Ukulele players today mainly exist in one of two worlds. If you go to a ukulele club, you’re most likely a hum and strum or strum and sing person. If you belong to a ukulele ensemble or ukulele orchestra, you’re more likely to be a plucker. The former is a singalong. The latter is instrumental.
When you start playing the ukulele, you quickly learn to strum on a few chords to accompany yourself singing songs that you already know and walk down sweet memory lane. You don’t need to read notes to sing songs you grew up with because you already know how the melody goes. The chords help you stay in tune. The strumming help you keep time. The song sheets you read from rarely ever contain notes or musical symbols but always contain letters that represent chord names and lyrics.
The other path is to learn to read tablature and pluck the individual notes on the four strings of your new instrument. The latter option, also known as fingerpicking or finger style ukulele, empowers you to play the melody and riffs, learn new pieces, leading you to playing chord melody arrangements and participating in an instrumental ensemble with other ukulele pluckers. The song sheets contain notes, tablature, and music symbols.
How are strummers and pluckers different? Strummers typically play and sing in unison. They know how it will sound when they play and sing a song by themselves. On the other hand, pluckers play different parts and only sound whole when they play together. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle when the ensemble meets.
How does this translate in practice? Take one of the most popular songs known the world over — “Happy Birthday” which can be played in two ways. One person can pick out the melody by plucking the strings and reading the notes or the tabs. The other can strum the chords. Both players can sing while playing.
A further deviation from the above is by embedding the melody in the accompanying chord, so-called chord melody arrangement. In my arrangement below, you can hear the melody when you strum all four strings of each chord.
After participating in the strum and hum world for most of my ukulele years, I started a new pluck workshop this past January. We have since performed a few times.
To grow the instrumental ukulele, I am developing new fingerstyle ukulele courses starting next week in Cambridge and Arlington, Massachusetts and the following week in Milton, MA. After learning how to read tabs, the ukulele player can participate in instrumental ensemble, a new course starting November 18, 2019.