Possibly the coolest thing about playing ukulele is what it can do rhythmically. We all want to strum really well. But what is good strumming and how do we achieve it?
Once you have learned a few songs you might want to make your playing sound more exciting. What do I mean by that? On one hand we feel the need to learn more chords while, on the other hand, we want to have more strums to choose from. Learning more chords may seem the more daunting of those choices but I will forever argue that more overlooked and challenging option is learning to strum well.
A starting point is to find an answer to the question, “What exactly is good strumming?”
It may be something which you have never considered. We take workshops and buy learning materials to get a host of new strums but without actually thinking on how to use these new rhythms in the context of our music. As a result, our playing can get more complex and disjointed without necessarily being any more listenable.
Complex does not mean better. And, when it comes to strumming a stringed instrument – ukulele or otherwise –the temptation is to want to run before you can walk. Walking means keeping a steady rhythm that is always on the beat and doesn’t speed up for each easy section and slow down for the difficult bits. The beat is king. It is far better to strum the occasional wrong chord right on the beat than it is to play all correct chords at a fluctuating tempo.
Allow yourself all the time in the world to practice playing in time without faltering. No matter what is going on with the fretting hand be consistent and steady with your rhythm. It’s a habit that requires training. This can be developed by learning to keep time with a device such as a metronome and really listening to yourself.
It’s amazing how easy it is to stop listening to yourself and go off the beat while still believing you are playing in perfect time. We think we can multi-task but we really can’t. It’s an illusion created as a result of our brains rapidly switching from one job to another. As soon as we stop listening to ourselves our tempo quickly begins to either speed up or slow down. Many people (professionals included) go off-tempo the moment their attention wanders onto other musical matters such as singing lyrics or playing tricky chords.
Once you can keep a consistently steady rhythm start looking at ways to vary your strum. Drummers, perhaps more than any other musician, have the most to teach ukulele strummers about what rhythms to play and when to play them. An effective place to vary your strum is at the end of a melody line. Drummers call this a fill.
A fill is a drumming term for a pattern that strays from the main groove of a song and usually comes in the transition between two lines of melody or between one section and the next. Listening to the drummer in almost any piece of music you’ll hear the rhythmic groove staying steady and out of the way of the other instruments. But every now and then the drummer performs a rhythmic fill which generates some variety. A good drummer will make sure each fill is in some way different from their earlier fills.
If you pay attention to when and what drummers play and copy exactly what they do you may never have to take another ukulele strumming workshop ever again. It’s all right there.
1 Pick a song and make sure you can play a single strumming pattern all the way through while keeping to a rock-steady tempo.
2 Decide on one place to put in a fill (a change in the rhythm pattern). To start with, practice the fill by itself before playing it in the context of the song. Once it is in the song don’t let this rhythmic addition change the tempo at all.
3 Keep adding one fill at a time to any bits of the song that could benefit from a momentary change in rhythm – like the end of a vocal line. Make each fill different. For inspiration listen to what other rhythm players do (whether it’s drums, banjo, piano or ukulele.)
4 It may seem like a bit of a slog to put yourself through 1, 2 and 3 but by the end of it you should be far better at improvising rhythmic changes to the groove of a song while still keeping in time.
The thing about playing any rhythm instrument is that most people don’t notice when you’re doing it well, but their ears prick up right away if you do it badly.
Keep Strumming and Smiling,
Ralph