Lots of good stuff this week but my favourite is Lisa Hannigan doing some boat-ukuleling. Also up: U to the izz-9 0 to the izz-0 take on a new cover project, hellogoodbye with Taylor York off of Paramore on uke duties, Aussie songsters The Little Stevies, power-popping electro-uke from Toy Horses and plenty more besides.
Fender has two new ukuleles out both small and cheaper than their previous tenor-only ukes. The concert size Mino’Aka and the soprano U’Uku. And they’ve taken the admirable step of saying the ukuleles are laminated in their product descriptions.
UkeBag.com has some very fetching handmade ukulele bags.
Kanile’a are mostly known for their finely crafted but hideously expensive ukuleles. But now they’ve brought out a budget range of Islander ukuleles (including the Islander MSS-4). A few interesting things about it: it has bridge pins, it doesn’t have the Kanile’a logo but a hideous ‘Islander’ logo (which is probably a smart decision as they might not want the Kanile’a logo associated with cheaper instruments), and the name is already taken.
This post on Not Playing Guitar about ugly amps got me thinking. Kala’s ukulele amps have had stick for being under-powered and over-priced, but there’s no doubt it’s prettier than the standard ‘black breeze-block’ look. So does having a good looking amp or uke encourage you to play more?
Singapore’s ukulele-playing presidential candidate, Tan Cheng Bock, came within a whisker of winning the election. After a recount he lost by 0.34% of the vote. And he consoled himself and his supporters with a song.
Ukulele shortbread including recipe (via aloha joy!).
The Ukulele Helper is a new chord and scale website that looks very promising.
Jake lists five songs that should covered on the ukulele (via @n0s0ap). He should check here and here.
Charlie McDonnell explains the science of sound with a ukulele.
Bosko and Honey have a new album coming out which you can pre-order on their website and listen to on Soundcloud.
Pictures: Uke House, The 2011 Greater Holy Lashing Tongue Evangelical Church of the Righteous Redeemer Grand Slam Tennis and Ukulele Club.
Adele – Rolling in the Deep
Adele might be handing my ass to me in the Musical Instruction books chart, but I’m not going to hold it against her. This is too good a song not to do an instrumental version of.
The tab doesn’t include every strum I do, so tackle it in the way that feels best to you – if you’ve got a complaint about that read Christine’s comment.
The trickiest bit comes in bars 12/13. Here I’m doing a fake strum because there isn’t time to do a real strum and get back to play the rest of the bar.
Here’s a slightly simpler way of playing it:
Melody
Rolling in the Deep (Single Note)
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Podcast #10 in your face.
The Uke Hunt podcast hits double figures and Bossarocker takes time off from being the saviour of North Manchester FM to bring you a bunch of tracks from familiar acts like Craig Robertson, Uke’s Not Dead and David Leach; and new – to me – names like Jason Johans and Jane Cameron.
You can find links to all the previous episodes here.
Playlist:
1. Uke’s Not Dead – Oi Kid! Don’t Be A Hoody
2. Lila Burns – Barefeet
3. Joseph Asfoury – Dateukevox
4. Watercolor Paintings – Vultures
5. David Leach – Jeremy Kyle
6. Herman Vandecauter – Vilsmayer’s Suite
7. Craig Robertson – It’s Your Fault
8. Ukulele Bartt – Love Burrito
9. The Bijoux Toots – I Want Your Love
10. Jason Johans – Shady Grove
11. Jane Cameron – Superhero
Submit Tracks
You can get in touch and submit tracks for consideration if you follow the rules (particularly the one about file format) via:
Beirut – A Candle’s Fire (Chords)
The new Beirut album is finally out! I got as far into it as the first track before I decided I had to grab my uke and work it out before I moved on. He’s using his 6 string Kamaka and it sounds great.
I’ve written it up as C# tuning or capo on the first fret. But it’s somewhere between C and C# tuning. The chords themselves shouldn’t provide too many problems though.
Suggested Strumming
There are a few passing chords which you can play like this:
If you find that a bit tricky, you can just miss those chords out and play Bb – C – F – Bb with this strum once for each:
d – d u – u d u
Intro
You can transfer the accordion intro to uke like this:
Videos this week include Zee Avi’s new one, a song from Boulder Acoustic Society’s session for 11 O’Clock Rock (watch the whole thing here, probably my favourite version of probably my favourite Burning Hell song, My Brightest Diamond, some Serbian ukulele and more.
There seems to be a lot of confusion over exactly who holds the record for ‘largest ukulele ensemble’. The attempt at the Strathmore Uke Fest was declared a success with 944 apparently trying to beat the London Uke Fest‘s 841. But that record had already been lost to the 1,000 Canadians who strummed with Lucky Uke in July (via 961 New Zealand school kids). Which itself had been surpassed by 1,547 Swedes a few days before Strathmore’s attempt. Now back to not caring.
Chalkboard Ukulele – your favourite ukulele players scribble on a ukulele (via Humble Uker).
Ukulele comic strip, The Bigfoot and Tiki Show got hacked recently. But it’s now back in business with a new design and an easy way to catch up on old storylines.
Ukes keep spreading around the world. Georgia now has its own ukulele website.
Tally ‘live2tivo‘ Deushane has released her debut album.
MP3s: Chipped Hip has a rather fine MP3 from Jordan Klassen. No Genre have a song from the Stephin Merritt Obscurities album (bottom half of the post).
Pictures: musical expression (warning: cartoon boob), mad dog ukulele, multi string and horn instrument, Steve Allen does Tiny Tim.
Moon River (Tab)
This seems to be the song of choice for angel-voiced, wood-dwelling, elfin ukulele ladies. A close investigation will reveal I’m none of those things. But, screw it, I wanted to do a version.
This arrangement is fairly straight-forward. It’s mostly played with a thumb. I play a few extra supporting strums (not shown in the tab).
Melody
Moon River (Melody) (Tab)
I’m not entirely sure it’s worth reviewing something that’s officially out of print. The ukulele songbook for Eddie Vedder’s Ukulele Songs album was available as a limited edition and was sold out before it was released (apart from a few copies sold on Flea Market Music).
It is still sort of gettable. If you’re willing to spend £300 on eBay. And there is a 48 page songbook with the vinyl version which, I believe, contains the uke charts. There has also been a PDF that was for sale (containing the pertinent uke stuff but not the photos) but I’m not clear on where or if this is still available.
What You Get
A 100 page hardback book.
A two page introduction to playing the ukulele.
Chord charts (no tab) for ukulele above standard notation of the melody for all the songs on the album. The book lists Jim Beloff as the, “songbook consultant and editor.” If you’ve seen any of his chord books before, you’ll be familiar with the layout. The only exception to the ‘no tab’ is Waving Palms – the short instrumental – which has tab for a single ukulele.
Lots of very nice pictures of Eddie and his ukuleles.
A copy of the album.
The Good Stuff
It’s gorgeous: It is by far the most lovely songbook I’ve ever had. Even if you didn’t play uke, this would make for a very nice coffee-table book.
It’s a dedicated ukulele book: And there aren’t many around for contemporary stuff. I had a lot of fun playing along with the album. It’s a big relief not to have to work stuff out myself or try to find something accurate on the internet.
It’s accurate: It all sounded pretty good to me. Only two things didn’t sit right with me. In Longing to Belong it shows F rather than Fadd9 – I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there’s a G in there. The other is the tab for Waving Palms which I had trouble matching up with the song.
The chart for Hey Fahkah
The Not-So-Good Stuff
There’s a lot missing: It is – apart from Waving Palms – just chords. That means a bunch of stuff gets missed out. There’s missing fingerpicking patterns in Broken Heart and Satellite. Missing filigree such as the solo in Longing to Belong.
There are some weird-ass chord names – which is mostly forgivable because Eddie uses some weird-ass chords. The strangest choice is the use of slash chords. Not really applicable at the best of times, but baffling to refer to 0010 as Fadd9/C (when C is in Fadd9 anyway) and 0220 as D/G (when G isn’t the lowest note).
It’s too nice to use: Being a hardback book, it doesn’t stay nicely flopped open on the selected page. If you want to get it to stay open, you’ll need to do some hefty palm-flattening. I couldn’t bring myself to do it and just used the PDF whenever I wanted to play stuff.
Overall
The book makes for a fantastic souvenir. I’m very glad I pre-ordered it. Not sure I would have been so willing to pay crazy eBay prices. But as a tool for learning it falls short.
