Behold! The mighty ukulele! Able to lull mighty beasts to sleep, be slung over the shoulder, and woo the women! It slices, dices, makes one mean cup of coffee and if you act now, it WILL make you a better bassist like it did me!
*Insert record scratching* Yeah, you heard that right. Playing ukulele made me a better bassist. I’m sure you’re all dying to hear how that actually happened.
So, the start of this little ukulele love affair started on a whim at the greatest music store known to man, Elderly Instruments. I thought it would be a cool instrument to pick up, play for my daughter and get a kick out of it. I grabbed a uke, a book with chord patterns and voicings, and figured my way through it.
The biggest thing to know and understand is that the ukulele is tuned in re-entrant tuning, gCEA top to bottom, where the top G string is actually tuned one step below the bottom A string. This yields very tight chord voicings, usually where at least one note is doubled. This also means that moving your finger one or two frets will completely change the chord, and not just change something from a major to minor (which can still happen).
Back to my ukulele endeavors. Grabbing the chord charts for a couple of favorite tunes, I started hacking through the changes and figuring out how to make it work, and turn those high-pitched plinks into melodious movements. This is where I learned about the tight chord voicings and how it related to my frustration.
Taking a deep breath, I took my time to figure out the chords I wanted, what chords I was going to, what notes they had in common and how to get there. After a couple weeks of focusing on voicings, I noticed I was basing the chord inversions based on the bottom note of the chord, allowing me to fake a walking bass line. I was also basing a lot of the strumming patterns on a loose version of slap bass, allowing me to hit some triplets and some things that most traditional ukulele books may not have covered.
Sure, I’m guessing that right about now, you’re wondering where the “ukulele makes you a better bassist” part comes in, because up to this point, all I’ve been talking about is how playing bass made it easier for me to pick up the uke. Well, it actually goes both ways.
The tight voicing and chords of the ukulele mean that the notes you pick had better outline that chord clearly. They also better be able to flow through the song seamlessly. By focusing on the few notes you have to pick for chords, it made me a more careful bassist. Instead of just hitting the root, it made me take a second and look to see what I’m really bringing to my bass lines, and how that note choice will affect the coloration of the chord at present as well as the next ones as the music continues. By doing this, my bass lines became a lot more cleverly thought out, and on those times that I was sticking with the root, it gave them more weight than if I just played the root notes for the duration of the entire song.
So, give the mighty ukulele a try or more generally, any instrument that you are not that familiar with. Spend some time with it and really learn the instrument and what it can and can’t do. You’ll be surprised at what your current knowledge base will bring to your experience, but more importantly, what your new knowledge will give you in return. What are some instruments you’ve picked up, and what insight did it bring to your current instrument of choice?