Petty Booka - Ukulele Lady

After endlessly playing the Hawaiian turnaround this week, it was inevitable I’d end up playing Ukulele Lady at some point and drag out Petty Booka’s version. I went over to Alligator Boogaloo to check their tab for the intro and found I was playing it differently to the way they have it tabbed. I reckon this is how it goes:

Their variation on the Hawaiian turnaround starts at bar 7.

You can download an mp3 of the introduction of Ukulele Lady on this page.

Buy Let’s Talk Dirty In Hawaiian: The Best of Petty Booka

The Elected - At Home (Time Unknown)

The Elected - At Home (Time Unknown) (Chords)

It’s getting difficult to work out exactly what independent bands are independent of.

Anyhoo. This is a short little ukulele ditty that cropped up at the end of The Elected’s Sun, Sun, Sun album. The song is only 40 seconds long but it packs plenty of chords in. There are even three different F chords in it. If you’re not comfortable with the more difficult shapes, you could use the standard open F chord for all of these.

The trickiest part to get right is the ending. There are some quick changes between C and F with the final F being played half way up the neck. For the final change, play a C chord then start to slide your third finger up the neck. You have to be quite accurate and stop at the 8th fret. Once it’s there, barre your first finger across all the strings and strum the chord.

Requested by Suzanne

Buy Sun, Sun, Sun

Ukulele Halloween Tab & Chords Roundup

You’ve only got a couple of days left to polish up these tunes before the big night:

Addams Family Theme Tune

Chopin - Funeral March

Dance Macabre

Ghostbusters (Duet)

The Gothic Archies - Freakshow

London Bridge Is Falling Down

The Misfits - Dig Up Her Bones

The Misfits - Halloween

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)

Twilight Zone Theme

Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London

Ukulele Halloween: Chopin - Funeral March

Funeral March (midi)

This tune has to be one of the most downbeat ever written. It’s so deep and gloomy it makes Leonard Cohen sound like Samanda. That means it’s not entirely convincing on the usually light and sprightly uke. The Funeral March is probably best played as a little throwaway joke than a serious piece.

This website quotes the painter Felix Ziem on the writing of this piece.

Some time later Chopin came into my studio, just as George Sand depicts him - the imagination haunted by the legends of the land of frogs, besieged by nameless shapes. After frightful nightmares all night, in which he had struggled against specters who threatened to carry him off to hell, he came to rest in my studio. His nightmares reminded me of the skeleton scene and I told him of it. His eyes never left my piano, and he asked: ‘Have you a skeleton?’ I had none; but i promised to have one that night, and so invited Polignac to dinner and asked him to bring his skeleton. What had previously been a mere farce became, owing to Chopin’s inspiration, something grand, terrible and painful. Pale, with staring eyes, and draped in a winding sheet, Chopin held the skeleton close to him, and suddenly the silence of the studio was broken by the broad, slow, deep, gloomy notes. The ‘Dead March’ was composed there and then from beginning to end.

My favourite game with this tune is to play it as slowly as I can without slipping into a coma.

Ukulele Halloween: London Bridge Is Falling Down

London Bridge Is Falling Down (midi)

There’s something very sinister about most nursery rhymes. Most real nursery rhymes. The ones that have been passed down through the generations, not the ones that have been passed down from purple dinosaurs. They’re quite often used in horror films (such as The Haunting) and this particular tune was co-opted for the Silver Shamrock theme in Halloween 3.

There are a few of ways you could pick this tune. Each time two notes are picked together, you could pick them with your thumb and index finger. This is a perfectly good way of doing it, but I prefer another way.

I position my hand so that each finger has its own string (those of you that have signed up for the fingerpicking course will be familiar with it) but I’ll use my thumb to pick the bottom note of each pair. So, the first note of bar 1 I’ll pick with my thumb and index finger. The first note of bar 2 I’ll pick with my thumb and middle finger. It seems a strange way to do it, but it’s the way that feels most natural to me. Experiment with these two (and any alternatives you can think of) and see which feels best to you.

Suggested by West

The Saturday UkeTube: Halloween Special

Something a bit different this week. Click here to see some Halloween related ukulele videos from Craig Robertson, NY Ukes, Waitswatcher, Michael Wagner and Petty Booka.
[Read more]

Lars Larsson’s Ukulele Video Showcase: Ukulele Noir

Mark Occhionero

(Played at Mike DaSilva’s Studio in Berkeley and made a special broadcast from Boston to Berkeley, Ca for our second club meeting!)

Pork Pie Hat
Body & Soul
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
When You’re Smiling
BUC Lesson (When U Smilin’)
Sleepy Eyes (At Mike DaSilva’s Studio)
See YouTube for about 40 more

Melvern Taylor

Sad & Blue
Sad & Blue (Art Video version)
Andrea (MT and the Fabulous Meltones) — &mode=related&search=
Sleepy Eyes

Craig Robertson

Kirtland Murder Barn
Sawing a Lady in Half
Mermaid
She Likes to Pull the Wings Off Flies
Masochism Tango
Houdini
The Hypnotist

Craig Robertson also has a new album out, That Dress, which includes Sawing A Lady… and She Likes To Pull… Here some tracks on UkeCast 225.

Fran Spain

5 Foot 2
All of Me
Hone A Ka Wai
Sweet Georgia Brown (Risa Solid)
Singing in the Rain

Keep up to date with the latest Noir-ings at Ukulele Noir.

The Lars Larrson lists were compiled by The list was compiled by Jeff West of the Berkeley Ukulele Club and had to be rescued from a hole at the bottom of the internet.

Friday Links

A series of video tutorials on strumming in French - but you’ll get the idea (thanks to Jeff for the heads up).

Midnight Ukulele Disco has come up with another winner this week with a session from Hailey Wojcik.

John Harris continues The Guardian’s championing of the ukulele. Apparently, Morrissey was a big fan of George Formby and The Smiths edition of The South Bank Show kicked off with Formby (and Morrissey is officially the only man ever to be more northern than George Formby).

Harris’ article also mentions the View whose lead singer, Kyle Falconer, this week turned up with uke. He arrived onstage to fill Amy Winehouse’s high-heeled shoes to sing Valerie with Mark Ronson. You can watch the whole performance here (the uke makes an entrance at about 1 hour 10 mins).

The ‘ukulele kills the recorder’ story trundled on and even made it onto Have I Got News For You.

Grab an mp3 of Jens Lekman doing a ukulele version of Your Arms Around Me (as well as other tracks) on False 45th.

Check out the completed Hula Girl and her tiny uke on Leeward Lounge.

Princess Maxima of the Netherlands gets the gift of uke (click on ‘NA’ for the big action).

No one will ever know.

A panda playing the ukulele.

U is for ukulele.

Ukulele Halloween: Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London

Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London (Chords)

Dead simple this one. There are only three chords (D, C and G) repeated over and over again.

If you want something a bit more challenging, the piano riff fits quite nicely on the uke too.

Buy Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon

Hawaiian Turnaround

I was watching another enlightening and inspiring tutorial by Mark Occhionero today, this time on Little Grass Shack (you can get the tab on the YouTube page). It set me off vamping around in a Hawaiian style (despite the freezing cold weather) and playing the most Hawaiian lick I know:the Hawaiian turnaround. In its simplest form (in the key of A), it goes like this:

Example 1 (MIDI)

Make sure you play it with plenty of lazy swing.

This phrase can be chopped and changed in many different ways. Here’s a popular one:

Example 2 (MIDI)

It can be extended and messed around with as much as you like:

Example 3 (MIDI)

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