Uketropolis: Ukulele Q&A with James Hill

This week, two topics: 1) How can you have a chord with no root? 2) Ideas for managing stage fright through creative pre-concert prep.

Learn ukulele with James: www.uketropolis.com

A short, bite-sized bonus episode for ukulele teachers. Here's a technique you can use in the classroom RIGHT NOW: turn any one-chord song (e.g. Row Your Boat, Frere Jacques, Every Night, etc.) into a soulful rocker. It's easy and fun. Definitely something you want to have in your bag of tricks as a classroom teacher, private instructor or community leader.

JHUI Teacher Certification Program: https://www.uketropolis.com/jhui
Free and premium teacher resources: https://www.uketropolis.com/teach

Welcome to Season 4 of the Uketropolis Podcast! To kick things off, a question from Uketropolis student Doug leads us to explore the relationship between speed and style in music. Specifically, we take a page from jazz saxophone technique in an attempt to have it all: speed and style.

Jazz teaches us many things. Even if we're not playing jazz, we can apply the lessons learned to many areas of music-making. In this episode: how jazz teaches us to do more with less (e.g. easier ways to play the B-flat chord), and how jazz encourages us to find our own personal musical style (e.g. artfully re-writing a melody to fit within a smaller range of notes).

There's an open question in the ukulele community: what to do when the tuning of the baritone doesn't mesh with the tuning of the other ukuleles in an ensemble? In this episode we explore this vexed question and as well as some possible solutions. BONUS: this episode includes a preview of my ukulele-orchestra arrangement of George Bizet's "Farandole." It's a banger.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a bridge between standard tuning and baritone tuning? Turns out, there is! In this episode: how to make the transposition between standard and baritone tuning in the most painless way possible.

Are your hands too small for baritone ukulele? Probably not. That being said, there's one chord that might give you trouble: the diminished 7. In this episode: a workaround for the diminished 7 that works on all sizes of ukulele, not just baritone.

A bonus lightning round of the most common baritone-ukulele questions. 

People who love baritone ukulele really love baritone ukulele. Why? We kick off Baritone Month with a simple question: "What makes baritone ukulele so great?"