Live ‘Ukulele

My family and I just flew back to the mainland to end our three year adventure in Hawaii. It was sad leaving, but we will be back (they can’t get rid of me that easy).

We will be visiting and moving for the next week, so you probably will not see any new posts for a while. …But coming up is a “Message in a Bottle” tab, two interviews, and an ‘ukulele building page.

~Hippie Guy

Slack Key Kid found and told me about the site Finetune a while back, but yesterday was the first time I have actually explored the site. On Finetune you can create your own playlist(s) using songs that are available free on their site. (It is kind of an odd deal; with music piracy as big as it is. I can’t figure out how they are keeping the MPA off their back.) I put together a playlist that has many tracks to go along with our tabs and songs. The only bad thing is that they have a very short list of Hawaiian songs and that means no ‘ukulele. Almost all of the songs are mainstream and since you need 45 songs to make a playlist I had to add some of my own favorites. The music player is in random order and is located down in the sidebar. Hopefully you can use it to learn a song along with the tab.

~Hippie Guy

In my opinion, the best kind of picks you can use are your fingernails. As they grow, just start playing and the nails will become what you pick with.

Thumb picks are probably second best to fingernails. It is a good idea to practice with a thumb pick occasionally so that if you break your thumbnail you have a backup. There are tons of different kinds, so just choose a couple that you like the look of and try them out. I personally like the Golden Gate GP-7s (shown below). Thumb picks allow your hand to rest at a more natural angle when you are playing.
When you first start playing with a thumb pick you might feel like you are going to break the strings off your ‘ukulele. Don’t worry, you just need to practice letting the pick slide off of the strings at a little bit of an angle. As great as they are, I wouldn’t use thumb picks exclusively, just in case you end up without it somewhere.

The only person I can think of who plays ‘ukulele with fingerpicks Is Ledward Kaapana. Most fingerpicks are made out of metal and you can bend them to fit your finger. Because of the way the picks go on your fingers, if you try to pick downward, you will most likely get tangled up in the strings.

Plectrums (flat picks) are not used by many ‘ukulele players, mostly guitar players who have just transfered over to ‘ukulele. There are several types: standard guitar picks, felt picks, and rubber picks. Standard picks will scratch the top of your ‘ukulele if you are not careful. Felt picks are just thick, stiff pieces of felt. The flat picks that I have experience with are the Wedgie rubber picks. They might work okay for you if are just doing simple picking, but if you try to rip it up, I think they would really slow you down.