Slide Ukulele & Online Learning

{Preview: This is a double-post about both online learning during the pandemic and Slide Ukulele!}

The pandemic brought about a flurry of interest in online studies. 

If you were a ukulele teacher, with an established online curriculum, already up and running pre-covid it was cause to holler hallelujah! 

If you weren't, like me, then you'd better come up with some cool classes and quick! {I'll let you be the judge}. In fact, 2020 will go down as the year I created more content than any other year in my 30 year career as a ukulele player, entertainer and instructor. {Thus my Intro To Slide Ukulele Class on 12/8 via Mead Library FB Live}

Most of my time, I've spent creating physical books, and touring the ukulele superhighway teaching in-person workshops at ukulele clubs and festivals all over North America. So the Covid crisis felt not only like a sucker punch {which I can take} but ultimately, many of us got caught with our pants down, not having an online school, course, or package to market, as folks began looking for places to study while quarantining. So we all jumped on FB live! Then Zoom. 

The reality is, I love to teach! In fact, I live to teach, so these things really matter to me alongside the fact that I happen to make my living from teaching. 

As for an online Lil Rev Ukulele School, that is about to become a reality in 2021. Stay tuned! 

Back to the story...

Everyone realized that this would be a great time to build their skills while laying low and staying close to home. If ever you wanted to learn finger-style ukulele, improvisation, chord melody, basic skills, strumming or any other facet of study, one things for sure....2020 was the year to do it.

Pros have to keep on upping the ante as well! I chose to woodshed on slide ukulele! 

As an instructor and performer, I've always loved slide guitar. I grew up listening to Duane Allman, John Hammond Jr, Blind Willie Johnson, Bukkah White, Robert Johnson, Ry Cooder, Bob Brozman, Fred McDowell and many others.

Locally, I've spent the better part of 30 years backing some of the best slide players in WI while on harmonica. See pic below of me with my longtime music pal and friend John Nicholson. John and I co-wrote the book: Fiddle Tunes for Ukulele. John is one of my favorite living slide players and his slide influence has really inspired and informed my harp playing and now my own efforts to build a repertoire of slide tunes on the ukulele. 

So you see, it was only a matter of time before I decided to start playing slide on the ukulele. 

Quarantining means more time to watch videos, experiment and work up tunes. 

The person most responsible for my forays into Slide playing, is my wife Jenna, who bought me a National Steel Bodied Ukulele for my birthday this year. Once that happened, I was all over! 

What I'm Doing With The Slide: 

Mostly, I'm arranging pre-war blues stuff, but I'm also playing a lot of bluegrass and old time, with slide as a small added ingredient, or just enough slide to spice it up and make it interesting in a way that the ukulele world isn't likely to of heard all that much. I find that the slide can be used as a condiment would. Not to overpower a tune, but to help dress up the taste a tad. The difference in my approach is this...If I am playing blues, the slide leads the way, if I am playing old time or bluegrass I'm using the slide as an ornament in small doses. For example, there's a big difference between how I use the slide on, The Sky Is Crying by Elmore James, and how I use the slide on Columbus Stockade or Rolling In My Sweet Baby's Arms. All of this of course, is really evolving fast for me as I'm spending alot of time working on slide styles on the ukulele and am having a blast doing it! 

My favorite players are Paul Rishell, Fred McDowell, Jerry Douglas {dobro} Blind Lemon's Jack Knife Slide, Blind Willie Davis Gospel Blues, All of the preaching Bluesman who used slide, Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, Lil Ed, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Charlie Patton, local music pal Peter Roller {who plays dobro and lap steel on most of my records, and too many others to list! 

Here's a cool 8 bar blues called Crow Jane Blues that's a good example of how I'm using the slide on the baritone ukulele. {I plan to record a national steel piece soon!}

I digress, as an aside, another thing I'm really digging is playing, clawhammer on the ukulele, usually I do this on the soprano, but lately I've been doing it on the baritone or my new Beansprout Banjo Baritone. Here's a cool example of me doing an old fiddle tune called: Old Molly Hare: 

Published Resources For Slide Ukulele Studies: 

At present, there isn't alot of instruction on slide ukulele; if you scour You Tube you'll find some, but not a whole lot relating to good bluesy ukulele slide. Fred Sokolow's Slide and Slack Key Book published by Hal Leonard, is a good starting point. The last 3 pages of Dave Rubin's, Hal Leonard Blues Ukulele Method Book is dedicated to slide ukulele, but more as a footnote and not a feature. 

Suffice it to say, someday,  I aim to produce an in-depth primer on slide ukulele that digs in really deep. Right now, I'm earning my slide stamps! 

Teaching Slide

For those who'd like to see what I'm doing with the slide, here's a virtual class I did on December 8th 2020 for Mead Library in Sheboygan. I taught this as an Intro To Slide Ukulele. Slide Class 2020

My pal Michael August, attended the class, and says my class on slide ukulele inspired him...I'm not buying it! I think its the other way around...Mike is tearing it up on the slide ukulele, and I cannot wait to jam with him when this pandemic is over! He's sounding really nice on the slide ukulele! 

Here's Michael's take on a tune I taught in my intro to slide class: Elmore James' The Sky is Crying. In my class, my goal was to teach absolute beginners how to find the I, IV, V chords and how to slide into the chords using, 8th note and triplet phrasings; as well as proper slide intonation. Michael took it to the next level with his use of fills, 12th & 14th fret slide embellishments, 7th chord exaggerations,  fretted turnarounds, runs and much more! Thus, I give Michael an A+ grade on his own rendition! Mike's advice to those, wanting to learn to play slide, is to focus on "learning how to mute and putting the right amount  pressure on the strings while fretting with the slide." 

Here's Mr. August doing Howling Wolf's Little Red Rooster

Great Job Michael! Keep it up and Please Post More! 

Tunings: I've been using C tuning alot on the soprano, which is GCEG. That means you only have to re-tune one string! In addition to C tuning, I've been using G tuning {GBDG}. Dig, there are many tunings, like D tuning, F tuning, Bb tuning, and a slew of others are a worth exploring to get to the keys you want to play in. You can also use tune to C for example and then put a capo on the 2nd fret and you're now in D or at the 4th fret, you'd be in E. I advocate having a couple Ukes and keep em in different tunings so you are more amp to learn the scales, positions, and chord shapes that are necessary to master those tunings. Remember, the bar or slide shapes are always gonna be the same in terms of I, IV, V and other open tuned chord positions. If you know how to transpose, then the shapes remain the same, while the keys change. For example in C tuning, the IV chord F, is bar {or slide} on the 5th fret. In G tuning the IV chord is C, and that's also bar or slide on the 5th fret and so on, as you change tunings. 

Same thing for the V chord, in C tuning, the V chord is G which is bar or slide on the 7th fret. In G tuning, the V chord is D, which is bar or slide on the 7th fret. Point being, you only have to remember the fret number and how to transpose the chord names and you can easily change tunings without having to relearn I, IV, V chord shape names. That goes for the II chord and others in the circle of 5th's wheelhouse. 

When using the Baritone to play slide,  the options, for guitar inspired slide tunings open up exponentially.. 

The two tunings I've been using on the baritone are CFAC or DGBD as well as a Banjo Inspired C minor tuning: CGCEb which I use on alot of cool modal Appalachian stuff and my Jewish and Yiddish Repertoire. 

Here are some of the Main Tunings I use on the Baritone Ukulele: 

Open D tuning: DF#AD

Open G Tuning: DGBD

Open Gm Minor Tuning: DGBbD

Open A Tuning: EAC#E

Open E: EG#BE

Open C: CGCE

Open Em: EGBE

Strings as they relate to slide playing on the Ukulele: 

The big conundrum that you'll run into when you start on your slide journey, is that nylon strings and slide  don't really work well together. Wound strings are the way to go! The closer you can get to playing wound/steel/bronze strings is where you need to be. Why? Metals produce slide tone and nylon sucks butt! 

The problem with wound is that they fray and sometimes at the most undesirable times, like on stage! 

For Concert and Tenor Uke, Shoot for a wound G and C and then nylon on the E and A. 

For Baritone, go for a wound D and G string coupled with two nylon strings on the B and E strings.

        I like Aquila Brand Strings https://www.aquilausa.com  for my concert and tenor ukuleles. 

For baritone, I use wound Guadalupe Brand Strings: http://thegcs.co/shop  Super cool little family run business in L.A. 

Slides: My favorite slides are from Rocky Mountain Slide Company 

https://rockymountainslides.com

They will customize a slide to fit your finger! 

Bottom line, stay tuned folks, I'm woodshedding slide like madman in 2021 and when this damn pandemic is over, I'm gonna blow the roof off the joint with the some smokey slide, kosher BBQ! 

                                To Close, Dig This Deep Cut:  Son House's Death Letter Blues: 

Here's to more slide on the Ukulele ! 

Lil Rev 

www.lilrev.com