Sunday, October 10, 2010

Trapped!

One of the songs I've been learning in recent months was Jake Shimabukuro's Trapped. (Yes, I realize the instrument I'm playing is called the uke, not the jake, but I guess I'm a fanboy...) This is the first song on his Live album and I've heard it at his concert twice. I think he explained that it's some sort of an Egyptian beat that kind of goes like 1,2-1,2,3, 1,2-1,2,3 or something like that. It's pretty catchy and I've always liked it. It's a very short song and didn't sound too difficult so I tried to play it based on how it sounded to me. I was able to figure out something that sounded pretty close by playing the first passage this way:

GCEA
x4x2
x4x0
x43x
x42x

where I pluck the 2 strings using my thumb and index finger. However, a while later I decided to pay closer attention to the song and noticed that toward the end it didn't quite sound the same as the way I played it. So I looked up a few Youtube videos and upon examination it looked like Jake was playing the song out of a completely different position as I've been playing it. So I tried to mimic it and ended up playing the first passage this way:

I:
x47x
x45x
x43x
x42x

This is played with my index and middle fingers plucking the 2 strings and the thumb picking C-4 after the x47x chord. Playing it this way made the whole song sound more like what the CD sounded like. The rest of the progression look like this:

II:
x57x
x58x
xx57
xx55
x57x
x58
x55x
x57x

III:
x47x
x45x
x43x
x42x
x47x
x48x
x45x
x47x

IV:
x37x
x35x
x33x
x32x
x37x
x38x
x35x
x37x

V:
x00x
x02x
x03x
x05x

VI:
x22x
x23x
x25x
x27x

strum
2322
2323

That's basically everything except for the ending, which was the main difference between how I originally played this and how I play it now:

x47x
x45x
x23x
x22x

x22x
x23x
three times

x00x
xx3x (hammer on)
x00x

x22x
xx5x
x22x

x23x
slide to x47x

strum 0477

Anyway, I don't know if any of the above make any sense, but if you want to give this song a shot, it might help. Below is a video of an attempt at this song.

1 comment:

Barry Maz said...

Wow - thanks for that.

BTW - I linked to you from my own blog (www.gotaukulele.co.uk) would be cool if you included a link back

Keep up the good work - love the site

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