The Five Note Dance duet for high G ukulele

Posted on January 24, 2025 by Anne Ku

Will the lack of a name or a title stop you from sharing the music itself? It has for me. I love the sound of using just five notes to dance on the high G ukulele. It’s easy to sightread and fun to play very fast. I’ll just call it The Five Note Dance for now. The number five in Chinese sounds like the word for dance. By the way, I use five chords to harmonize this duet. Maybe I should rename it to “The Five Note Five Chord Duet” – 5 note 5 chord duet.

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Fill and connect melody with passing notes

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Anne Ku

One way to play a chord melody arrangement from single melodic notes is by filling and connecting the melodic notes with chord and nonchord tones. So far, my examples make use of chord tones (notes within the chord). In this post, I show the use of nonchord tones, in particular, passing notes. Let’s apply this to Auld Lang Syne to celebrate Robert Burns Night on 25th January.

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The pedal tone applied to a lead sheet for ukulele

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Anne Ku

One way to add notes to a melodic line and make a so-called chord melody arrangement is to add a pedal tone. Also known as pedal point, organ point, and pedal note, this added note is meant to sustain and fill the harmony. Being able to add notes to a lead sheet is the basis for improvisation. Let’s look at example – a hymn called “Bless This House” in which we add pedal tones to the lead sheet.

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Harmonized major scale exercises for high G ukulele

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Anne Ku

How many different ways can you harmonize a major scale? In other words, which chords will sound good to accompany a major scale on the ukulele? Are they diatonic chords, i.e. chords with notes in the same major scale? Or not? Here are extracts (excerpts) from my forthcoming book of progressive studies of harmonized scale exercises for fingerstyle high G ukulele.

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Dance on Mostly Open Strings for high G ukulele

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Anne Ku

Change one note in “Dance on Open Strings” and it still works. Let’s experiment with changing different notes, starting with mostly open strings. You are ready for the exercises on this blog post IF you don’t have to babysit your fingerpicking hand. In other words, your right hand fingers continue playing the piece as before. Just your left hand — which in “Dance on Open Strings” holds the ukulele neck — needs to get into action. You will now produce your own version of Dance on Mostly Open Strings.

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Dance on Open Strings for high G ukulele

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Anne Ku

What’s the easiest and quickest way to get someone to fingerpick, strum and have fun with the ukulele? Years ago, my piano guitar duo partner and I wrote a short ukulele duet in which one person only uses one hand. The other person strums the chords. Dance on Open Strings is the new name of this instrumental duet.

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Simplifying Midnight Diner theme, Omoide 思ひで, for ukulele

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Anne Ku

The theme to the Netflix series “Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories” on the guitar can be played on the ukulele. Originally in the key of B minor, the transposed tune in A minor presents many possibilities for the ukulele. However, it’s even easier to play in the key of D minor. The melody to Omoide (pronounced oh-moh-ee-deh) is repetitive. What do we really need to know to play this catchy tune?

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Body Surfing for easy ukulele transposed

Posted on January 20, 2025 by Anne Ku

When we transpose Herb Ohta’s (Ohta San) Body Surfing in the original key of G minor to A minor, we can now play the entire piece on a high G ukulele an octave lower and with more familiar chords. Easy ukulele means easier to play. Often we transpose a piece so it’s easier to play and/or sing.

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Daily Music Writing Project

Posted on January 20, 2025 by Anne Ku

On the first day of the year 2025, I declared my intention to write music every day. My daily music writing project is a testimony of my commitment to arranging and composing music for the ukulele so that I will publish and make my work available to a wider audience. Towards that end, I am offering the music listed on this page as indicated on this Request & Feedback Form.

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Body Surfing for easy ukulele

Posted on January 19, 2025 by Anne Ku

Virtuosic instrumental ukulele performances woo and awe us. Master ukulele shredders like Taimane and Jake Shimabukuro play so fast and furiously that sometimes you can’t see the fingers at all. They play up and down the neck, covering the entire geography of the four string instrument. It would seem impossible to play at their breakneck speed. But maybe it’s possible to play an octave lower, half as fast, or even strum the chords and play along.

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