Pictures
– Iris Boudreau’s painted character ukuleles.
– Fishy machete.
Videos
– Ukulele live documentary
– George Formby’s uke meets Tiny Tim’s
– George Harrison plays the Ukulele at home (possibly)
New Releases
– Something Is Wrong With Me, Part 2 by Craig Robertson
– Demos from Sweet Soubrette
– Henry the Rabbit.
– Free EP from Jacob Borshard.
Kickstarting
– Sophie Madeleine: new album for 2013
– Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra’s Scottish trip
Campaigning against ukuleles in schools: “These taxpayer-supported schools are hell-bent on indoctrinating your innocent, unsuspecting children into the ways of the ukulele, an unholy instrument of Satan.” Couldn’t agree more.
Eddie Vedder – Tuolumne (Tab)
Nype suggested I do a uke version of Eddie Vedder’s Tuolumne from the soundtrack of Into the Wild (and the precursor to Just Breathe). I was a bit trepedacious as a lot of guitar picking songs end up finger-crunchingly tricky on ukulele. But it actually works out very well. I didn’t even have to change the key.
Trickiest Bit
Moving down from the 10th fret at the end of bar 2 to the 3rd fret. If you have trouble with that you can take off that 10th fret and just play bar 2 like bar 3.
Picking Pattern
The right hand is doing a constant Travis-picking pattern. The thumb alternates between the g and C-strings, the index finger picks the E-string and the middle finger picks the A-string.
Here’s the pattern:
And here’s what it looks like slowed down:
The only variation is that I occasionally miss out the final i to buy some time for the chord change. And the slow-down bit at the end of bar 7.
Links
It’s about half way through 2013 so time to run through a few of my favourite things so far this year. I’m sure I’m forgetting something so leave your faves in the comments.
Favourite Posts
Tabs
Muppet Show Theme
Elvis Costello – Shipbuilding
Pi for Ukulele
Mega Man II – Flash Man Theme
Chords
John Bianchi/Eddie Cantor – The Dumber They Come
Kelli Rae Powell – Some Bridges are Good to Burn
Johnny Cash/James Clem – Big River
Daft Punk – Get Lucky
Favourite Videos
Celisse Henderson – Well
Matt Kresling – My Apartments In Order
Catey Shaw – Run, Run, Run
Brendan Maclean – Stupid
The Staves – Facing West
Sarah Humphreys – Why Don’t We Just Stay Home
Sanford and Adrien Sala and Tesia Rhind – As the Living Do
Keston Cobblers’ Club – Beam
Not Songs
Dale Seever – Spending Time With…Cory McAbee
Matt Kresling – The Madagascar Journals, Episode 3
Favourite Records
Spotify: Ukulele 2013
Check out my Ukulele 2013 Spotify playlist.
Albums and EPs
Various – The Ukulele Mixtape – Various
The Flamin’ Mamies – The Flamin’ Mamies
Phil Doleman & Ian Emmerson – Turn
Manitoba Hal – Devil on the Wall
Ukulollo – Devotion
Singles
Leftover Cuties – One Heart
Nicholas Abersold – Pollux
Catey Shaw – Run, Run, Run
Arctic Monkeys – Fluorescent Adolescent (Chords)
About 1,750 posts ago I put up The Arctic Monkeys’ Despair in the Departure Lounge. Since then there’s been a steady trickle of requests for Fluorescent Adolescent. So it’s about time I got round to it.
It’s a fairly difficult one. Lots of barre chords, the dreaded E chord and some confusing rhythms. Still, none of it’s as tricky as spelling the title.
Twiddly Bits
Arctic Monkeys – Fluorescent Adolescent Intro (Tab)
Here’s the intro part arranged for two ukuleles.
Or you can just about fit both parts on to one ukulele. Which sounds like this:
Or play just the lead line.
Links
Buy the MP3
Despair in the Departure Lounge chords
AM Medley tab
Leftover Cuties have a new album on the way: the Spark & the Fire. They’ve released the opening single, One Heart, and it blew me away. They were kind enough to let me put it up for download:
Leftover Cuties — One Heart (MP3)
You can pre-order the Spark & the Fire on their website.
New Releases
– Sophie Madeleine has released a ukulele tab book. The bad news: it’s already sold out. The good news: you can still buy the ebook version. I did some proofreading on it so I got a sneak peek and can highly recommend picking it up.
– Live album from Molly Lewis.
– Free single from Jacob Borshard.
Videos
– Jim D’Ville has 3 Questions for Del Rey
– The Martin Ukulele book trailer.
– If you’ve been watching YouTube tutorials Learn Guitar with David Brent will look familiar.
Pictures
– Ukulele: instrument of torture for the busty girl.
– Bear’s rad ukulele solos.
Litmus Films – makers of The Ukes Down Under are Kickstarting a new film abou the UOGB: The Ukes in America.
Howlin’ Hobbit chats with and ukes for the Billow Waggle Dangle podcast.
This isn’t the first 3D printed ukulele but it seems like the first playable one.
Two new luthiers on the scene: Nick “Ron Swanson” Offerman and Matt “Kate’s Brother” Micucci. Their kazoos cost $50 each so get saving now.
Fatso – Keyboard Cat (Tab)
I was inspired by Ukulele Cat to knock up my own version of the Keyboard Cat tune. It’s dead simple, just the D and Dm chord shapes on the C, E and A strings. Make sure you’ve got the chord shape in place at the start of the bar and you’re good to go.
For the picking I’m using:
Thumb – C-string.
Index – E-string.
Middle – A-string.
My version is in a different key. Here’s a version in the original key.
Links
I’ve been using Guitar Pro to make my tabs for longer than this site has existed. But I spend so much time making tabs that I’m always on the lookout for something better. So I picked up a new tabbing app for Mac: Tabular by Chromatic Labs
It’s very new and the bugs are still being worked out. But it does have all the important features and it certainly could be a contender. It’s gaining features quickly. I’ve had to delete a few things I was bitching about in this review because they were fixed.
This review is based on version 1.1.0.
What You Get
A tabbing app for Mac. It can create tabs for ukulele, guitar, pretty much any other fretted instrument and drums.
It does all the things you’d expect a tab programme to do: creates tab and standard notation and rhythm slashes (or just tab), has most of the expressions you’ll need (bends, slides, vibrato, harmonics), creates chord diagrams, allows for multiple tracks in each tab.
You can import from Guitar Pro 3/4/5 or MIDI file formats and export to PDF, MIDI or plain text.
It also has a practice mode that allows you to adjust the tempo and loop selected sections of a tab.
The Good Stuff
Copy/paste plain text tab: I love this feature so much! You can copy the tab from the app, paste it anywhere you can put text and it will give you plain text tab that looks like this:
|----3----|
Q E E E Q Q
A ||-3-------------------------------|
E ||-------3----3----3----4-----3----|
C ||---------------------------------|
G ||---------------------------------|
That’s already made Tabular the app I go for to I want to make a quick bit of tab to go in an email or comment.
Document Library
The app keeps an iTunes-like library of all your Tabular files which I found handy. You can arrange them into groups (a bit like playlists in iTunes). Which I prefer to folders as it means you can have one tab in any number of different groups.
It just needs iCloud support and I would love it to pieces.
Looks Great
My biggest problem with Guitar Pro is how butt-ugly it is. Tabular is much more pleasant to use.
Price
It’s currently £13.99 ($19.99). Making it much cheaper than Guitar Pro at €60 (£51/$79). Although if it’s cheap you want Power Tab (Windows only) is free.
Uke Suitable
There’s an option for standard ukulele tuning. None for low-G or baritone but it’s easy to create those and store them. I didn’t run into any problems trying to do uke stuff. And its automatic chord names work much better than Guitar Pro which is forever adding in slash chords on ukulele.
Also on the fretboard display the strings get thicker as the tuning lowers. So reentrant tuning actually looks like reentrant tuning. Which has no practical value but I like a lot.
Importing
It imports a good range of files: MIDI, Guitar Pro 3/4/5 (currently no .gpx – the format of the latest Guitar Pro). It did a good job of importing everything I tried.
The Not So Good Stuff
Exporting
Currently you can export to pdf, MIDI and plain text. They work well but I missed the ability to export images.
Limited Display Options
You’re currently limited to the app defaults when it comes to fonts, sizing and titling.
In the app itself, if you’ve got multiple tracks you can’t view them together.
Chord Charts
The chord charts it produces are a bit lacking. As well as the lack of display options you can’t add fingering, indicate barres and the nut isn’t bolded (making it more difficult to check which fret you’re at). They’re also not particularly pretty.
Tabular:
Guitar Pro:
Limited Features
It’s lacking a few other features you may or may not use. There’s no ability to add lyrics, codas, segnos. There’s also no way to add fingering to tab. There are most likely other features that I didn’t look for. So best to check the features it does have if you want anything beyond standard tabbing.
Mac Only
This, I’m fairly sure, isn’t going to change soon. Which is obviously bad news for non-Mac folks. But even for Mac folks it means that Tabular isn’t going to replace Guitar Pro as the internet’s favourite format for exchanging tabs.
Overall
My official position when I started this review was, “Looks promising but you should wait and see.” But the update to version 1.1 really cut down on my reasons not to recommend it. And there is a lot it does very well.
If you planning on doing a lot of tabbing I’d still highly recommend Guitar Pro. I can’t imagine Tabular becoming my main tab maker.
But if you’re looking for something inexpensive and easy to use for occasional tabbing then Tabular is already looking like the best option.
Links
Tabular on Chromatic Labs
Tabular on Mac App Store
Guitar Pro
Power Tab
Daft Punk – Get Lucky
I was humming and hawing over whether to write Get Lucky up until I heard Will Grove-White’s awesome ukulele version. Both versions are in the same key so you can use these chords to play along with either.
Suggested Strumming
Nile Rodgers’s funky rhythm part really makes the song. There’s a lot of variation in the strumming but I like to keep a constant semiquaver strum and mute most of the strums.
Here’s the basis of the strum I use with the muted strums as Xs:
Here it is played at half speed:
And up to speed:
Once you’ve got it under your fingers try out a few variations.
Twiddly Bits
The little solo at the end is very tricky to play up to speed. Here’s my best crack at it.
Links
Buy the MP3
WillGroveWhite.com
Harder, Better, Faster, Strong chords
Le Freak riff
