Now, I don't want to start a big ole flame war with regards to the best way to strum your ukulele. Especially considering that I definitely don't do it the "Right Way" myself. As you might have seen from my videos, I play the ukulele by whipping my hand around and having my fingernails strike the strings. This is actually how I play guitar as well. The reason for both of these things is that I was originally a bass player who never learned to use a pick.
Many people will argue that the "correct" way to play the ukulele is to hold your hand flat, over the strings (as if you were waving hello to the ukulele or something) then bend your index finger to point it towards the strings. Now, I guess you are supposed to use that finger to do most of your strumming. Nuts to that, I'm too old to learn a new thing.
Or so I thought. You see, I took a little break from ukulele to play bass in a Cure cover band. And, as it turned out, there were two Cure songs that are picked so fast that I couldn't approximate it correctly using my "hand whipping" method. Those songs were Primary and Hanging Garden. You wanna see what I mean? Check out this live footage of the actual cure.
Good grief!
So, it was settled, I had to teach myself to use a pick and so I did. Well, now I'm wondering if I can't translate some of this to ukulele? Especially considering that they only picks I could really make use of were the .50mm versions of the below pick.
I guess I need my picks to be floppy. So, I was stoked when I found out about these leather ukulele picks! I'm going to get a few of them and see how they go. I'm hopeful that the leather pick will translate to a softer picked sound as well. I'll let y'all know.