Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's beautiful version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow is one of the most popular ukulele songs of all time. If y'all've always read my near folio I said I wouldn't do information technology on Ukulele Get but here I am showing I'thou a man with absolutely no principles. On with the lesson…

The song is so beautifully played and sung that pretty much everyone that owns a ukulele will naturally gravitate towards it at some point. At it's heart it's a pretty simple song but information technology's worth investing some time on really perfecting the strumming design to get an authentic sound.

Simply the 290 million views to appointment for this one, not too bad at all.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow Chords

Vii chords will see you through the song (co-incidentally the aforementioned number as colours in a rainbow) and whilst that is a few to remember they're actually not that hard and some of you lot will be very pleased to hear that there are no barre chords in the mix.

Probably the near difficult to bargain with are the E minor and the E7. If E minor is causing you lot problems then you can simply play a Thousand chord and drop your little finger finger onto the 4th fret of the C cord.

Hither are the chord boxes for you to get to grips with…

Somewhere Over The Rainbow Chords

Strumming Pattern

Ok here we get. At that place are a few ways to interpret the strumming pattern on this ane and you tin get away with just strumming DUDUDUDU throughout but nosotros're going to go a little fleck beyond that in this lesson.

The design I similar to play is a slight variation on the good old fashioned D DU UDU and looks something like this…

somewhere over the rainbow strum pattern

Observe that the first crush isn't actually a strum at all though, what I'1000 doing is plucking the G cord with my thumb at the start of each bar. Information technology'south pretty clear to hear this when y'all listen to Iz play it, and although he's playing low G, it works only too on a ukulele strung with a loftier G. The pattern shown to a higher place sounds something like this when you lot play it…

I thing I will say is that when I listen, certainly at the start I tin hear Iz catching the strings direct afterward the thumb pluck and on the tertiary beat also. That would make information technology more than of a TUDUDUDU blueprint but this tin sound pretty clunky. Iz really uses dynamics on this pattern and some of his strums are barely aural at all just they exercise contribute quite a lot.

I'd recommend sticking with the design above if you're just learning this one and eventually progressing to include the other strums further down the line. If you do want to effort it with a more than consistent blueprint it would sound something like…

Whichever fashion you go with the strumming pattern, it remains the same pretty much throughout. There is a subtle shift away from such a rigid blueprint towards the second one-half of the vocal only it's by and large just changes in dynamics rather than a change in the bodily pattern. Equally I ever say, very it equally much as you feel comfortable. The same pattern played the same way throughout tin can go a little boring (for you lot and your listeners).

Song Structure

To go the song structure grab the PDF song sail that I've put together as a reference. Information technology includes all the chord boxes and lyrics.

You'll by and large be playing the strumming pattern above twice per chord. The exception to this is the intro (just before the singing) where yous play the strumming pattern only once per chord.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow Songsheet

Strum Like A Pro

ukulele-strums If you really desire to progress your strumming at a rapid rate and so I'd highly recommend taking a wait at Al Forest'due south downloadable ebook How To Play Ukulele Strums. For just $12 you become an in-depth guide showing you how to play 49 different strums with supporting videos and MP3 files. There's likewise a really useful section that focuses on counting strums the easy way (something I wish I had when I was learning to play).

Purchase How To Play Ukulele Strums

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