Nickel Creek have always been too smooth and nicey-nicey for my tastes. So I’ve been a bit slow in picking up on Sara Watkins. But she is incredible. This song had me in tears.
Also up this week: Dala (who are being supported/blown off the stage by Ukulelezo in a couple of weeks), Nigel Burch and his banjolele (who may be unwelcome on the London Underground but are very welcome here) and plenty more.
Kala have a new and very stylish wood and leather ukulele stand. A bit more expensive than your usual stand.
Prototype Mainland banjo-ukulele.
Some nice vintage ukuleles around this week: Weissenborn #10 concert ukulele, Ernest Kaai, Kumalae.
Boy and girl with ukuleles.
Banjoleles banned from the London Underground for being, “undesirable”.
Jimmy from the Bobby McGee’s proved the intellectual superiority of ukulele players when he appeared on the Weakest Link (watch it on iPlayer).
Abatab is an interesting new site where indie artists can sell tabs. It’s only been up a month so there’s not a great deal there yet. But you can buy stuff by Bess Rogers and pick up tab and an MP3 of Kelli Rae Powell’s Don’t Slow Down Zachary free.
Helen Arney leads a gathering of ukulele players at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Sophie Madeleine is raising money for her latest album. And you can get a snippet in the background of Spike Milligan’s home movie.
The Fake Ukulele Orchestra have put up their side of the story, “It has been said that we are advertising our orchestra by using their pictures and material. This is totally wrong and we refute this unequivocally.” But here is one of their dates being advertised as being the UOGB (hat-tip to minusuke on the Cosmos). On the upside, suspicions about the lead singer proved to be well founded.
787.89 – Ukuleles and the Dewey Decimal System.
For balance, Hot Boys with Ukuleles – much more challenging than the hot girls blog I’d wager.
Sam Fox on Beatles Complete on Ukulele.
Jimmy Fallon finds ukulele music annoying when you’re trying to get work done.
Simon Cowell has banned I’m Yours from X-Factor.
Ukuleles help kill the planet (via Bossa).
MP3: who the bloody hell are they? has Darren Hanlon’s All These Things.
Pictures: Sandy Low (from this page), bird ukuleles.
With the hat, the class, the relaxed air of mischief, if Top Cat had lived in the 30s he’d certainly have been a uke player. But he was around in the 60s when no-one played the uke – there’s not even one in the Hawaiian episode. Nevertheless, the theme tune is crying out for a ukulele arrangement. A lot of jazzy turns in there – which do make it quite tricky to play.
There’s a lot of switching between picking, melody strums and supporting strums (in brackets in the tab) – which is probably best picked up by watching the video.
Just because you’re a newbie doesn’t mean you can’t rock the raging patootie out of a few songs. Here’s a list of songs with chords for all.
If you prefer, you can use G7 in the place of G or vice versa for any of these songs.
NeverShoutNever! – Your Biggest Fan/Did It Hurt?
Noah and the Whale – Five Years Time
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
Paolo Nutini – High Hopes
SoKo – I Will Never Love You More
The Bobby McGee’s – A Dog At All Things
The Lancashire Hotpots – He’s Turned Emo
The Tiger Lillies – Start A Fire
Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra/Kings of Leon – The Bucket
Addams Family Theme Tune
Alton Ellis – Rock Steady
Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend to Dance With You
Darren Hanlon – All These Things
Electrelane – Cut and Run
Garfunkel and Oates – Me, You and Steve
Florence and the Machine – Dog Days Are Over
GUGUG – California Sun
Israel Kamakawiwoíole/Jason Castro – Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Julien Dore – Cet Air-La
Kate Nash – Foundations
Kate Micucci/The Gooch – Mr Moon
Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next to Me
LP – Into the Wild
The Lumineers – Ho Hey
Phosphorescent – Wolves
She & Him – Sentimental Heart
Allo Darlin’ – Tallulah
Amanda Palmer – In My Mind
Antsy Pants/Bear Creek – Vampire
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy with the Arab Strap
Daniel Johnston – Living Life
Gothic Archies – Shipwrecked
GUGUG/The Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop
Keston Cobblers’ Club – You-Go
Phredd – Elmer’s Electric Tricycle
The Dubliners and The Pogues – The Irish Rover
The Pogues – Fiesta
The Little Ones – Tangerine Visions
Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London
Camera Obscura – Cock Up Your Beaver
Florence & the Machine – Kiss With A Fist (don’t panic, you can use E7 instead of E in this song)
Joan Jett – Bad Reputation
Kate Micucci & Ted (Scrubs) – Screw You
Paolo Nutini – Pencil Full of Lead
The Pogues – Streams of Whiskey
Beirut – A Candle’s Fire
Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (You can use C instead of C5)
Ingrid Michaelson – Be OK
Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
Mumford and Sons – The Cave
Nevershoutnever – First Dance
Neutral Milk Hotel – King of Carrot Flowers
Noah and the Whale – Jealous Kind of Love
Mastered all those? Tackle more:
What’s she doing with a bloody mandolin? There’s already enough mando/uke confusion out there. Luckily, most commenters were distracted by the drummer.
This will see you most of the way:
Twice for D, once for G, once for D.
For the A – G – D – A chords and the end of each verse just do the first half of the bar (four down strums) for each chord.
With the song just being 3 chords, it’s a great place to start playing with chord inversions (playing the same chord in a different way) and chord substitutions (playing one chord in the place of another).
A dead easy chord substitution you could use in this song is to use 7 chords (D7, G7, A7). And of course, you’ve got inversions of the 7 chords.
Put these together and you could play a verse like this:
She didn’t request it, but this one is for Ida.
Sliding into a well-known song to perk up the audience in the middle of a song no-one knows is a cliched, shameless trick. And I love it. This week Tom McRae and Matt the Electrician pull it out. With Matt the Electrician’s choice resulting in a bubble-riot amongst the 4 year olds in the audience.
Also this week another one from Secret Home Party (who I bullied into setting up on YouTube so comment, rate and subscribe), a clip from UOGB’s Ukulelescope show and Sara Watkins should wear those glasses all the time.
Le Domino banjo ukulele – haven’t seen one of those before.
A few more Ohana resonators up including my favourite, the Vita.
Little boy plays ukulele.
Videos from the Ukulele Guild of Hawaii Exhibition 2010 including a close look at the ukes. There are also some pictures on Ukulele Me Crazy.
Kala have a new look website. As do UU.
Long-time friend of the Hunt, Jenny has is blogging Hot Girls with Ukuleles which is not safe for work. At all.
New friend of the Hunt, Lorraine Bow gets interviewed by the Guardian.
Rivers Cuomo’s opinion of Fender ukuleles seems to be similar to that of many commenters (if you feel different you can win a Weezer signed ukulele here).
Pictures: Ukulele Underground, Antique Muse (NSFW), the running man with a ukulele.
MP3: Indie Music Database has one from The Chord and the Fawn.
What it’s really like to work in a music store.
In the comments: The best comment ever, “many of these people seem to stroke your dick which is obviously bigger and more important than your ear you deaf bastard.” Yes, my penis is bigger and more important than my ear. And everyone wishing to stroke it should form an orderly queue.
Emily suggested the Countdown theme should be on the essential snippets post. And she’s quite right.
It’s another classic from Alan ‘Grange Hill‘ Hawkshaw. The tune is in C and fits very nicely on the ukulele. The only odd thing is that the theme is repeated 5 times – presumably to make up the 30 seconds.
I’ve finally accepted that I’m not going to convince the world of the vast superiority of campenella, so this one is very straight forward.
Buy the original version
More TV theme tabs
Alan Hawkshaw’s Grange Hill Theme
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