At this year’s SouthDowns Music Festival I ran two, hour long, ukulele workshops. One was on alternative chords, and one was on strumming.
On both days I had about 30 people attend, which was a marked improvement on last year, when I ran a single workshop that was attended by ten, tops. On the Saturday therefore, the fifteen or so handouts I prepared were barely ample. Once again, I can only apologise, and once again thank those resourceful people who took photos and scans of the handouts on their tablets before passing them round. I think we got away with it, and I appreciate all the good feedback I’ve had on the workshops since.
For this blog I’m just going to go over quickly the first workshop, on alternate chords. I’ve done blogs about strumming and getting to grips with barre chords before, so I’m going to try not to repeat myself too much. You can check out those blogs here:
Strumming:
Barre Chords:
Saturday morning...
At the Saturday workshop, chords were the topic, more specifically alternate or alternative chords, how to find them, and how to start thinking about them. We talked a lot that day, about all sorts of things in the end, but to summarise the main points we made I’d say this…
Most players reach a plateau. You’ve learnt all the basic chords, a strum pattern or two, and suddenly you’ve got access to playing more songs than you can possibly manage in a lifetime. As Clive used to put it, ‘the world’s your lobster’. Thing is, the more songs you play with the same chords and the same strum patterns, the more you realise how much songs can sound the same. The challenge therefore is to try and supercharge your playing with that little bit of something special every now and again to keep it interesting.
If you’re playing in a big group, that’s one thing. You choosing a clever or subtle chord voicing isn’t going to make much difference to the whole. I’m talking about when it’s just you, or maybe just you and a few friends and you can hear what’s going on. Those can be the times that as a player you make the most progress. You have to be able to hear yourself, otherwise how are you going to know if you’re doing it wrong, and how are you going to know how to correct it?
"The first trick to just varying your playing a little bit is swapping normal major chords for seventh chords, like ‘D’ for ‘D7’. I’ve talked about this before, I’m not going to dwell on it, but most of the time it works, try it out."
The main idea the workshop tried to pass on is that all chord shapes are moveable, it’s just that some are more moveable than others.
I presented a diagram (I apologise it’s only a scan) of some different versions of the chords ‘C’ ‘F’ and ‘G’. Four versions of each horizontally, along with the basic seventh version. Vertically I’ve created the same chords but by using the same chord shape. A lot of the time this is where barre chords come in, although it’s not always so. Take the fourth example for ‘C’ on the top brown (the one using a ‘G’ shape at the seventh fret). Even though this chord is way up the neck, it doesn’t have to be played as a barre chord. That open ‘g’ string is common to this chord shape and your normal, open, one fingered ‘C’ chord, so it doesn’t have to be messed with. The open circle finger positions could be considered optional.
Try playing songs that just use ‘C’ ‘F’ and ‘G’ using one shape (i.e. by reading the chord shapes vertically) Try using barre chords for the verses, and open chords for the chorus. Or vice versa. Or mix it up, add sevenths, it doesn’t matter, just try to find something that works for you. The key thing is not to give up after a few minutes because it seems a bit tricky. Basic ideas like this really are one of the biggest keys to unlocking better music!
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