Ever since I put up this video of Wagner’s Bridal Chorus I’ve had a steady trickle of requests to play it at people’s weddings (not going to happen!) or for a recording they could use.

I made a recording of it that I’ve been handing out and here it is:

The Bridal Chorus – MP3 Version (quick download)
The Bridal Chorus – WAV Version (higher quality)
The Bridal Chorus – AIF Version (higher quality)

I’ve given it a Creative Commons license (more on that later today) so you’ve got full permission use it for free (even for commercial purposes). But if you want to make a donation to Ukuleles for Peace that would be nice. And if you do use it, I’d love to know.

It is a bit short. It was made for the specifications of the first person who asked it who – like I’m guessing most people wanting a ukulele rendition of Here Comes the Bride – was having a beach wedding.

I’m also giving the tab for it a CC license in case you ever get roped into playing for someone’s wedding:

It’s part of the How to Play Classical Ukulele ebook.

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

UPDATE: Here’s the little bit I tacked onto the end.

It’s official. Being a bearded, bald, chubby ukulelist is the height of itness.

I’ve written up Stephin Merritt’s solo ukulele version for this chord sheet. The album version is in the key of C (so the chords are C, Am, F and G)

Suggested Strumming

The strumming isn’t very straight forward.

In the verse, for the F:

d – d u – u d u
d u d u

Then 2 down strums for the Dm or one each for the Bb – C.

In the chorus, if you want to keep it simple you can do this for each chord:

d – d u – u d –

But if you want to be more accurate you have to have one extra strum on the first chord in each line. So you can do this for the Bb and Cs:

d – d u – u d – d

And then this for the F and Bbs:

u d u d u d u

Buy the MP3

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.

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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.

Lyon & Healy Bell ukulele.

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.

Eddie Vedder announces first-ever UK solo shows.

Auckland noise control seizes ukulele.

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

Riff

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

Riff

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.

Riff 2

White Stripes – Icky Thump

Riff

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

Riff

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

Riff

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?

Buy it now on UkuleleLicks.com

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.

Buy the MP3

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.

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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).

Miniature banjo.

Some ukes from the 20s: slightly abused 1920s Gibson, 6-string Favila Wimbrola, Martin Style 2 koa taropatch.