Apr/23/10
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UK Uke Shows: Friday Links

I’ll be off on holiday by the time you read this. And not one of those fake holidays where I just stop blogging and spend every day laying in bed. A real holiday where I go somewhere. So after tomorrow’s videos there won’t be any posts for three weeks.

Jim D’Ville’s Play Ukulele by Ear is now now available for download (for $18). You can read my review of it here.

Assuming the ash air transport authorities come to their senses and hire Kate Bush and Donald Sutherland to sort out the ash cloud, the UK will soon be playing host to a full Beatles Complete on Ukulele show in London in July. And the Corner Laughers are coming over in May.

Eliza Newman teaches Al Jazeera how to say the name of that volcano by the medium of song.

Two acts have been posting chords to their songs (something which should be heartily encouraged) Howlin’ Hobbit and Craig Robertson.

Head to Finland and learn to build ukuleles with Pete Howlett.

Raul Malo and his fans are impressed with his new UBass.

Armelle discusses the Paris Ukulele Bazaar.

Rock’n uke.

In the comments: Lizzie got me thinking about chord notation. If you’ve got any thoughts on the best way to indicate chord inversions, let me know.

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  • Written by Woodshed
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3 Comments

  1. Howlin' Hobbit April 23rd, 2010 4:14 pm

    Thanks for the shoutout! (And for using exactly the right link. Good geek. ;-) )

    As to the chord inversions thing… illustrate them. That’s one of the points behind what I’m doing with my songs. You can do a LOT for your arrangements by such simple expedients as using say… first position chords for the A part of the tune and second position for the B part. It’s not that damn difficult and it changes the color palette in your tunes quite a bit. It also slowly but surely teaches you the inversions. Win!

    If you don’t want to actually make the chord boxes, use the numbers system.

    C
    0003

    C
    5433

    …etc.

    The chord boxes I’m using started out with the nice selection that Ray Shakeshaft put out on UKUkes and I’ve built on it as needed. I’ll be zipping up my expanded collection soon and making it available for download and I’ll also be updating said download every now and then to include the most recent additions (because it looks like it’s going to be a work in progress until I die).

  2. Woodshed May 5th, 2010 10:50 am

    Hobbit: I know you were using ‘colour’ in a different context, but it got me wondering colours could be used in chord charts and tabs. It’d be an interesting experiment at least.

  3. Howlin' Hobbit May 5th, 2010 1:46 pm

    Douglas Reynolds, one of the fellas behind the Tahoe Area Uke Fest, has a teaching method called “PSP” (Pick Strum Pinch). He’s at http://www.playuke.net. He’s working out the second version of it because in the first version he used color coding to show if you were supposed to be picking, strumming or pinching.

    Then somebody pointed out that a largish number of folk were color-blind to one degree or another.

    I’ve got a copy of his old material (sans color coding) and it’s actually quite a good method. There are several songs done up for you and with a little bit of study someone just beginning to try chord/melody stuff could be playing some nice arrangements. I’m looking forward to seeing what version 2 is going to be like.

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