Why Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's Ukulele Hit Is Magic

Israel kamakaviva Ole is the most famous Hawaiian ukulele player of all time the year was 1988 and it was late at night at 3am when Israel also called is for short suddenly needed to record a song on his ukulele he had a friend called local studio in Honolulu but the engineer working that night Milan bertosa said he is about to close up shop and go home but is God on the phone and with a little persuasion was given the okay to come over and in Walks Like the largest human being I had seen in my life Israel was probably about 500 pounds I put up some microphones do a quick sound check roll tape and the first thing he does is somewhere over the rainbow five minutes and eight seconds of recording was all it took to capture magic and create the most iconic ukulele hit of all time believe it or not after recording Over the Rainbow it remained unheard until five years later in 1993 when is was working on his solo album facing future the same engineer from that night Milan bertosa happened to be working at the studio and proposed adding Over the Rainbow to the new album impressed is his producer and manager John Demello agreed and facing future went on to become the best-selling Hawaiian album of all time [Music] the story behind the song is pure magic but I can't help to wonder how does a spontaneous late night recording of a man and his ukulele Skyrocket to become the most popular ukulele cover of all time for starters we know it's not because of Any fancy recording tricks is sat down they rolled tape is started to strum and according to the engineer that night the song was captured in just one single performance what I do is it's minimum effort but maximum pleasure what is it specifically about is his Over the Rainbow performance that's just so magical his producer John Demello pointed to one thing in particular he was an elementary tree player he just didn't play in a lot of different keys or a lot of fancy stuff but boy could he find the groove with the strum and the element that takes the listener on a voyage okay when I first learned the song I'll admit I made the mistake thinking it must be easy just because it is played it using the most beginner ukulele chords and the recording sounds simple at a first listen but when I would try to strum it it sounded nothing like him the way is strums is deceptively masterful and can be difficult to replicate there's a feeling created by the strumming that makes this song Magic the first thing you notice when you hear is start to scrum is that he's playing a tenor ukulele tuned with a low g string there's definitely some magic to the low G tuning but the strumming technique is where things get really interesting at the surface the core strumming pattern used to play this song is known as the Calypso or Island strum one of the most popular beginner strumming patterns for ukulele but what you might notice is if you just play this regular old pattern it really sounds nothing like is one and two e and a three and a four E and A one [Music] kind of familiar but not really is takes this basic strum but then takes it to a whole other level part of the feeling you get listening to this song is one of East like everything's gonna be all right the strum is constant throughout the entire song it never stops but it's not forceful it's light it's effortless and it's like the fingers are just dancing on the strings a big reason for this is because of iz's style and technique he would often use the thumb and index finger in his playing switching from beautiful strums to intricate finger picking and in another performance we can see him plucking with a thumb and strumming while keeping a relaxed open hand so for over the rainbow it's likely he used a similar technique what we can hear in the recording is that he definitely used the thumb by replacing the first down strum of the island pattern with a thumb pluck of the top low g string and then strum down and up with the index finger the pattern plate slowly sounds like this one two three four thumb down up up down up thumb down up up down up thumb down up up down up thumb down up up down up but that still doesn't quite sound like is what we need to do next is add a rhythmic pulse to the Rhythm by accenting the end of the Beats By strumming those strums just a little bit louder is does this with ease all while making sure his thumb pluck isn't overpowering the other strum so he plucks more softly with the thumb relative to the other strums to practice this place slowly and focus on really exaggerating the end of the Beats one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a three and a four and a things are starting to come together a little more but our rhythm is still sounding too stiff and robotic it doesn't have that ease like is the secret to create more of an island feeling is to add swing to the Rhythm this is where the down strums are held for roughly twice as long as the up strums so this effect creates one of almost hesitation between the Beats let me play this pattern without swing first so you can hear the difference [Music] foreign now let's add swing to give it more of an island feel [Music] [Applause] that's starting to sound a lot better and while we're still not there yet the rhythm is starting to take shape and groove just a little bit more [Music] the magic of is is strumming on this song is how he's automatically layering a lot of technique and ideas into his rhythm something that drove me crazy when I was listening to the recording of Over the Rainbow is that it sounds like on Beats two and four of the pattern where there are no down strums like there is almost a percussive sound at first I thought maybe this was some kind of slap or mute of the strings something like [Music] thank you but I don't think that's it if you listen closely to the recording you can definitely hear the strings continue to ring out on this beat hearing this made me think back to what we can observe with iz's style of strumming something he does is although he's strumming with the index finger he keeps the remaining fingers in a relaxed open hand position so what I wondered is is is it possible he's taking the middle in ring fingers and tapping them on the top of the ukulele I think so one and two e and three and a four e and one and two e and three and a four e and uh by doing this you get that percussive effect while keeping the strings ringing out and if you play that up to speed this percussive tap on the top of the ukulele really adds a lot but just keep in mind you'll want to play around with the Dynamics you don't want this percussive tap to be too loud think minimum effort maximum pleasure here thank you is in effect is strumming his ukulele but with a rhythmic percussive or drumming component I think this is really cool and it shows how is is a master of its instrument he understands the Rhythm deeply where it's just part of his fingers and he layers multiple techniques to create a really compelling strumming Rhythm that carries the song but there's still one more thing that is does with this pattern to really make it groove by the way I've put together a PDF worksheet summarizing the strumming pattern we've covered so far if you want to get that cheat sheet so you can practice this in your own time then click the link below this video and I'll send it directly to your inbox so yeah it adds one more Touch of variation to the strum we can hear this immediately at the beginning of the song in this first measure he strums the C chord and he plays this pattern we've covered so far one and two e and uh but then on beat three where he switches to the E minor chord he starts to add what I'm going to call a ghost pick it's almost like he's bringing the thumb to the top g string an index finger to the C string like he's going to finger pick the strings but then he rolls off with the wrist three e and a four e and uh three e and a four e and a three e and a four e and a three and a four E and A when I was first doing a deep dive into this track I had thought maybe his index finger is just so relaxed with this technique that it sort of accidentally touching the C string for certain chords and well I think that could be the case it's just so consistent throughout the entire song and it's done with so much control which makes me think this is just part of his sort of hybrid strum and finger pick kind of style it's kind of insane to me how much is going on with what is supposed to be just a classic Island strum in some basic ukulele chords when you practice all these things and bring it up to Tempo it's gonna sound something like this foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh oh somewhere now even as I hear myself play this over the rainbow strum pattern I have to be honest I think it's there it's solid but there's just something to be said about is this Dynamics and feel which are really just next level and it's what makes Over the Rainbow such a hit and gives it that extra Magic [Music] Over the Rainbow [Music] when you play ukulele This Groove is everything it's what holds the song together and this is an absolute Master at this and this is just the ukulele plank the real magic of this song is how this playing comes together with is his voice Del Beasley is a musician who grew up playing music with Israel and recalls the first time he heard him sing they set up with instruments that were kind of beat up in fact one of the ukuleles was held together with bubble gum what happened was as soon as Israel kamakawivole opened his mouth and sang that whole place went quiet the ukulele is an instrument that connected is with this Hawaiian culture but it's his voice that really moves us [Music] foreign [Music] even the moment towards the end of Over the Rainbow he vocalizes away from the melody and kind of does this really fun riff so it might be 3 A.M in the morning but one thing's for sure Israel is going to be having fun with his ukulele there's the virtuosity of the player and then there's just the pure joy of being alive and Israel had both at the surface Over the Rainbow is one man's ukulele cover mashing up two popular songs but when you take a deeper look you find the magic of the song as in how it was recorded the technique and feeling in which it was played and the person who was Israel kamaka Viva Ole all these things come together to create pure ukulele magic and if you want to learn how to strum your ukulele with magic then I want to invite you to join me in my strumming tricks online course over at ukulele tricks.com where I take you from complete beginner to proficient player thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Ukulele Tricks

Views: 2,643,476

Keywords: Somewhere Over the Rainbow, ukulele, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, Over the Rainbow, ukulele song, strumming pattern, ukulele tutorial, ukulele strumming, ukulele lesson, strum pattern, ukulele strum, Bruddah Iz, Iz, Jon de Mello, Milan Bertosa, Del Beazley, Hawaiian Music, Hawaii, What a Wonderful World, how to strum ukulele, Ukulele Tricks, Brett McQueen

Id: TLUaVIfc5VA

Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023