Mainland are following Kala into the pastel and plastic ukulele field. Interesting that both brands seem to be distancing themselves from the plastics ukes. Kala market theirs as Makala. And the Mainlands are missing the logo on the headstock and seem to have Gecko on the soundhole sticker. Also hoosierhiver (of Mainland) was playing down expectations on the UU thread.

Another Kala trick that looks like it’s catching on is the thinline travel uke. Here’s one from Ana’ole.

Another guitar manufacturer bustling into ukuleles: the hilariously named BadAax.

Photo: College boy, playing for a pile of men.

Long time friend of the blog, Shigeto Takahashi‘s album Roots Trip is for download on iTunes and on CDBaby. Must have tracks: Hilo March, Kohara March. Unfortunately, two of the best tracks (Peanut Vendor and Rhapsody in Blue had to be dropped for copyright reasons).

Hull Ukulele Group have made their Halloween/Guy Fawkes songbook available to all

Catalogue for Cairns Uke Art Exhibition (via Herman)

Stephin Merritt hasn’t been playing ukulele much recently but he still some nice things to say about it. But the most interesting parts of the interview was him and Claudia Gonson realising they’ve been playing Papa Was A Rodeo incorrectly for the last decade. (Thanks to Paul)

Humble Uker has more animated uke videos with this clip from Phineas and Ferb being the standout.

In the comments: A while back I took down Bess Rogers’s’s I Don’t Worry when it was made available (legit-style) on Abatabs. Since then it’s provoked a couple of negative comments.

I’m a bit ambivalent on the subject. I certainly support artists making money from their work. It’s my policy not to put anything up when there are official uke tabs available. (It helps that they were nice about it and didn’t threaten to send in the lawyers). Also, I’d like to see sites with official tabs on the net. There needs to be an iTunes for tabs. But there isn’t really anything like that for guitar so a uke site like that is a long way off.

On the other hand, I do think you can build up a big fanbase through teaching. Aldrine’s certainly won a big audience on the back of teaching on Ukulele Underground.

One issue I’m not ambivalent on: 95 years is a ridiculously lengthy term for copyright and absolutely has a negative impact on culture. The Economist, those famously anti-business hippies, suggest 14 years is more sensible.

I’ve had this one knocking around, half finished for years. The version I’ve ended up with diverges from the original quite significantly. As well as being shorter, the fast section is completely different in terms of notes.

The most important thing is to vary the tone between the guitar and the banjo – otherwise it’s not a duel you’ll just playing the same thing twice. There are a bunch of ways you can separate the two. For the city guitar I’ve played open strings wherever possible and picked and strummed mostly with my thumb around the start of the fretboard. For the rusty, backwoods banjo I’ve used more fretted notes and picked/strummed with my finger near the bridge.

Jim Beloff’s The Ukulele: A Visual History must be the longest surviving ukulele book in my collection. Others have been discarded as useless or had the info sucked out of them and left in a draw. So it’s about time I got round to giving it a review.

What You Get

125 very heavily illustrated pages.

Chapters:

History of the Ukulele
The Great Players and Personalities
The Great Ukulele Manufacturers
The Story Continues…

The review is for the 2nd Edition of the book.

The Good Stuff

Ultimate in uke pr0n – The book is jam packed with ukulele pictures (and ukulele-related pictures and sheet music covers). There’s a huge amount of fabulous stuff to look at. Some of my personal favourites:

– The most stunning Santo ukulele I have ever seen.
– Hank’s Eukadidles for the Ukulele
– Ancil Swagerty being the chicest geek on the beach.
– A 1993 UOGB grinning like kids’ TV presenters.

It’s made to be flicked through and stared at. And doing so is a real treat (this review has taken 10 times longer than necessary to write because of the amount of aimless perusing I’ve done).

Useful reference – I’ve regularly picked up the book to check a date, name or to to answer, “Where have I seen that uke before?” niggles. While it’s not designed as a reference book, I don’t think there’s anything out there that does a better job of it than this.

And, refreshingly, it has a section on the ukulele in Japan.

Coffee-table/toilet-side book – It’s heavily diverting and not at all taxing – making it perfect for those occasions when things are either going into or coming out of your body.

The Not So Good Stuff

Busy Backgrounds – I found it hard to concentrate on reading the book. There’s a lot going on visually and the backgrounds – sometimes photographs – make it tricky to read. Partly because of this (and partly because of the way the book is structured) I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and actually read it for a significant period of time.

Due For A New Edition – A lot has happened since the 2nd edition came out in 2003. The book is definitely deserving of an update and it feels like the right time for one.

Overall

If my copy was lost, eaten by mice or combusted on a bonfire of the vanities, I’d buy a new copy straight away. Definitely worth a buy if you’re interested in ukes (and I’m guessing you are).

The Ukulele: A Visual History on Amazon

It was the anniversary of John Peel’s death yesterday. I was going to put up Napalm Death’s You Suffer in tribute. But after getting hate mail for my Dillinger Escape Plan post, I thought I’d go with something a bit more crowd pleasing.

For this version I’ve written up the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain version (from Anarchy in the UK).

Suggested Strumming

For C and Am you can go with:

d – d u d u d u
d – d u d u

Topped off with one down strum for the Cmaj7 passing chord.

d – d u d u d u

In the verse you can use this twice for each chord.

Twiddly Bits

The intro/solo riff goes a bit like this:

The rest of the solo you can noodle around with C major pentatonic.

Undertones Version

The Undertones version is two frets higher (so the chords are D – Dmaj7 – Bm and G – A).

They also have another passing chord between G and A (G#). If you want to throw it in the UOGB version, it’s F# (easiest to play it x121).

I’ve been getting a lot of comments from people complaining about the endless stream of songs I feature about Ukrainian constitutional reform. I don’t want this blog to become musically 1 dimensional so, with deep apologies to those of working on snappy rhymes for Leonid Kuchma and fitting Law No. 2222-IV into pleasant scansion, this week’s song from Eugen will be the last I feature.

Also this week krabbers is in a similarly East European protest mood, Mad Tea Party railing against name-thieves, Andrew Vincent covers Daughtry to great advantage, Herman and Paulien remind me of when the Super Furry Animals were fabulous and Misty Miller (who has been causing a bit of stir down London way but I haven’t been entirely convinced by).

Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting article about ukulele sales talking to a number of sellers (via Arch on the Cosmos). Despite a few clangers (Kamaka was established in nineteen-sixTEEN rather than nineteen-sixTY, and there’s still no ukulele in I’m Yours) it’s well worth a read through.

It’s a long article so here are a few quotes:

Sammy Ash from Sam Ash:

It’s an interesting business to watch, because it seems like whenever we add another line, it just adds more sales. One new line doesn’t seem to be taking sales away from another. That’s always a fear – if you have eight lines of guitars and you add one, you’re not selling more guitars you’re just selling less of one of the ones you already carry.

Peter Dods of Easy Music:

“They are an easy upsell. The cheaper ukes sound… well, cheap. Up from the $30 ones to over $100, the sound is noticeably different. Above $200, it’s dramatically different.

It seems like Kala are outstripping Lanikai these days. Myrna Sislen of Middle C music:

I’m excited about Kala because they make a perfectly fine uke at a reasonable price… I love dealing with Kala – they treat their dealers very well. In the rare instance there is a problem, they make it right.

Ash again:

“We’ll see two more years of growth, but now what we’re seeing is that so many manufacturers are jumping in… If you would have tried to tell me I’d be having this conversation five years ago… But there’s no store that is lacking in uke sales.

Sislen:

the uke market is growing rather than leveling – I’m selling more every month, so I would guess the market hasn’t peaked yet. I’m happy!

In other matters, this week’s ukulele photos: children’s ukulele band, goofy guy, ukulele girlfriends in a boat.

City traders are relieving all the stress of gorging on taxpayer handouts by taking up the ukulele. Although Lorraine and Suzie are denying their ‘quotes’ and would never say anything as toss-potty as, “This is definitely in vogue in the City world at the moment: It seems to be the team-building course du jour.” Plus, I think it’s been a few years since the UOGB did any teaching.

Meanwhile, Hull Ukulele Group are going in the opposite direction and getting a corporate rebranding.

Ralph Shaw is as thought-provoking as ever discussing whether to read or memorize.

Hula Dreams: Reinterpreted ukuleles.

The ukulele is topping the German charts at the moment. If any German readers can explain why IZ has hit the top now, please do leave a comment.

The UOGB are full of outdoorsy freshness after supplying a version of Reef’s Place Your Hands for this ad.

Ukuleles and guitarleles have started cropping up in Mystery Guitar Man‘s videos (visually if not always audibly) including this multi-armed version of Ode to Joy.

Guilt Free Pleasure has a couple of MP3s from I Hate You Just Kidding.

Photos: Lots of great shots in this set but this would have to be my favourite, Nicky Noble and Tobi Rix

I’ve included the video with this one because I assume most colonials are unfamiliar with the Happy Mondays and I can’t think of any way to explain what a Bez is. But you’ll need one to play this.

Lots of riffs to get a hold of in Step On – all of them presented here in the original key.

Piano Riff

In the mp3 (at the bottom) I’m fingerpicking this one – it sounds sharper. But it works well strumming out the chords as well (C, D and G) but make it easy on yourself and use C6 (all the strings open) instead of C.

Strummed Version

Guitar Riff 1

The first guitar riff is pretty straight forward.

Guitar Riff 2

The second one changes around much more. Use this as a basis and play around with it.

Riffs

Hard to believe a song this gimmicky can still sound so great after 20 years. No doubt it’s down to having one of the greatest bass riffs of all time – pilfered from Herbie Hancock’s Bring Down the Birds and very much improved upon.

Here’s the riff in C:

In C

And with a bit of prodding you can play it in the original key:

Original Key