your strumming more interesting when you’re playing in 3/4 time. Here are a couple of variations. The main point is that you should emphasize the first beat. So it’s like this: “ONE-two-three”. Of course how much you should emphasize that first beat will depend on the song. Generally speaking when you
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”. Here I walk thru “Ode to Joy” very slowly to give you a better idea
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 easy 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)
