Tone

There are many different tones that can be coaxed out of an ‘ukulele. Once you learn what kinds of tonal options you have to work with, they can be integrated into your playing. This is what separates the good from the great. There are no awesome ‘ukulele artists with bad tone.

How to get a good tone:

What makes for “good tone” is totally a matter of preference. Every player has a little bit different sound and chases different ideals. Here are the variables I can think of that you can manipulate to change your tone:

• How tightly you hold the ‘ukulele. When you grab the ‘ukulele in a bear-hug you are trapping many areas of the instrument against your body. This dampens the vibrations of the wood and changes the tone.
• Picking/strumming location. If you pick closer to the bridge the tone will be brighter and more snarly. It you pick closer to your fretting hand the tone gets warmer and more mellow. The are tons of possibilities between those two extremes.
• Fingernail vs. flesh. Picking with your fingernail yields a more precise, bright tone. The flesh of your finger is more a more rounded, warm sound.
• Up vs. downstrokes. An upstroke and downstroke have very different sounds depending on whether you are using nail or flesh.
• Angle. The direction you pick along with what part of your fingernail or flesh you use alters the tone.
• Attack. How hard you pick changes the tone along with the volume of the notes.
• Fretting hand. If you can believe it, your fretting hand does have a role in tone. It’s not just “buzz” and “no buzz”. With some experimenting you should be able to find a sweet spot inside the fret the allows for optimum tone.

Changing the tone for expression:

I just went over how to get a good foundation tone – something you can use for everything. This is a spin off of that and talks about how you can manipulate your tone to further aid musical expression.

Why learn about a few different tones when there are so many notes and other facets of music to work on? Because, you could play the most challenging piece in the world perfectly and still not be expressing the music to its full potential. The subtle things are what make a spectacular performance. I personally would be bored listening to someone play song after song at the same volume with the same touch. Change it up and it gets interesting. (Did you know you can phrase with tones? Just like you phrase notes.)

Volume:

The first “idea” of changing tone is volume. A loud volume is in your face, quiet is not, medium lets the listener choose. The first part of learning dynamics would be to determine what your quiet, medium, and loud volume is. Try playing a chord as quietly as you can, and then as loudly as you can without breaking the strings, then all places in between. Now try applying dynamics to a song. Pick a favorite song and see if you can spot what parts could use some dynamics. For example, the intro might be soft, the 1st part of the verse might be kind of loud going softer to lead into the loud chorus. From soft to loud, here is what notated dynamics look like: p (piano), mp (mezzo-piano), mf (mezzo-forte), f (forte). You will see these notations in different combinations. This is what makes the song a living breathing thing. Besides just the overall volume of a song section, you can use dynamics and accents to stress certain notes. You can get many different feels out of a single line of notes just by changing where the accents are.

Pop:

A “pop” is a different way to accent a note. This is used by guitar players like Eric Clapton quite often. You pull the string out and away from the fretboard and let go. This produces a percussive “pop” from the string hitting the fretboard, along with the original note.

Picking Location:

The next “idea” of tone is in the picking location. The ’ukulele already has it’s own timbre, but there is more manipulation that you can do with the strings. Where you pick on the string affects the tone. Usually the main “’ukulele” tone is located somewhere between the sound hole and end of the fretboard. There are two other distinct sounds you can get from the picking location. One of them is near the bridge. This sound is in your face and trebly – kind of like a banjo. The other is close to your fretting hand on the fretboard, this is also trebly, but not so in your face. A kind of “koto” sound. Anywhere in between will get you most every other tone color you need. If you need to accent a note, but don’t want to play any louder, try picking closer to the bridge. If you need to mellow out your chord playing, move your strumming hand up over the fretboard.

Palm muting:

Palm muting takes the treble away from a note, leaving it (no way!) muted sounding. Notes also don’t ring as long when palm muted, which keeps things sounding tight. To palm mute, place your palm on the bridge with a little bit of it hanging over to mute the strings. The more flesh that is resting on the strings the more muted the note will be. Here’s more: palm muting lesson.

How you attack the strings:

Lastly, which fingers/thumb that you use to pick with affects the tone. If you don’t have any fingernails, notes are going to sound more gentle. If you do have nails, your sound will be louder and stronger. Playing with your thumb will also be more full than if you play with your fingers. You can change the angle and direction you pick with to get more tone colors.

Effects and EQing an amplified signal can also change the tone.