Hi and welcome to another episode of Webcam Sessions. This week we're going to
be talking a little bit more about some fretting habits which we actually
covered in an earlier episode, I believe it was the first, second or third episode
we did of this series, but we're going to be looking at a very specific example to
work on, essentially thumbs out or thumbs in with the fretting hand, so to start
here let's talk just a little bit about fretting an ukulele.
A lot of times when people are learning, they're taught that their thumb should
always be squared back behind the neck. If they do anything else they're wrong
and I don't think that's true. I think that there's a lot of different ways to
actually hold up the neck, and some of the the rules that go with guitar
playing that people oftentimes try to apply to the ukulele, aren't necessarily
correct for the ukulele, and the biggest thing I find with this is where the
thumb goes behind the instrument. So a lot of times what people will do is
they'll say "hey your thumb needs to be right along the back, at about a 45
degree angle and when you're playing the instrument you need to be holding up
chords with the pressure of the thumb, and the fingertips" and a lot of times
people will find that they're dropping the ukulele because of this, because it's
really difficult to hold and balance it, and make switches between chords.
What I find works really well is, some chords you need to allow the instrument
to drop into that first knuckle joint on your hand, right in here where the ball
of your index finger is, to be able to essentially support the ukulele and have
the neck still upright. So to look at a couple examples we're
going to start with just a G chord, and we're going to learn how to play a G
chord with both of these sort of techniques, so let's do a G chord how
most people think the "right way" first, so what we'll do, we'll take our thumb on
our playing hand, we'll put it on a 45 degree angle facing out towards the
headstock, then we're going to take our index finger place on the second fret of
the C string, ring finger place on the third fret of the E string, and middle
finger here on the second fret of the A. Again making sure you're getting right
up against the frets to make sure that the tone is maximized much, much cleaner
when you're not so far back, but right up to those frets and now that thumb
again we're tilting out at that angle and we've got our G chord, it's
okay if you find that your thumb wants to go the other direction and that turns
the whole hand a little bit, that's okay as long as the thumb is pushing and
pinching up against the neck, and propping up the chord you're good.
So that's a normal way of playing a G chord.
Now let's learn the other way with the thumb up instead the thumb down. What
we're going to do is take off the hand and then we're going to take that first
knuckle joint right here on the finger and we're going to set the edge of the
under part of the fretboard right in this sort of area, right on that little
ball of the knuckle. Now with your thumb, instead of trying to put it behind
what you're actually going to do is, you're going to put it a little bit on
top, so you see that it's more cupping the ukulele and less holding it, and more
just giving something to sort of grip on to, because the part that's actually
supporting the instrument is going to be right there at that knuckle joint at the
hand, and then what you'll do, you'll cross the index finger over to the
second fret of the C string, ring finger over the third fret of the E string
and middle here on the second fret of the A, and so this is playing with the
thumb up right, and you can see that looks like I'm making a thumbs up but
I can still play a G chord this way. Now you might find that that second way
is way more difficult, or you might find that the first way is way more difficult
it's one of the fascinating things about people learning the instrument. I've had
students that you know struggle with both ways depending on their background
and just what it is that's more comfortable immediately to them,
but the reason we're working on kind of both of these methods is because which
version of the G chord we pick for our thumb position is sort of determined by
what the chords are that we're playing after, or before it, and for a little bit
of an example here, we're going to practice going from a G chord to a D7
chord and we're also going to practice going from a G chord to an Am7 chord
and we can really see how each one of these techniques, can really apply to
the G chord depending where we're coming from. So let's go ahead and start with a
G to the Am7. So how do we play an Am7, well it's probably the
first chord you've ever played on the instrument,
it's all open, pretty cool right. An all open chord. Well if we fret the G chord with
our thumb behind like this right, in that sort of pinching motion and we go
from the G chord to all open, it's really tough to hold up the ukulele without
putting any fingers on the fret board to prop it up, because now this thumb has
nothing to pinch up against. Normally when we're playing a chord and
we have the thumb squared back it's pinching these two together to create
the friction needed to prop up the instrument, but as soon as we look at it
from the standpoint of this Am7 where there's nothing to prop up, the
instrument wants to fall and that's where that second form, the thumb being
up really comes into play. By having the instrument sort of rest on that knuckle
instead, playing all open is very easy, making sure that as I do this I'm not
cupping over, muting that A string, leaving it open
it's much easier to play. Now if I were to try playing a G to an Am7 and I
were to do my G with the thumb like this and I we're to do my Am7 by
taking it all off like this, I'm making extra steps that I don't
necessarily need to be making right, and so what I would try to do from this
point is play the G chord with that thumb up instead right. By playing it
with the thumb up, it's as simple as removing and placing back the fingers
you notice that the position of the thumb doesn't change between the G chord
and this Am7, which I think is really cool.
So in the event we're playing a chord like that, it makes more sense for our
thumb to be more up, however let's say that we were playing a D7 chord instead.
A D7 chord is going to be played by taking your index finger barring it
all the way across the second fret, again getting right up to the fret, sometimes
it can help to roll the finger so the nails going towards the headstock and
then inch it a little bit closer to get right across that fret wire, maximize
your sort of connection there, and then placing the middle finger on the third
fret of the A string. So that's a D7 chord which is a barre chord, can be
a little tricky, but if I were to try to play this chord with my thumb up here
like what we were just talking about, I actually can't get the break angle with
these fingers because I need the fingers to be more straight. If you look at the
index finger when the thumbs up like this, I can't get it all the way across
comfortably and so what I need to do is bring the thumb down, elongating the
finger and making it easier to fret and get that whole connection, you can see
especially down here how important it is, compared to if I'm playing like this.
So in this particular case a D7 chord is going to want the thumb to be
squared back, which means if I'm going from this D7 to the G, back and forth
instead of doing the G like this and then doing the D7 like this, and coming
back to the G like this, makes a lot more sense for my finger to essentially be
kept in position, so now if I'm going from my D7 to my G
you can see how I'm propping it all up
the knuckle joint is not holding it up because these
particular cords benefit it. Now if I were going to this G to the Am7
again I'll switch my sort of format, and sometimes we'll switch in
preparation for so let's say I'm go to the G again and then the D7, you'll notice I
put my thumb behind prior to the D7 to kind of set it up. What this is
trying to say is that we want to make sure that we're always setting ourselves
up for whatever comes next, and so sometimes that means we change what
we're currently playing or the technique that's used, to make the next technique a
little bit easier to utilize right. So thumbs up, thumbs down, both are really
good, both are really important and there are countless examples of playing that
use the thumb in different positions. To show it for more of some of
the things I play example, if I were playing something more jazzy, I'd really
have the thumb behind for most of these barre chords that are going to need the
ukulele kind of propped up right. Now you notice until I got to the very end here
with a lot of open strings I was keeping that thumb squared behind
the ukulele. But if I were playing something that's
more kind of instrumental in its feel, and what I mean by that is more like
ukulele instrumental, not so much traditional jazz, one of the original
songs I've written called Crossing Hemispheres, which if you want to check
out there's actually a link in the description below, I'm going to keep my
thumb up like this almost the whole time
and the reason is because as I'm doing these motions, I'm keeping a lot of open
strings, I'm taking the fingers off pretty consistently so by having that
thumb behind, I can hold up the instrument as I'm moving up despite not
having any frets fretted some times right so kind of cool. So let me know in
the comments which way you're more comfortable with. Do you usually have your
thumb more up or your thumb more down, and I want to know just what the
true statistics are, so please do leave a comment below. If you like this video be
sure to share it and give us a like, it helps drive traffic and
everything else, all that good stuff. So have a wonderful week and I'll see you
guys next week on another episode of Webcam Sessions.
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