![]() ![]() The melody is important and everyone in the group should learn it if they can. Like most rags, the complete version has two sections or strains, then a repeat of the first strain, and then two contrasting strains in another key. (Note: this is only the first two strains. I’m providing you here with an excerpt from The Entertainer, more or less as I remember doing it in the 1970s with Chalmers Doane’s “A” group: One advantage of standard notation over tablature is that you can usually use the same music for either tuning. A good thing to remember is that published flute and recorder arrangements usually work on the uke without too much adjusting, because middle C is the lowest note, the same as on a re-entrant C-tuned uke. A lot of rag tunes are available this way, or with piano accompaniments, in arrangements for flute, mandolin, violin or other melody instruments. The best starting place with a uke group is probably to find or make some lead sheets (a printed score with a basic single-note melody line and chord symbols). There’s several ways to approach arranging ragtime for ensemble. ![]() It’s easier to play ragtime music in a group-even duo will do-because you don’t have to supply the basic beat and the cross-beat melody at the same time on a single instrument. ![]() ![]() In the same publication Joplin makes the important point that “ragtime should never be played fast.” The second version has that attractive off-kilter sound which Joplin describes as “weird and intoxicating” in his 1908 publication School of Ragtime. If we shift a few notes half a beat we have the beginning of a syncopated or “ragged” tune: This could almost be part of a march by Strauss or Sousa, or maybe even a little dance piece by Mendelssohn. Let’s start with a simple melody like this: The tuning and range is similar to ours, so with some transposing much of their music is available to us (one place to look for tunes is I first learned two of my current favourites, Honolulu Cakewalk and Kaloola, from this site). The “classic banjo” style of Ossman and van Eps-fingerstyle playing on five gut strings-has a lot in common with modern ukulele techniques so it's not surprising that many banjo rags work well on the uke. In fact, their banjo recordings pre-date early piano or ensemble recordings of ragtime. The basic “gimmick” is this: displace a few melody notes by half a beat so that they fall between the beats of the accompaniment and voilà, you’re playing in “ragged” time! Playing Ragtime UkuleleĪround the same time Joplin was writing rags like The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag, banjo virtuosos like Vess Ossman and Fred van Eps were recording ragtime tunes. The characteristic ragtime sound is a syncopated melody played against a straight, (usually) two-beat, accompaniment. It’s one of the great accidents of world music that these styles were similar enough to blend easily. Ragtime-and jazz, which came later-is essentially European melody and harmony salted with rhythms from West Africa. This style was almost certainly first played by people from West Africa who were brought to the United States as slave labour and were introduced there to European melodies and instruments (Joplin’s ancestors had been slaves and he studied music with a German piano teacher). ![]()
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