Pluck & Play

Pluck & Play refers to a new fingerstyle ukulele course with a focus on fingerpicking technique for dexterity and better tone, to be offered in November 2022. Pre-requisite: have taken Tab & Pluck or equivalent introduction to fingerstyle course, instrumental ukulele, or chord melody course.

We will be using Daniel Ward’s two books: ‘Tis the Season for Ukulele and Arpeggio Meditations, all to be ordered from Anne Ku. Listen to the pieces from Daniel Ward’s books. The first book uses high G ukulele. The second uses low G ukulele.

When you first pick up the ukulele, the tendency is to strum all four strings rather than pick the individual strings with your fingers. Strumming requires reading chord diagrams whereas picking requires reading tablature. Some say fingerpicking, also known as fingerstyle ukulele, is harder than strumming because you need to control and exercise individual fingers with the correct picking technique to get a good tone. What results could be something quite beautiful and delicate, such as accompaniment for lullaby or melodic riffs to embellish a song.

Registration & Schedule

8 Tuesdays 3 PM EDT (or EST) starting Tuesday 1st November 2022 in Zoom.

In the example shown above written for low G ukulele, you can almost hear the descending melody of Pachelbel’s famous canon. You can use your right thumb to do a down pluck (slow down strum) from the G to the A strings or use all four fingers (so-called PIMA fingering) to pluck the individual strings. It’s also possible to change the pluck pattern so that you can hear the descending line more prominently and accurately.

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In the second example, what is known as chord melody arrangement with block chords, notice that the melody line resides on the highest pitched note.

Melodic fingerpicking becomes easier with regular practice of scales. Harmonic fingerpicking, also known as chordal accompaniment, can be improved by practising pluck patterns such as arpeggios, alberti accompaniment, Travis picking variations, etc. The patterns are similar to strum patterns in that the more you use them, the easier it is to recall what they are — no need to read tabs (tablature) to accompany because the patterns are the same.

Learning Objectives

• Use proper fingerpicking technique to produce the best tone from your instrument
• Improve and speed up reading from tablature
• Progress, or start, to read from notation
• Collect and use bespoke exercises to improve reading, fingerpicking for tone and dexterity
• Get exposed to different genres of music
• Improve melody picking
• Improve harmonic and rhythmic picking (accompaniment)
• Diverse repertoire: riffs, melody, chord melody, plucking patterns, instrumental solo, duet
• Diverse genres: nursery rhymes, traditional songs, classical, popular song

Testimonials (previous fingerstyle classes)

Unlike strumming, which you have to sing along to, this chord melody course teaches you how to play the melody line along with enough chords so that the result is musical, so you can hum along or just play.

The Online Pluck class via Zoom was great! We had the opportunity to learn many things relating to Fingerstyle Ukulele; exercises, techniques, and songs! Anne works very hard to enrich her classes to reach a lot of different folks across the world! The recordings have been very helpful as well!!! I never came away without having new tidbits to work on for the next week’s class! 

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TAB and PLUCK was the perfect class for me as I had only been playing chords in my practice of a few years and mostly avoided tablature and plucking patterns. As a “hobby musician” I greatly appreciate and benefit from Anne’s depth of knowledge and classical training. She helps infuse beautiful riffs and secret chord structures that make you feel like you CAN really make beautiful music. If you start learning ukulele with her, you will avoid getting in to bad habits with your hand placement and you won’t get into the chord rut that I did. She helps you add that flair (melody). She is the greatest teacher. So knowledgeable, yet so fun and supportive of all abilities. I highly recommend any class with her. I will be taking more. ~ Ginny Smith, Owner Imagine Art and Music, Wharton, NJ