Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Our group was the tiniest ever….but there were two brave souls who came to play last night.. Marge Warkentine and myself.  

I didn’t make a list of all the songs but we did work on the island strum and the various picking patterns we are learning.

- Lorna

You were brave to make it out in that cold!  

Here is some info on the strums Lorna mentioned:

Strum known as “Island” strum (from liveukulele.com/lessons/strums)

D DU UD

This one is used in a lot of contemporary Hawaiian songs and is most people’s default “island” sounding strum.

The hand motion is down, down, up, up, down.

Since there are double downs and double ups, you must sometimes move in the opposite direction without strumming to get back to your starting point. This essentially makes the hand motion for this strum just a simple D/U pattern. The only difference is that you are only strumming the strings some of the time. The rest of the time you are skipping strums even though your hand is still moving.

This is key: Keep your hand moving the entire way through the strum pattern!

Here’s the timing:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

D - D U - U D -

With the “invisible strums” and keeping your hand moving the entire time:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

D(U)D U(D)U D(U)

https://liveukulele.com/lessons/strums/

Here is a video by Cynthia Lin featuring the Island Strum:

The Beatles Pluck Strum sheet for I Will and 'Til There Was You can be found on the Drive. The other songs that will help you practice the strum are: Dream a Little Dream of Me, and Blue Moon. I have also added these songs to the blog.

 - Heather