You should be absolutely amazed that I’ve posted anything the last few days. This week has seen the two releases I’ve been looking forward to most this year: Portal 2 and the new tUnE-yArDs album. Both of which I’ve enjoyed even more than their predecessors.

Jonathan Coulton has written a new song for the game and if – like the first game – if it’s a ukulele song you can be sure it’ll turn up here. But I don’t want to ruin it by searching out the song before I finish the game, so here’s the standout ukulele-heavy track from W H O K I L L.

tUnInG-yArDs

She’s playing a tenor but actually has it tuned dGBE (like a baritone but with a high-D string).

rIfF 1

The song is mostly made up of two riffs. The first uses both fingerpicking and strums. For the picking use the thumb on the bottom two strings (d and G), index on the second string and middle on the first string.

rIfF 2

The second riff is all strums with a couple of slides thrown in:

sTaNdArD tUnInG

The song transfers pretty well to standard tuning (whilst keeping it in the same key). The one note I’m not entirely happy with is the open A string in bar 3. It’s an octave above what’s being played in the original and I don’t think it’s quite right. One alternative would be to play the open C-string instead. Or, since she leaves out this note late in the song, don’t play anything at all.

Here’s how the standard tuning version sounds:

Standard Tuning Version

When I posted Diane Rubio’s version of Under Paris Skies it prompted some discussion of her vibrato technique (which she chipped in on). So I thought it was about time I put up a post about it.

Vibrato is making the note quiver by varying the pitch slightly. You hear it a lot in the big diva singers. They’ll hold a long, high note then make it wobble. Rather than singing the note straight they glide between singing slightly higher than the note to slightly lower than it. Recreating that effect on an instrument gives it a more expressive, human feel. One you’ll hear all the time in blues guitar solos. If you’re wanting to do any solo work on the ukulele, it’s well worth learning a couple of vibrato techniques.

Classical Style

Players of classical string instruments like cello and violin will create vibrato by moving back and forth slightly along the string – making the pitch go from slightly higher than the note to slightly lower than the note just like the vocal vibrato. It works very well on fretless instruments, but is also used on classical guitar and ukulele.

You do it by rocking your finger back and forth with the fret. Here’s the technique done slowly then more rapidly.

There are plenty of advantages to playing vibrato this way. It’s very suited to the uke’s nylon strings, it’s a subtle effect and it can be done with full chords like this:

Guitar Style

In guitar playing, vibrato is created by bending and releasing the string. You do it by pulling the string down (for the C-string – as in the video – or the g-string) or pushing it up (E- and A-strings). Here it is slow then fast:

This technique isn’t quite so friendly with the nylon strings. It creates a bit more noise. On the upside, you can get a much wider and wilder vibrato with it by doing larger bends more quickly. It’s also the ideal vibrato to use on bends like this:

When to Use Vibrato

Don’t go too overboard with the vibrato. Like most techniques, it’s most effective when you use it sparingly. The best place to bust it out is on the long notes at the end of a phrase. Also vary the speed and, with the guitar-style vibrato, width of the vibrato. You can do that even on one note. Try starting with a slow vibrato then speeding it up as the note fades.

Me a year ago: “That’s the second ukulele-based cover of the entire In the Aeroplane Over the Sea album I’ve ever heard (after this one). I should write up a song from that.”

Me a week ago: “I should probably get round to that now.”

So this is long overdue and now fairly irrelevant but it’s still an excellent song. And pretty easy since it’s only three chords. I included the soprano version of the chords in the chart above but the song is played on baritone so here’s that version of the chord shapes.

Suggested Strumming

For the main strumming pattern you can use this:

d – d – d u d u

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

Main Strum

Do that twice for the F and once each for the C and Bb in the first two lines. Then twice each for the C and Bb in the next line.

The only tricky bit is the quick change in the intro, verse ends and instrumental parts. Here you strum like this:

Tricky Strum

After that, you’re back to the easy pattern for C and Bb.

Twiddly Bits

I’ve included tab for the two accordion/trumpet/melodica parts in the chord sheet. The first part is pretty simple and sounds like this on uke:

Break

It’s played twice through (as here) on the original but only once in the NUH version.

The outro section is a bit more tricky. It’s played higher up the neck. Try to use your pinky for all the notes on the 8th fret. That way your other fingers will be in the right position for the other bits.

Outro

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When they get round to writing the history of this ukulele revival Craig Robertson‘s name should be up there with Jake and IZ in importance. One thing’s for certain, if it hadn’t been for his involvement in Ukulelia and Ukulele Cosmos there wouldn’t have been a Uke Hunt.

Craig’s just put all his albums up on Bandcamp where you can buy them or listen to the full tracks. With there being seven albums to negociate, I thought I’d select ten of my favourites as a starting point for people who are new to his music. If you think I’ve left something out, feel free to leave your own selections in the comments.

Practical Hypnotism

Staten Island Slide

An instrumental track from his debut album. It’s become a ukulele standard and is my favourite tune to mess around with. You can pick up Dominator’s tab here (PDF link).

That Dress

That Dress
She Likes to Pull the Wings off Flies

Possibly the most prominent of Craig’s themes: femme fatales. Usually to be found in bars.

Houdini’s Perspective

Houdini Never Hung Around in Bars

Another one of his recurring themes: performance magic. This time a series of escapology based puns.

DeChirico Street

The Leopard – My all time favourite Robertson song. Don’t listen to a word he says, this song is definitely about his penis.

Goodbye Paul Tibbets – Craig’s next album will be a collection of protest songs. If they’re all as good as this one, it’ll be a fantastic record.

Read my write-up of DeChirico Street

Under The Mystic

The Ballad of Blanche Barrow

A story song about a real-life femme fatale. Blanche Barrow was the sister-in-law of Clyde Barrow (as in Bonnie and Clyde).

Read an interview I did with Craig when this came out.

Better Liar

Narcissa
Better Liar

You might recognise the Shiny and the Spoon featuring Narcissa from the very first Uke Hunt podcast.

Perfect Wife

Ghost of a Chance

Burberry are throwing a lot of nice clothes at ukers: Misty Miller, General Fiasco, Acoma and, this week, Pegasus Bridge. If this is general policy, can I put in an order for one of these? Size: the fattest one you make.

Not quite so well dressed but just as entertaining this week are Hawaiian soloist Benny Chong, Irish troubadour Peter Delaney, Japanese jazz-nutters Bliki Circus and many more besides. I should warn you, there’s lots of extended jazz noodling this week.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some stiff competition for my affections this week: Les Reitfors concert, Kumalae Style 5, 1928 tenor Gibson, Jose Do Espirito ukulele.

But for this week, it’s not a ukulele I want. It’s this strange, jumbo tenor guitar thing.

(Over-Keyworded) Pictures: 3 Handsome Ukulele Banjo Boy Pretty Girls Ocean Grove, ukulele pretty teen girl, 2 boys

The Guardian are letting you stream the new Tune-Yards album w h o k i l l.

Mark Gutierrez experiments with fingerpicking.

You can win tickets to a Ukulele for Dummies session at the London iTunes festival (and, no, I will not be there – I’m hoping for Mogwai tickets).

Make a cardboard ukulele (thanks to Jenny).

Alvin Keech.

It’s an easy mistake to make.

Are there any ukers out there with Raynauds syndrome? Long-time friend of the blog, Gazmatt has been diagnosed with it and is hoping to chat with a fellow uker about coping with the condition. If you want to chat you can send Gary an email here.

Following on from yesterday’s post about the Cabral manuscript, two more C19th pieces for, the uke’s forerunner, the machete.

I say ‘forerunner’ but reading Manuel Morais‘s Colecção de Peças para Machete, the rajão seems like the much more likely candidate. The soprano uke is more like a machete in size and number of strings, but not at all like it in terms of tuning. And I’d say the uke’s re-entrant tuning was its defining characteristic. In that, it’s much more like the 5-string, tenor-ukulele sized rajão which is tuned dgCEA (with re-entrant d- and g-strings).

The difference in tuning between the machete and the uke does cause a few problems. Unlike yesterday’s tunes, today’s don’t transfer directly to a re-entrant uke as pleasingly. They would, however, work well on a low-G uke (with the A-string tuned down to G) or on a baritone (with the E-string tuned down to D). I might well re-arrange them for standard uke sometime.

Again these tabs (worked out from the original manuscript which is public domain) and MP3s are released under a Creative Commons license meaning you can freely play them, record them, adapt them, pass them round or even sell them. I had assumed everyone was familiar with Creative Commons but a comment from plink freud set me straight. I’m more than happy to write a post about my take on Creative Commons – and I might well do that – but you can read the official version here and watch this video.

Masaniello

There’s a bit of an anomaly in the original score for this one. Bar 15 is clearly only has enough notes in it for a bar of 3/4. But there’s no indication of a time signature change and you’d expect it to be (indeed it’s very similar to) a repeat of bar 3. I’ve retained it as written in the tab above but here’s a tab with bar 15 repeating bar 3.

Here’s the tab being played by a robot:

Masaniello (MP3)

The second section doesn’t work too well on a re-entrant uke, so here’s a shortened version for uke tuned gCEG

And here that is being played by a human:

Masaniello – Uke Version (MP3)

Galope

I’m going to have to work up a uke-suitable version of this one because I love this tune. Until then, here’s the robot version:

Galope (MP3)

These pieces with arrangements by Manuel Joaquim Monteiro Cabral; and tab and audio by http://ukulelehunt.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

After I did my post about Madeiran music (the ancestral home of the ukulele), Jay left a comment about music for the uke-like machete (ma-shet). He was also kind enough to forward me a scan of Estudos para Machete Arranjados by Manoel Joaquim Monteiro Cabral which is a machete method book from the mid-19th century. You can see some pictures of it on Nalu Music.

The pieces in the Cabral manuscript are written in standard notation only, so I’ve been writing them up in tab form. And most of them work very well transferred directly to a standard ukulele. The only thing you need to do is tune the A-string down a tone (so it’s the same pitch as the g-string). That’ll give you an open C chord; making it the same relative tuning as a machete which is tuned to an open G chord (DGBD – higher than the ukulele). The one issue is that the machete isn’t re-entrant. So if you’re playing a low-G (or a baritone), it’ll work perfectly. If not, it’ll sound different but – for today’s two pieces at least – it’ll still sound good.

If you’re interested in this topic, I can highly recommend you pick up a copy of Manuel Morais‘s Colecção de Peças para Machete. The written section is in Portuguese and English and the second half is made up of standard notation of music for machete and guitar. The website is in Portuguese but I didn’t have any problems ordering it and it was delivered very quickly.

I’m putting up all these tabs (and MP3s for that matter) with a creative commons license. That means you’re free to use them in whatever way you see fit. Record them, rearrange them, pass them around, sell them if you like.

Waltz

The first full piece in the Cabral manuscript is this Waltz. Do note that I’ve never even touched a machete so it’s not to be entirely trusted. The original document does have fingering numbers written in pencil. I’m assuming that’s done by someone who knows more about playing the machete than I do so I’ve tried to tab it out to match those fingerings.

Here’s a version of me playing this tab – without any changes – on a re-entrant ukulele tuned gCEG.

Cabral-Waltz

Danca Camponeza

Again, I’ve used the fingerings written in pencil as a guide for this tab. But they didn’t really suit my style so I rearranged it slightly for my version to this:

Danca Camponera (MP3)

These pieces with arrangements by Manuel Joaquim Monteiro Cabral; and tab and audio by http://ukulelehunt.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

There’s been a fair bit of Grammy-bashing around here but this set of performances from Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers and a Bob Dylan impersonator was incredible.

Since the last time I did some Mumfords, Marcus has picked up the ukulele. Until some uke action crops up on record, here’s a uke version of Little Lion Man.

Suggested Strumming

This strum will see you through the intro, the verses and the loud choruses:

A lot of the time – particularly the verses – he’s playing this with palm muting on the down strums. That means you rest the bottom edge of your palm on the string just in front of the bridge as you strum. It’s a bit like a chnk but you keep your hand on the string as much as possible.

Here’s a video (playing it slow then up to speed) which may or may not make things clearer.

For the middle section, do all down strums. Four times for C and F and eight times for Bb. You can fancy it up a little – like he does – by doing a quick up-strum before each chord change. As it gets louder he goes back to the main strumming pattern.

Twiddly Bits

In the intro (picked up again later in the song) there’s a switch between F6 – F – Fadd9 – F during the first bar of the F chord:

Intro

In the intro (and verse 2) the banjo adds a couple of B flats to the chords like this:

The little banjo solo after the first chorus is tricky to transfer to uke. I’ve included a version of it in the chord sheet (make sure you fret the C-string with your ring finger if you’re attempting it). It sounds like this:

Banjo solo

But you can make it much easier to play without losing much by leaving out the hammer-ons and playing it like this:

UPDATE: If the video is blocked where you are, check the comments for some alternatives.

Requested by pretendings and Anika.