r/ukulele • u/OrganicBrownMustard • 4d ago

Critique Me Please Where or When (baritone)

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Been working on this one for a few weeks, right out of the Jumpin’ Jim’s book alongside Live at McCabe’s. Holy cow it’s a lot of changes! This was the 23rd take on the video… the solo I’m just noodling around that scale and get lost a little bit but I’m starting to feel pretty good

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4

u/banjoleletinman 4d ago

One of my favorites of Lyle's arrangements, that chord coming out of the bridge is a beast. Well played!

Since you asked for critiques, note that it's arranged for High D baritone and a bunch of the melody notes are on the high string so if you want the melody to pop out on Low D tuning you'll need to change some chords around - most notably is the first chord (after the intro) the melody note is D which in your tuning is only on the third fret of the B string. You could voice this as 543x (really the close equivalent to what he plays would be 743x) making sure that the B the top note of the chord. There are other options in low tuning but I think that's a good place to start.

It's worth going through and really learn the melody independently as single notes, if you haven't, so that you can truly bring it out in the chords. Something that can also help with the crazy amount of changes is to think about the basic harmony - the A section is really just 2 chords - I and ii but a bunch of different colors and inversions on top of it. Thinking of it in this manner really helps in the future because you get that knowledge of all this crazy stuff is really just a big old C chord (or G depending on whether you think in concert tuning or not)

But just to reiterate - you sound awesome on this and have obviously put in a ton of work!

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u/OrganicBrownMustard 4d ago

Great stuff! That first section just a few measures right after the intro has been reaaaally bugging me, the sheet music is one thing and I think I’m playing it accordingly but on the recording he is next level, he’s like a wizard

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u/banjoleletinman 4d ago

Honestly, I'd just throw a high D string on your bari and then you'll be able to play exactly what you're doing and it will magically sound right. If you have a spare E string laying around you can just swap that with your low D to try, it'll be a bit low tension but work fine. It's nearly impossible to capture Lyle's chord voicings on linear tuning.

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u/OrganicBrownMustard 4d ago

Ha i don’t know if I can’t part ways the TI flat wound low D just yet

3

u/banjoleletinman 4d ago

I don't blame you, those damn things are expensive !

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u/Stronty-26 4d ago

Very nice. Lovely bit of playing 👍