Hi, Andy Eastwood here welcoming
you to the Octopus Ukulele Academy! [Andy shows off…] There's all sorts of fancy strumming you can do
on the ukulele but let's not try to run before we can walk. None of that stuff is going to happen
until after you've mastered a solid reliable basic strumming technique and that's what
we're going to talk about in this video. Strumming the ukulele, it's a huge topic
that we could talk about for many hours but I don't want to get bogged down by too many
details just at this stage, I want to give you the most important points and help you to
avoid some of the most common mistakes that I see people making. Now I cannot over emphasise how
important it is to develop a correct strumming technique because the average ukulele player is
going to make this movement millions of times and I'm not exaggerating you can do the maths
if you like think how many beats there are in a song how many songs you might play in a week how
many years you might go on playing the uke for and you can see we're talking not thousands but
millions so you owe it to yourself and your arm muscles to get this right.
Okay, so here are six
important aspects to think about when you strum. What's going on when we strum? It looks like
a wrist movement doesn't it. Actually that's a bit of an illusion and it gets people into a
lot of trouble. Take a look at your wrist joint, it's not so great at moving side to side. It
moves that way pretty well but side to side not so good. The little tendons that move the
wrist in that direction are only designed for delicate positioning they're not intended to
do any heavy work, so the minute you call up on your wrist joint to create a strumming action
you're really fighting your own physiology. If we thought this was going to come from the wrist we'd
better have a rethink. If we're going to make this strumming movement millions of times it needs to
be easy so relax your wrist, let it flop.
When it's relaxed it rests at an angle like that, okay
so that's how we'll strum. Now keep your wrists completely relaxed and wobble your hand as if it's
wet and you're trying to shake the water off. The wrist is relaxed but these muscles are doing the
work, you can feel them moving. Now those are the biggest muscles in your arm they're designed
to do heavy lifting and carrying and all we're asking them to do is wobble the hand from side
to side so there's no strain, it's effortless, and that's what we want.
Another way I could
describe this movement is like turning a doorknob, it's a rotation of the forearm palm to the ceiling
palm to the floor. Now if you rotate your forearm with your wrist straight your strumming finger the
'index' finger stays on one point but if you angle your wrist that finger draws an arc and the more
angled the wrist is the bigger the radius of the arc so given that we want to hit four strings
side by side a big radius is going to suit us. So let that wrist be at its relaxed angle. So, it
looks like a wrist movement but actually what good players do is let the arm muscles do the work and
keep the wrist relaxed. Now in addition to this rotating movement there is also a little bit of
downward and upward movement of the forearm from the elbow joint but don't think too much about
that for the time being just let your arm follow the movement of your hand and that should happen
naturally. Later on when we want to add a bit of emphasis we can use this arm movement as well just
to give the hand a bit of extra speed but for the time being concentrate on getting that rotation
of the forearm because that's the basic action.
So we've talked about the wrist now what
about the hand? Well we're going to let the index finger do the business. Later on when
we're doing fancy rhythms and special effects we let the other fingers get involved and the
thumb but for standard basic strumming we use the index finger. Now a big mistake that a lot
of people make is they play with the fingers all spread out and they wonder why it doesn't sound
good. Well imagine an athlete running in a race, they wouldn't run with their arms flailing around
all over the place it's not controlled it's not balanced it's not aerodynamic. Well it's a bit the
same with strumming. If you tuck the other fingers in the weight of the hand is more concentrated
and the strumming becomes more controlled. Just try wobbling your hand with the
fingers spread and then do the same thing with them closed and you'll immediately notice the
difference. So for accurate rhythmic strumming you want a closed hand position.
Gess what? When
you relax your fingers they curl it's when you tense the muscles that they extend so again
everything we're doing here is designed to make life easier! So have your fingers curled in now I
would hesitate to describe this as a fist because that suggests clenching and tension and those
are just the things we're trying to avoid but have the fingertips lightly touching the palm and
then just open out this index finger a little bit so that that fingertip protrudes so that that one
can get to the strings while the others can't. So the other three fingers are supporting
the index finger on this side and the thumb, lightly touching it, is supporting
it on the other side by supporting I mean that when it hits the strings
it's less liable to wobble around.
So where do we strum? Well generally
speaking we want to play the strings fairly near the middle. That's where we get
a full sweet sound and it's also the point where the strings are softest on the fingers
so that's another good reason to play there. If you experiment a little bit you'll
find that the nearer you get to the bridge the harsher the sound is and the more
resistance there is in the strings so for best results aim for round about the point
where the neck meets the body of the uke. The size of the strum is very important and
yet a lot of people forget to think about it. In order for your strumming to sound neat
and rhythmic you have to obviously play on the beat but actually when you think about
it what we're doing is hitting the four strings one after the other we can't physically
strike all four at the same exact time. So all we have to do is get the hand moving
so quickly that the four strings sound like one chord.
Now to get the required speed of course
you have to take a bit of a swing at the strings and I like to compare this to a golfer. Now, I
don't play golf myself but we've all seen what happens. Think of a golfer driving off from
the tee and first of all of course there's the backswing and then the club starts behind the
head travels through 180 degrees then there's the split second where you're in contact with the ball
then the follow through carries on all the way up here and you finish behind the head again the
other side. Now it's not all about that precise moment where you're in contact with the ball.
In fact, by the time you get to the ball you've already determined what's going to happen to it.
Well it's the same with a strum. I see a lot of people making too small a movement and struggling
to make it sound good.
They think the strum is all about the area where the strings are they start
about here and finish here and all you get is that spread effect where you hear the four strings
one after the other. Imagine that golfer trying to drive the ball 100 yards down the fairway but only
starting to swing about this far from the ball. It would take a lot of effort from those arms
to get to the required speed well of course it's impossible. Try and start the strum about here
in line with the edge of the body of the uke and end around about here again near the edge
of the uke then your hand has time to accelerate before getting to the strings and slow
down after hitting the strings. Because you've given yourself that space you don't have to force
it. So a bigger movement is actually less effort. When you hit the strings on the way down use the
nail of that index finger. Not the very tip of the nail but the big flat surface of it.
Many people
make the mistake of trying to hit the strings too square on now of course the natural result of
that would be for the finger to bounce back again off the string and so people then fall into the
trap of trying to force the finger through which leads to a very heavy impact, a harsh sound, and a
sore finger: three things we really want to avoid! The smart thing to do is to angle the hand
so that when that finger meets the G string, that's the first string that it hits on the
way down, the nail is it's a very shallow flat angle so that it can glide or skim across
the strings without too much resistance.
That way, we keep the speed up and the effort
to a minimum. So far we've talked more about the downstrokes than the upstrokes and that's because
they're kind of more important in a way. For most people the easiest way to learn is just to think
about strumming down on every beat. For example, four beats in a bar. one two three four one two
three four If you focus on doing that your hand automatically comes up again in between the
down strokes to get ready for the next beat. Now when you feel comfortable
playing down on every beat, gently introduce the up strokes.
Instead
of missing the strings on the way up let the fleshy part of your index
finger gently brush the strings. Of course as we have this curved finger position
what's going to happen is when the finger hits the strings on the way up the strings are going to
bend it back a little taking the power out of the impact but that's fine don't fight it we actually
want the upstrokes to be softer than the downs because we played down on the beat and up off
the beat. So by playing the downward strum strong and the ups gentle we give the music a
little rhythmic light and shade. Often people tense the finger and then it catches the
strings on the way up. Just relax… And my advice when learning to strum is let the
upward strokes be as gentle as you possibly can. Think of them as a fill-in between the more
important beats don't worry we'll still hear them. So there's a lot to think about in a simple
strum isn't there? But the number one tip is keep it loose and relaxed, don't fight the
uke it's your friend…
Enjoy it! Bye for now..