Ukulele Method

Whoa, this blog is a disaster. I like to think of it as a representation of my state of mind right now.

Must. Finish. School.

I'm in the middle of transcribing many, many things right now. I'm going to accompany little violin students, and have been writing out their parts for clarinet so that I can practice my part with mummy. I also have a bunch of half finished Christmas trios that need to be done soon. I've also been transcribing Christmas songs for the young'uns because my scanner is broken and they can't count eighth notes, anyway.

In the meantime, I also have my first ever ukulele student. He's never played an instrument before. This is very, very exciting, because it means that I have a lot of room to play around.

The ukulele is tuned to an open minor seventh chord. I tune to an am7 so that there are no accidentals in the open chord. The top string and the bottom string are high notes, a second apart, which means that you can do claw hammer and other interesting fingering techniques, but that scales are kind of awkward. It's a folk instrument and useful for tonal music only.

I've decided to slowly write a beginner book based on what I have time to teach in class. I'm going to start with open strings, and then add the D and the F so that I have the notes Do, Re, Mi, Fa and So to work with. I came up with these songs on the fly, so I was pretty proud of myself. Also, check out my handy photoshop skills! (that was mildly sarcastic)




I think I may need to draw pictures. Once again - WHEN I'M OUT OF SCHOOL! AAAAAARGH!

La Joyeuse

I love Rameau. I can play this on flute, almost. I'm just missing 2 notes in the high register. And I sound shrieky and terrible. The clarinet part is "easy peasy, lemon squeezy", as all the 6 year olds seem to be saying nowadays.






The clarinet line was altered so that it wouldn't go so low. This was originally written for Piano, and the descending lines are supposed to continue so that they end an octave lower. You'd need an instrument with a bigger range. I'm thinking of playing it with a guitar player.

an underrated carol

I was in Homesense the other day, and it was all Halloween/Christmased out. Plus, I was there at around 8pm, so it felt like it might as well have been winter because it was so dark outside. It was amazing. For one glorious hour, I forgot that it was the middle of the semester and I had homework to do.

I can't wait until December.

In celebration of not doing homework under the delusion that it is Christmas time, I'm taking a break to post this beauty. "Sing We All Noel" is one of my favourite carols. It also doubles as the supremely awesome chorale for Easter, "Love is Come Again Like Wheat that Springeth Green". Apparently it was a Christmas tune first. And French!

Anyway, I wrote this out for my mum and her woodwind friends, none of whom had time to jam anymore once it had been written out. I hope it eventually gets put to some use.



It's exactly the same thing twice, except that the two parts are an octave higher the second time. Finale glitched out and put them two octaves higher, and because I didn't notice it as a problem the first time, and it sounded ok either way, I decided to print it both ways. (pssst. I totally STOLE this from a MIDI file and rearranged it, because I'm LAZY. That's probably where the weird Finale problems came from, and why I didn't notice them.)

Minuet in G transposed to F

This is a Minuet by Bach which can be found in the 81 edition of the RCM grade 1 book. I decided to learn it on flute, and transcribed it so that I could be accompanied on either tenor sax or cello.

This meant that the piece had to be transcribed to F major, because I am not a very good flute player, and the cellist and saxaphone players in question are beginners on their instruments as well.

Tenor sax is written a Major 9th above the note that it sounds. Because I'm lazy, both parts are in Bb on the tenor sax part, however, that means that any Bb instrument could play the melody in this case, such as clarinet or trumpet.