In this week’s selection includes the smiley Vespers, the grumpy Stephin Merritt (taking some time off from crazy golf to play uke), the Dubliny acoustic hip hopping Original Rudeboys and right-angley Walk off the Earth.
Jake Wildwood has a sale on for his vintage instruments. A few ukuleles available but my favourites are the Bantam guitar and the 6-string balalaika.
Some wild grain action on this Kanilea 3D curly koa. Speaking of Kanilea, their new Islander budget range has been picking up some good reports.
1939 UB01 Gibson.
Pictures: Buster Keaton and Ukulele Ike, young flapper and her mum, Girls’ music group, Nautical band.
Rose Turtle Ertler’s recipe collection – as featured on the podcast – What Ukulele Players Eat 2 is now up for sale. It features recipes and tracks from loads of Uke Hunt friends including Bossarocker, Armelle, Herman Vandecauter, Rodrigo Lemos, Uke Box and a bunch more.
The Antiques Roadshow visits the Kamaka factory (from 20 minutes).
Pictures: Ukulele pixel art by Ben Lane, Ukulele rage comic, banjolele orgy, They Might Not Be Giants.
On Uker Tabs: Nirvana’s Heart Shaped Box, Game Of Thrones Theme and James Hill’s Lying In Wait.
New album from Madeline Ava Still Gonna Be Fine.
Bosko & Honey and UKE on Australian radio.
Jack White’s debut album is coming out soon so it’s obviously time to do a career retrospective with a Jack White edition of the Guitar Riffs for Ukulele series. I’ve already covered his most famous riff – Seven Nation Army – but there’s plenty more where that came from.
White Stripes – Hardest Button to Button
I’ve arranged this one in the key of C as it doesn’t fit too well on a standard ukulele in the original key. You can, however, play it on a low-G like this:
The Raconteurs – Salute Your Solution
Two great riffs in this tune. The main chord riff above and the single note riff below (which you need to play a lot higher than the original to stay in the same key). When you play the A chord in the riff make sure you do it with your middle and ring fingers so you can bring your index finger under it to slide into the B chord.
White Stripes – Icky Thump
This is a version of the riff that crops up at the 47 second mark in the video. It’s not in the original key.
Dead Weather – Treat Me Like Your Mother
Isn’t Alison Mosshart just fantastic? Anyway, I played this one bass guitar picking style. But it’s a good excuse for using a pick too.
Tom Jones – Evil
Third Man Records – Jack White’s record label – have put out so much great stuff. Often with Jack providing some wild guitar accompaniment to the artist’s usual sound. My favourite of these is the one he did with the Secret Sisters but this new one with Tom Jones comes very close.
This riff kicks in at 40 seconds.
Jontom from the Italian uke site YOUkulele.com has got a new ebook out A Collection of 50 Ukulele Licks. He was kind enough to send me a copy to look over.
What You Get
– Tab for 50 licks (short phrases you can use in solos) in five genres: blues, pop, rock, folk and Hawaiian. (one PDF file for each genre). I’d say they’re mostly intermediate level of difficulty. They’re made for high-g and there’s a fair bit of use made of it but most of them would work well on low-G or baritone.
– Videos demonstrations of all the licks (.mov files mostly between 20MB and 35MB which makes for a big download if you’re getting the whole thing).
– You can buy each genre individually but you buy the whole thing you also get the tab in GuitarPro format.
– UPDATE: If you buy the whole thing you now get 50 strums as well. I haven’t got a copy of that so it’s not included in the review.
The Good Stuff
Cool Licks: Plenty of cool stuff to play in here. No surprises that the blues section has the juiciest licks. I wasn’t expecting it but the pop one was my second favourite. And plenty in the others to interest me too.
Videos
Each lick comes with a video showing the fretting hand and an insert looking down the fretboard at the picking/fretting hand. The video usually shows the lick played full speed then split into sections and played slowly with explanations from Jontom.
Price: It’s $8 for the whole thing ($2 for each genre). Definitely worth the price of admission. $2 for the blues licks is a no-brainer.
Guitar Pro Files: I’m not sure how many people have Guitar Pro. But I use it all the time so this makes for a nice bonus.
The Not So Good Stuff
Lack of Theory and Context: The tabs tell you which key each lick is in (although not major/minor) and that’s about it for explanations. There’s no discussion of the scales used or a particular progression you might use the lick over.
I think when you’re improvising have a library of licks in your head isn’t as useful as knowing your scales and how to transition between chords. So more help there would have been useful.
Videos: This is a personal thing. I don’t learn well from videos. They either go too slowly and I get bored or they go way too fast and I can’t keep up. The videos here are useful for picking up fingering (which isn’t tabbed) but otherwise it’s not saying much beyond the tab.
Overall
The obvious comparison is with Lil’ Rev’s 101 Ukulele Licks (about twice as many licks for about twice the price). If you’re a video person, definitely go for Jontom’s. If I could only have one, I’d go with Rev’s. His book is stronger on the country, jazz and bluegrass areas. And I like hearing how the licks would fit against the chord changes.
But I can have both and I’m glad I do. Even if you don’t buy the whole thing, $2 for the blues licks? Why have you not got your credit card out already?
OK Go – Needing/Getting (Chords)
I’ve had quite a few requests for the ukulele bit in this OK Go video. So I went ahead and did that and the chords to go along with the slappy-tubes and dildo-piano (dildano?). The chords are actually based on the studio version but works perfectly well with this version (and we’re spared the extended outro).
Suggested Strumming
You can use this strum all the way through.
d – d u d –
Twice for each chord. Except for the long D chords in the intro riff.
Twiddly Bit
Here’s the intro ukulele bit:
All down strums for this bit.
Two videos this week from Hawaiian legend Cyril Pahinui backed by Peter Moon on ukulele. Also up is Lisa Hannigan covering the song everyone is covering at the moment, The Leftover Cuties covering Regina Spektor and Phredd covers a guy in a skin-tight superhero outfit he found in a spaceship.
Signed charity ukuleles: One signed by Seth Rogan, Aziz Ansari, Judd Apatow, Bruno Mars, Patton Oswalt, Charlyne Yi and others. And one just signed by Tune-Yards.
Ukulele badges (via Ukulele Porn).
Some ukes from the 20s: slightly abused 1920s Gibson, 6-string Favila Wimbrola, Martin Style 2 koa taropatch.
I’ve been dying to hear more about Indonesian protest punks Marjinal since, let me see, the 26th June 2009. They give ukuleles to street kids and teach them to play so they can earn money busking. Now there’s a Kickstarter to make a documentary about them. I kicked in straight away.
Trailer for a Jake Shimabukuro documentary. According to the video description, “the World Premiere of this captivating documentary –PLAYING ONE NIGHT ONLY!” Bummer.
Remember that time in 2012 when someone decided to make a ukulele out of an iPad and and an iPhone and it sounded like a goat dragging a bag of conkers over a sheet of corrugated iron? Yeah, that was pretty funny.
The ‘… for Dummies’ people have an offer on their books every March. Right now on Amazon UK you can pick up a copy of Ukulele for Dummies at half price.
Howlin’ Hobbit has a new album of standards out Standards Issue. You can get it on his website – it’s currently ‘pay what you like’. It’s an excellent record, so great ukulele lines. Well worth throwing something in the hat.
Eff Barzley did a lovely ukulele session for I Am Fuel, You Are Friends.
Bossarocker is starting up a uke-up in Levenshulme (Manchester).
Garfunkel and Oates sum up the Independent Spirit Awards.
Vintage ukuleles (and a mandolin) in old movies (thanks to Ron Hale).
Strings made of spider silk (via HVDC).
On Uker Tabs: Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling, The Fruit Bats, Cake and The B***les.
The uke is so easy to play a chimpanzee or a dog or a duck or a cat could do it.
Keith Allen prepares for his meeting with Nick Griffin by playing the ukulele in the European Parliament (that link might not work outside the UK).
Somebody That I Used to Know (Instrumental Tab)
I’ve already put up the chords for this song. But when Voxdog sent me his arrangement for an instrumental version I had to put it up here and do my own version.
My version is very similar to Voxdog’s. But I’ve shaved out quite a few of the sections and I take fewer trips up the fretboard (it makes it a lot easier to play while staring into space).
I encourage you to do your own take on the arrangement as well. This one is a good place to start for doing that too. The melody is really strong so as long as you have that going on you can fill in the backing in any way you like the sound of.
There are more of Voxdog’s arrangements here: Mele Kalikimaka, Sweet Child O’ Mine and Here Comes the Sun.
Coldplay – Yellow
Coldplay – Yellow (Instrumental Tab)
I did a similar thing with voxdog’s tab for Yellow. His tab is above. I read through his and busked together my own version based on that.
