Friendly Fred

Hi, I'm FriendlyFred and running this blog. I play 'em all from soprano to baritone, acoustic and electric. Yes, big hands can handle small instruments. Enjoy strumming around and have a good day !

” Brown Girl In The Ring ” – Easy Ukulele Playalong

"Brown Girl in the Ring" is a traditional children's song from the Caribbean. It's about a ring game from Jamaica. The players form a ring, one steps in the middle and begins skipping or walking around to the song. A lot of artists like Louise Bennett, Exuma, Brotherhood Of Man, Raffi, Dan Zanes  and the Minipops performed this song in different versions. The most famous rendition was recorded by Boney M. in 1978.   This easy playalong might help you to get into offbeat rhythms. Those are often used in Reggae, Ska, Rocksteady and other genres.   Chords In the video I used A and E7. If you want to sing along and the pitch is too high for you, just try to play the song in G and D7 or C and G7.   Strumming The tempo is 120 bpm. The strumming is an offbeat rhythm. To get into the groove you can learn it by the ear from the video. The strumming is shown seperately in the beginning ( 0:15 - 0:52 ) in C. Or you take a metronome ( or an app like garageband on your smartphone or tablet) and adjust the tempo to 120 bpm. Now count from one to four repeatedly. Strum as shown in the video on 2 and 4. D = Downstroke U =Upstroke
1 2 3 4
D D
 1 2 3 4
D U D
  Irie Friendly Fred.

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