You might, and should, know Mark Kailana Nelson from his essential book Fingerstyle Solos for Ukulele.

His latest book is a collection of blues, rag and hokum tunes from Mark’s album of the same name.

He was kind enough to send me a copy and here’s what I thought of it.

What You Get

Tab and standard notation for all the songs the Juke’n the Uke album and six others.

All but three of the tunes are for low-G ukulele. Each has a short description with hints on playing and fingering (there’s no fingering in the notation itself).

Short Lessons

Introduction to reading tab, blues scale, bottleneck slide, chord inversions for major, minor, 7 and minor 7 chords, transposing.

What you don’t get: A CD.

The Good Stuff

Adaptability

Learn the patterns in this book and you’ll probably be able to cobble together a version of any number of blues and hokum tunes.

There’s a fair amount of blues licks stuff out there. Which is useful. But not so much stuff that will set you up to play full songs. Juke’n the Uke fits there very nicely.

Because so many blues and hokum songs follow a similar pattern the ideas you pick up in the book (and there are plenty) are going to apply across a huge range of songs.

Videos

There are a few video lessons of tracks from the book on Mark’s YouTube channel. All done in a friendly and accessible way and perfect for people who like to learn by video.

Level of Difficulty

The book definitely isn’t for beginners. You have to be fairly confident with fingerpicking before you tackle it. But if you are then there’s a very good range of difficultly. Some stuff you’ll be able to pick up after a couple of runs and some stuff you’ll have to practice hard to get.

Slide Songs

Four of the songs in the book use a bottleneck slide (the type you put your finger through and play with your ukulele upright). They make for a nice bit of variety and something fun to try out.

The Not So Good Stuff

Low-G

All but three of the tabs are for low-G ukulele. The back of the book says they are, “Playable on any ‘ukulele (low G preferred).” Which, I suppose, is true but that doesn’t necessarily mean they sound good.

Here’s a snippet from the first low-G tune Richland Woman Blues played on low-G:

Low-G

And here it is on high-G:

High-G

The dissonance between the A and the Bb creates a nice bit of tension in the low-G version (where the notes are nearly an octave apart) but earache in the high-G version (where they’re right next to each other). This sort of thing crops up a number of times in the arrangements. And there’s the fact that sometimes the alternating thumb line doesn’t sound right with the high-G.

So I’d say the book is really only for low-G fans. That’s a deal killer for me.

Gets a Bit Samey

Because many songs in this genre are very alike, a lot of the tabs in the book are quite similar. I counted eight in the key of F. Most of the arrangements involved alternating thumb patterns on the G and C strings with additional notes on the E and A strings.

No CD

I was actually going to put this in the “good stuff” section. I hate CDs! And you can listen to the whole album on Spotify and on Rdio. And he has videos for most of the tabs that aren’t on the album. But these ways are restrictive and I think people might feel a bit short changed not to get a CD.

Tune Order

The books are arranged in terms of difficultly. Which makes sense. But I had wanted to play along with the album. But I was using a PDF of the book. It wouldn’t be as much of a pain to find what you’re looking for if you’re using the real book.

Conclusion

Mark’s books are always well put together and full of ideas. But I wouldn’t recommend everyone dashes out and buys Juke’n the Uke like I would Fingerstyle Solos for ‘Ukulele.

The tunes are arranged for an album first and a tab book second. So it’s not ideal for learning purposes. If it’s an area of music you’re interested in I’d definitely recommend checking out Mark’s album and then grabbing the tab book if you want to play it.

Buy Juke’n the Uke on Amazon US

I have a bone to pick with the end of this song: it really annoys me when a song that’s been in a minor key switches to major right at the end. You never hear a major song turning minor right at the end (watch the comments fill up with examples). It’s the worst sort of discrimination in the world by far.

Nevertheless, it’s an excellent song and picked up a fair few requests when I posted the uke version by Sophie Madeleine and Pearl with the Beard.

It’s worth keeping your index finger barred on the third fret to make for easier chord changes. But that does make it tough on the left hand because you’re barring for the whole song. So if it starts feeling sore while you’re practicing take a break.

Suggested Strumming

For the longer strums you can use old faithful:

d – d u – u d –

And for the short ones just two down strums:

d – d –

The tricky bit comes at the end of the choruses. On the C7 do old faithful then two down strums. One down strum each for Db7 and C7. Two down strums each for Fm and Db7. Then back to old faithful for C7.

On the Fm at “things that you do to me” she plays crochet triplets. But old faithful will work fine there if you’re not comfortable with those yet.

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Visit SophieMadeleine.com

It’s not often I repost the same song from the same band. But it’s happened twice this week with Shiny and the Spoon reprising their cover of A-ha and Keston Cobblers’ Club. Also on the list is Scott Avett with a horrible ukulele, Walk off the Earth tossing around a Flea banjolele (head to 2:54 if you only watch their videos for headstock guy) and an instrumental from War Jacket.

Non-video Update: Wilfried Welti – who you might know from his excellent videos and his tab ebooks Solo Ukulele für Einsteiger and Weihnachten mit der Ukulele – has released three new ebooks: Alte Musik mit der Ukulele, Keltische Musik mit der Ukulele and Klassische Musik mit der Ukulele.

Full Playlist

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I’ve had a lot of despondent messages since Ukulele Dav and Arnaud D’s site disappeared. But now their tabs are back. If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s well worth a visit for tabs of classic ukulele tunes.

There’s a new most ukers world record for Japan with a total of 2,134.

John Flansburgh and his Cat Ukuleles (“You can hear the ukulele on car commercials when they stop using toy pianos.”.

My patriotism being far outweighed by my ukuloyalty, I’ll be cheering for reigning Olympic champion, one of the few openly gay Olympians and ukulelist Matthew Mitcham in the 10m diving.

The list of July’s most popular ukulele videos is dominated by Tom ‘Off Of McFly’ Fletcher.

Pictures: ukulele girl band #1, ukulele girl band #2, ukulele/guitar/bass, “Mama, I think I’m in love with a ukulele player“, “It’s not a ukulele, Sherlock“.

Podcast with tips on taking photos of ukuleles from 11:50 (via krabbers).

The world’s most never ever popular instrument

New Release: Ukulele Heart by Tyrone and Lesley (and on CDBaby)

After a break of four years, I’ve returned to Last.fm (I realised it’s the only social network I used that I actually liked because it’s about something). Do friend me up and feel free to join my long neglected ukulele group. This week I’ve been mostly listening to Sun Kil Moon, Mary Epworth and Nas.

One of my favourite techniques for rut-busting and expanding my playing is to listen to other instruments and brazenly steal everything. It’s instructive to learn from other weirdly-tuned, four-stringed instruments like the cuatro. But there’s also plenty to be learned from instruments that are completely different.

And it doesn’t get much more different than church bells.

Even so, this is far from the first time bell ringing has cropped up on the blog. I’ve long been fascinated with John King’s campanella technique of playing every consecutive note on a different string and letting the notes ring into each other.

And when I did a version of The Bridal Chorus I decided to tack on a bit that sounded like bells:

Wedding Bells

This was enough to get me excited about bell ringing and I wanted to make sure I didn’t end up looking like a bellend. So I investigated proper bell ringing a bit more.

Bell Ringing Rules

If you thought the ukulele was restrictive, that’s nothing compared to bells. As well as being very restricted in the number of notes, they’re also restricted in the amount of time you can have between rings. Because of the bell’s momentum there needs to be a certain amount of time between rings. That’s why you don’t hear church bells playing tunes.

Instead there’s been the tradition in the UK and elsewhere of “change ringing”.

1. Every bell has to sound once – and only once – in each set.
2. Bells can only move by one position in the order they’re rung.
3. Once you get going you can’t play the bells in the same order twice.
4. You start off and end by repeatedly playing all the bells in descending order – known as a round.

Within these rules it can get very complicated and mathematical.

Bell Ringing Notation

Bells aren’t rung using standard notation but by numbers. And, unlike every other system, number one is the highest and then they’re numbered sequential going down the scale (usually the major scale). For these examples I’m going to use the A major scale so the numbers are:

1 = A
2 = G#
3 = F#
4 = E

So playing them in descending order – a round – you get this:

1234 In A

Make sure you hold down all the strings so that the notes ring into each other like they do with bell ringing.

And if you wanted to play the new record for most ukers (2,134) you’d do this:

2134 In A

Method Ringing

There are two main types of change ringing:

1. Call ringing: where a conductor calls out what changes are to be made to the order.
2. Method ringing: where the bells are rung according to a certain sequence (ranging from fairly simple to horrendously complicated).

The simplest method is the “Plain Hunt”. This involves pairs of bells switching with each other. So in our example of four notes:

Step 1: You start off playing rounds (1234).
Step 2: The first two bells swap places and the last two bells swap places (2143).
Step 3: The middle two bells swap places (2413).
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you get back to playing rounds (1234).

Follow that sequence and you get this:

Here it is played slowly:

Plain Hunt

And here it is sped up:

Plain Hunt Fast

There’s a huge selection of sequences you can play. Here’s an excellent description of various bell ringing methods

Six Bells

If four notes is far too simple for you, switch up to six notes. Six notes works very nicely in the key of C:

123456 In C

Campanella Campanology

Here’s a little study I made in attempt to take the bell ringing ideas and combine them with the strengths of the ukulele. So I’ve kept the ideas of cascading notes ringing into each other, the changing patterns, starting and ending with repetitions of the same sequence.

But I’ve been much looser with the rules, made it more intuitive to play and taken advantage of the greater range of notes (not often you get to say that with the ukulele). And I’ve used a lot of open strings since they ring more than fretting ones.

The notes are all from the C major scale. But I was thinking more in terms of chord shapes. So it starts off with a Cadd9 shape (5435). Then a Dm7 shape (2213). I’ve tabbed the suggested fingerings once for each new shape.

This work by Ukulele Hunt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

More Creative Commons ukulele.

UPDATE: pinta_vodki shared this video of the Russian take on bell ringing. It starts at about 1 minute. It’s pretty funky.

The movie theme tune quiz was popular so here’s a TV theme tune version.

One problem: TV shows aren’t quite as international as films. So I’ve split them up into UK and US TV shows (sorry other 95% of the earth’s population). Tackle one, the other or both.

If you’re reading via email or RSS click through to the blog to hear the tunes.

Again, if you’re desperate for hints, they’re all tunes I’ve tabbed on the blog.

UK TV Shows

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

US TV Shows

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Go here and check your answers.

It really shouldn’t have taken a request I couldn’t turn down (they bribed me with a pizza) before I wrote this one up. It’s one of my favourite WIUO covers and definitely one of the funnest to play.

I’ve written up the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra’s version. It’s one fret lower than the Toto version but otherwise they’re very similar. So if you want to play along with the original slap a capo on the first fret.

If you’re playing by yourself it’s worth playing Gm instead of Gm7 (outside the Ab-Gm7-Cm move) otherwise the change between Gm7 and Bb get’s lost.

Suggested Strumming

The song is in 2/4 time. So this simple strum will get you most of the way through:

The trickiest bit of strumming comes in the Ab-G7m-Cm move which you can play like this:

I kept getting thrown by the Cm being in the middle of the bar. It feels like the start of a new bar. So if you’re as stupid as me it’s worth paying attention to the count in that part.

Twiddly Bits

I’ve included the tab for the little twiddly bit in the intro in the chord sheet. It’s made up of two parts. The top line (Uke 1) is the main one. So if you’ve just got one twiddling uke use that one.

And here’s my stab Age’s solo:

Buy the WIUO version
Buy the Toto version

More WIUO

Blue Smoke
Hey Ya
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
It’s a Heartache
Short People
The Bucket
The Israelites

Interview

Lots of good stuff to choose from for this one. I had to be quite ruthless with my choices to keep the list to a reasonable length. If you want to influence what gets included on here do rate the videos I post on UkeToob. I always check the ratings before I put together the list.

Finding particular favour this week are Ukulollo and his vertical pool, Sophie Madeleine and her Pearl and the Beard buddies and Origamibiro and their office equipment.

Full Playlist

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There are some fun ear training games here to help with tuning practice and chord progression recognition. The first few levels are free but you have to pay after that.

Jontom has an ebook-type series of 3 Months of Ukulele Licks

On Video: Day eight in the Big Brother house and the housemeeyates are hoeing down to The D’Ukes (from 21 minutes), For The Win – Sexy Python, SNL ukulele (it’s blocked in the UK so I haven’t seen it).

Ukuleling at the Olympics

Photo: Moana Vierra’s Royal Hawaiians

Music: Duke Ukem Sound System (via @mtntrout)

In the Comments: Eron G. reviewed the Red Aquila strings.

Ukulele protest for West Papua. Which I can certainly get behind. Here’s a piece I wrote about West Papuan activist and ukulelist Benny Wenda

I’m testing to see if cats will help sell more ebooks.

I’ve been meaning to do an instrumental version of this Muppet song (written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher) for ages. It’s a lovely little tune and I’ve kept things as simple as I could.

After the intro, there’s no fancy picking at all. It’s all done with the thumb.

Intro

If you want a simple, thumb-playable version of the intro you can use this:

Bars 7 and 8

Changing the fretting on the C-string from the middle finger to the index finger should make it easier to reach up to the fifth fret with your pinky.

Bars 11 and 12

Keep the notes in brackets soft. You can throw in a bit of fancy filigree here if you like but make sure it’s quiet enough so it doesn’t overpower the melody.

Same deal in bars 19 and 20; and 27 and 28.

Bars 21 to 24

Keep the fifth fret barred with your index finger.

Bars 31 and 32

I found this to be the trickiest move in the whole tune. Try keeping the fifth fret playing for the last note but start moving your other fingers ready for the A chord.

Melody Version

Here’s a melody only version for you to do with as you wish.

Buy the MP3