A tribute to Hal David with two Bacharach and David songs this week. Starting off with my favourite Anyone Who Had a Heart. The Americans got Dionne Warwick’s version and us Brits got the Cilla Black version. I’m not going to argue with anyone who thinks Cilla’s version is better (even though they’re clearly wrong) but I’ve written up the Dionne Warwick version.

It’s a pretty tricky song to keep up with. Lots of barre chords to contend with. And the chords move back and forth quickly in the chorus. Which doesn’t translate to ukulele too well. You could simplify the chorus to this:

If you are looking for suggested strumming on this one you’re shit out of luck, I’m afraid. I only go into the strumming on the beginner/improver level stuff. And this certainly isn’t. There’s an interesting section in the book Burt Bacharach: Song by Song discussing the various polyrhythms and time signature changes. None of which are the way I hear the song. As you can tell from the twiddly bit.

Twiddly Bit

This little twiddle approximates what’s going on with all the strings in the chorus. It sounds like this:

Twiddle

Old Dionne Warwick Version

This is my favourite version of the song. Even if she can’t reach the notes as she used to, that’s more than made up for by how rich her voice is.

Because her voice doesn’t reach as high, the key has been changed to D minor. Which works a bit better on ukulele, I think.

And the twiddly version of the chorus works better in this key. You can just keep strumming the chords and mess with the notes on the A-string.

Twiddle

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Incredibly Serious Warning: There are two songs here made famous by Maroon 5.

For any of you brave enough to continue, this week has a great new song from Laura Marling (bet you can’t guess what make of ukulele she’s playing). Also, off of Once, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová in separate videos. And two videos from Mexico: Natalia Lafourcade and uke-adjacent action from Al Guatimé Strike.

If you’re a Catey Shaw fan you have to listen to her super-fun new song on Soundcloud.

Full Playlist

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Gibsons: Two unusual Gibson ukes: Gibson TU-3, spruce tenor Gibson. But the classic style is clearly the best 20s Gibson Style 3.

Ziva painted ukuleles.

Electric ukes: RISA-inspired electric ukulele, Tear-shaped Vox electric (Thanks to Fred).

Ko’olau Archback Slimline Tenor.

Tiny Tim signed ukulele.

Cigar box uke with a “license plate resonator”.

Photos: Bessie Love, Yelling a song, George Burns.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall prompted a flurry of press interest. No surprises that the only one that’s interesting and doesn’t drop the F-bomb was written by George himself. Here he is discussing adapting Terry Riley’s In C for ukulele. You can glimpse the results here and download the score in the underbar.

The first part of Matt Kresling and his ukulele’s trip to Madagascar has been my favourite documentary of the year so far. And now episode two of his Madagascar Journals is up. And you can download the instrumental and vocal versions of the theme tune (MP3 links).

Fred Sokolow has three new ukulele instruction DVDs out.

Kickstarting: Aaron Keim is raising money for a new Quiet American. Rewards include a full collection of Aaron’s songbooks, Skype lessons and a Mya-Moe ukulele.

Recordings: Grant Wood’s Grave by Craig Robertson, Chistofer “Nevershoutnever” Drew seems to have struck out on his own with a new song The Light.

Pictures: HoneyBell labels, Marlene Dietrich with uke, Ukulele Man Figure.

Video: Jack Johnson sings about plastic.

I was completely unaware of Lute of Noah from Final Fantasy III before I got a couple of requests for it. But as soon as I heard it I knew it’s make a great campanella ukulele piece.

And it does work out really well. The tune is triplets all the way through. Just make sure you’ve got all the strings fretted for that triplet at the start of each triplet. For example, in bar 4 you’ll fret the E and A strings at the 7th fret at the start of the first triplet; then the g, C and E strings at the fifth fret at the start of the second triplet and so on.

There’s only one place where the “no consecutive notes on the same string” rule makes things tricky. In the first triplet of bar 3 you have to stretch quite a bit. If you’re okay with breaking the campanella rules you can replace the 12th fret, g-string with 10th fret A-string.

In the original version the tempo varies wildly. I’ve kept the tempo variation but made it a bit more subtle. If your fingers are nimble enough, feel free to keep up with the original.

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More Final Fantasy

Aloha de Chocobo
Ukulele de Chocobo
To Zanarkand (PDF link)

Judging by the amount of ‘I’m listening to’ stuff clogging up Facebook, Spotify has really caught on. And it’s now available in the countries the blog is most popular in (sorry Canada, Singapore and Brazil). Which is good because I’m a big Spotify fan and am forever fiddling with playlists. And I’ve put together a bunch of ukulele playlists.

If you’re not familiar with Spotify, it’s an app that will let you listen to most music released for free (if you’re willing to put up with ads – I pay for it to get rid of them). You can download it here.

For each playlist I’ve included a link to the playlist, a plain list tracklist and the fancy-dan Spotify doodad. If you’re reading by email or reader you might need to visit the blog to see the doodads.

If you’ve made a ukulele Spotify playlist let me know in the comments and I’ll add a link to the post. And leave a comment if there’s something I’ve egregiously left out of one of the lists.

Ukulele 2017

Spotify link

Ukulele 2016

Spotify link

Ukulele 2015

Spotify Link

Ukulele 2014

Spotify link

Ukulele 2013

Spotify link

Ukulele 2012

The ukulele highlights of the year so far.

Spotify link
Tracklist

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With Mumford and two of his sons toting Mya-Moe ukes I was hoping to find some ukulele action on their new album. No such luck though. If there’s any there, I missed it.

Nonetheless, the lead single from the album is pretty great and – with the addition of a capo – works well on uke. If you don’t want to use a capo you can play along with the live version which is one fret lower.

Suggested Strumming

The strumming gets a bit involved. You can follow the guitar you can use this half bar pattern

d – d – – u d –

So the second down is long and the up is short (and accented). So played twice it’s this:

Which sounds like this (slow then up to speed):

Strum

Use the half bar pattern:

Intro and Bridge Twice for Am and G. Once for C, F, C and two for G the first time and four the second.

Verse Four times for each chord.

Chorus Four times for C, twice for Em, twice for G. (Eight times on the C chord after the first chorus).

Middle Three on C, one on Cmaj7, three on the Am, one on F and C, two on G.

The dynamics on this one smell like Teen Spirit. If you’re playing this on just uke it’s worth dropping down to just one down strum per chord in the quiet bits.

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Up this week: Jim Boggia’s tribute to Hal David, Awna “off of Po’ Girl” Teixeira, Michelle Blades and plenty more.

Full Playlist

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There’s a Robert Johnson ukulele tab book on the way.

Pictures: Martin factory 1925, Melvin Goaté the ukulele goat, Death Meets Amanda Palmer, Don’t you DARE walk away from me, Nick Nolte on guitarlele, gig bag maker and his mule (thanks to Phredd).

The pUKES have some sixty ukuleles between them and have started reviewing them all here.

Video: The Ukulele Hall of Fame has a lovely silent video including Manuel Nunes, Most Popular Ukulele Videos August, Skyrim dancing ukulele bear

Sophie Madeleine’s second album The Rhythm You Started has been officially released in the US (including a track I don’t think has been released before – annoyingly it’s album only). And here’s an exclusive clip of her in the studio discussing her gear:

The Olympics coinciding with Adele’s maternity leave certainly worked out well for Emeli Sandé.

My mum requested this one. I wasn’t intending to tab it so it’s pretty messy and busked together. I’d recommend you using this as a basis rather than copying it exactly.

Some pointers:

Bars 1 to 4: Picked with thumb on the C-string and index on the E.

Bar 5: For the first three notes here (and in the same phrase in the rest of the song) I’m doing a bit of a triplet strum. I strum down all the strings with my index finger, then I play the g-string with my thumb, then I pick the A-string with my index finger.

Bars 5 to 21: Other than that, it’s almost all down strums in this section. I’m even strumming rather than picking the single notes.

The ones in brackets are backing strums – play them a bit quieter.

Bars 22 to 26: This bit is a nod to the drums-only section of the song. Back to thumb on C and index on E.

Bars 32 – 39: In the, “you’ll find him next to me,” bits of the song I’ve had to fudge the melody on the “next” because it goes down to a B. For this final few bars I take this section up an octave so I can include the B. You could use this version all the way through but I thought the switch in octaves was a bit too sharp to do that.

Melody Version

Here’s tab for the melody along with the chords to help you build your own version. Or just play an easy version.

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