2013 is coming to an end. And it’s been another golden year for ukulele music. Here’s a rundown – in no particular order – of my favourite uke albums and EPs of year. Leave yours in the comments.

If you use Spotify you can listen to my Ukulele 2013 playlist with a much bigger selection of the year’s ukulele music. If you’re not a Spotifier here’s a list of the songs on it.

The Flamin’ Mamies – The Flamin’ Mamies

Who: Liverpool’s own toe tappin’ deco dames.

What: Rollocking 20s tunes.

Buy it on Bandcamp

Me & Amelia – Me & Amelia

Who: Brother and sister duo Zeke and Amelia.

What: Simon and Garfunkel for today’s swinging teens.

Buy it on iTunes.

Ninebarrow – Kingdom EP

Who: British folk duo.

What: Pastoral and historical songs with beautiful harmonies back with perfect uke picking.

Buy it on iTunes

Keston Cobblers’ Club – A Scene of Plenty EP

Who: Instrument swapping Kentish five-some.

What: More of the ever popular tuba and ukulele combination on this selection of oom-pah folk pop.

Buy it on iTunes

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If you’ll allow me to be hipster for a minute, my love of Pokey LaFarge pre-dates Uke Hunt. I was singing his praises back in 2006 (in the grand old days when MySpace was a legitimate site to link to).

So I’ve no excuse for not doing one of his songs before. Luckily, Gavin’s ukulele version of La La Blues was more than enough to give me a kick up the arse.

Suggested Strumming

For the main strum you can use this once each for A, E7 and D.

d – x u – u d u

Then play one down strum (d – ) on the D again and switch to D7 for the rest of the bar playing:

d u – u d –

Then back to the main pattern. Play it twice for the final A.

Put those together and you get this:

Strum

Twiddly Bits

Here’s a uked version of the intro:

Intro

And this is my favourite little run to play in the outro:

Here it is played slow then up to speed:

Outro

Links

Buy the MP3
PokeyLaFarge.net
Pokey LaFarge on MySpace

Full Playlist

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Blackbird have just released the Blackbird Clara ukulele made from plant fibre. One of the few ukuleles made from renewable materials.

Some spectacularly colourful ukulele gig bags and cases from Musical Miscellany.

Never seen one of these before: KoAloha Solid Body Tenor prototype.

Fender have finally got on the ukes-that-look-like-Fender-guitars bandwagon with the Fender ’52 ukulele.

Kala are continuing to add to their Ukadelic range including:
Swirls, cheesy beach night and cool decorated skulls and steampunk.

Lanikai LKS-TEU complete with USB connection and Gibson-style fret markers.

Swagerty Kook-A-La-Lee.

1930s The Egyptian Ukulele by Regal.

Mr Bones banjolele.

Eleuke Vox Ukulele.

Pictures
Ivan Petrovitch
Margaret Thompson (as seen on Boardwalk Empire)

heART for PEACE: auction of decorated ukuleles to benefit victims of the typhoon in the Philippines.

New Releases

– Can’t Stop, Shan’t Stop – Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer.
– Heretics by Rusty Cage.
– An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer (Live)
– Lost Forever by Craig Robertson.
– Easy Christmas Song ebook.
– Ma Petite’s – Winter Comes, Winter Goes

Pictures

– Dog, beard, ukulele.
– Ukulele haul.
– Grand Cat Show, 1883.
– Decorated ukuleles.

Kickstarting

– woodhook ukulele hanger.

Videos

– George Formby’s Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith (Thanks to Ron Hale).
– Former Australian PM, Julia Gillard’s rant at ‘sexist’ Tony turned into a song.

Following on from Charlie McDonnell’s Big Bang 2 with the tune from Doctor Who it was based on: Murray Gold’s I Am The Doctor. The theme for Matt Smith’s Doctor.

I also jammed a reference to the main Doctor Who Theme in at the end.

7/8 Time

The main theme is in rather tricky 7/8 time. When counting it I went with “1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4”. But once I’d got the hang of playing it I dropped the count and just went with the swing of it.

Trickiest Bit

The high, screechy violin bit in bars 5-8. You can simplify this a couple of ways. You can drop the note on the A-string 8th fret at the end of the bar and just stick with the 10th fret. Or you could play a simpler version without the screeches. Either repeat the first four bars or play bars 17-20.

Links

Buy the original on iTunes
More Trock tabs and chords.
More theme tune tabs and chords.

Full Playlist

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Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat and tuning its ukulele. As am I. If you’d like to join us here’s all the Christmas stuff on the site.

Christmas eBooks

I’ve done two ebooks of Christmas songs arranged very simply for the uke. Each song is done in two ways. One solo version combining the chords and tune. And one that’s just the melody. You can read more about them here:

Christmas Ukulele 1
Christmas Ukulele 2: The Second Coming
Christmas Ukulele III: Return of the Maji

They’re each just $7 but get them all at once and you can get all three for the price of two

Buy them here