KAME week 11 ukulele post

~ mitchelljamesdavis

As we wind down this semester into the period of stuvac leading to exams, there is admittedly less cool content to talk about this week (at least on my end anyway). Once again, I should mention that my days of using these posts to take screenshots of my chord fretting chart are long gone, tucked away in the history of six/seven weeks ago. There are several chords on the list which I am aware of two positions to play in, considering the change I made not too long ago regarding the use of more open shapes rather than barre shapes higher up the neck, which cut off string resonance and vibration, destroying the tone of the ukulele.

Our main activity this week was three songs with various chords that James had given us in the wrong order, so that our job was to listen and work out the order. The universe gave me a pass this week in Kame, since I chose the Ben E King song “Stand by me” which I did not realise would be the easiest to work out. A beautiful song with a I vi IV V based progression in A major. The harmonic rhythm, instrumentation and texture of the track compared to the other tracks (Is this love by Bob Marley and Happy by Pharrell Williams) made it the easier choice.

Our homework this week was to choose a song that contained at least one chord from the list of chords on our list in the assessment that we had not played in any class songs as of yet. My choice is “Help the Poor” by B.B. King, a mid tempo, grooving D minor blues track. It is based on a twelve bar blues progression, although it is actually a 16 bar progression that underpins the track. It contains Dm, Gm and A7.

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Published by mitchelljamesdavis

Mitchell Davis is currently a music education student at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, born in 1997 in Sydney. Following a positive experience with music education in primary and secondary school combined with a personal interest in music as an art form and pastime, the decision to become a secondary school music teacher was naturally made. Complimentary to studying music education, Mitchell also holds ongoing experience working casually in a youth centre in his home town of Liverpool, New South Wales. After studying a Certificate IV in Youth Work, It was here that he initially found his confidence and appreciation for working with young people to achieve positive outcomes, predominately running various sport and recreational youth programs both in local Liverpool school environments and at the youth centre's facilities. Mitchell's specific area of musical expertise is in contemporary popular music. He is a guitarist and songwriter who enjoys genres such as heavy metal, extreme metal, hard rock, blues and pop. He has begun to write, release and perform his original music in order to gain greater experience in the world of contemporary music and give more value to his skills in becoming a music educator.

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