In case you missed it, the latest Uke Hunt ebook How to Play Classical Ukulele was released yesterday.

One of my favourite uke tunes this year, Keston Cobblers’ Club’s You Go is one of the Storm the Charts tracks. I don’t much care what’s in the charts but it’d be nice if this song were better known. So if you’re in the UK pick up the track from Amazon for 50p (thanks to shameless).

The Boston Globe chats uke with Amanda Palmer and One Happy Island.

Vote for Sophie Madeleine on Ellen Degeneres’s eleveneleven thing (mercifully no login required).

Jake says there’s a video of him playing with Tiny McItchyFace.

In the comments: reckons Martin ukuleles are over-priced: “I will still look for martins, but i refuse to pay a ridiculous amount of money for one. In reality the only reason they are so expensive is because they are very popular and vintage.”

MP3s: Craig Robertson is offering up a free track from his latest album, Tinyfolk and Wisdom Tooth have a new split album up for free, Indiehere have a lovely MP3 from Panic Attract (although they seem to be having problems with the band’s name).

Pictures: grumpy mountain band uke tattoo, ukulele bot.

I promised delivery on July 1st and here it is.

Your Rugged Good Looks and Easy Charm Have Convinced Me Already. How Do I Buy It?

Buy it here

After you pay you’ll be taken to the download page and get it sent to you by email.

What’s In It?

You get tabs for 7 classical tunes arranged for re-entrant ukulele:

Blue Danube – Strauss
Bridal Chorus – Wagner
Elephant – Saint-Saëns
Gran Vals – Tarrega
Orpheus in the Underworld – Offenbach
Pizzicato by Delibes
Toreador Song – Bizet

Watch them all here.

The focus is on tunes that you’ll have fun playing and that people will recognise and be impressed by. The focus isn’t on good classical technique or faithful recreations of the original works (in some of them I’ve sythed out the less famous sections).

You get individual pdf files of each of the tabs along with an ebook (fancied up by Ben Lew) with my usual blathering and a few general pointers on playing. It’s not a full on guide to classical technique, more along the lines of the stuff that usually accompanies tabs on here. It’s all delivered digitally. Check out FAQ for more info.

I’ve decided just to go with the YouTube videos this time round. It cuts down on download size and technical problems. So there are no videos or MP3s included in the download. Just links to the YouTubes.

Why You Shouldn’t Buy It

In the spirit of bad marketing, you might not want to buy it if:

– You’ve never done any fingerpicking. There’s a variety of difficultly but none of them are suitable for beginners.
– You’re looking to develop classical technique.
– If you play soprano only: Some of the tunes use frets above the 12th.

What If I Get It And It Sucks?

As with all my stuff, if you don’t like it let me know within 7 days (with the email address you used to pay with) and I’ll send you full refund. No questions asked or seething resentment.

I Can Now Look Past Your Ugly Face and Repugnant Personality. How Do I Buy It?

Buy it here

After you pay you’ll be taken to the download page and get it sent to you by email.

I Have A Question

If you have any questions, queries or problems you can email me at ukulelehunt@gmail.com or contact me here.

Usually when I’m arranging for the uke I try to spread things across the strings, campanella style, so you’re not playing the same string many times in succession.

But there are times when that doesn’t work out. It’s then I bust out the running man:

You pick the string (the E-string in the case) alternately with your index and middle finger. That dramatically increases the speed you can play things at.

Here’s what the technique looks like when you have to swap between strings:

When you really have to bust out the speed, you can bring your ring finger in for support.

UPDATE: You can now buy the chords for this song (and other Bess Rogers songs) on Abatabs.

Bess Rogers is obviously a bit hit with the sensitive girl types who are fans of her cohorts Ingrid Michaelson and April Smith. I’ve had a bunch of requests to write up one of her songs.

Right now you can pick up this song in exchange for your email on Bandcamp.

Suggested Strumming

This strumming pattern will get you through most of the song:

d – d – – u d u

But you’ll want to do just down strums in the bridge section.

Download it on Bandcamp and pick up her Travel Back EP

Favourite video this week is a short and sour song from Savannah Smith. There’s only 1 minute and 13 seconds of it so I highly recommend listening to it five times in a row. Credit goes to Bossa for turning me onto Savannah and helping me to convince her to do a video for this song.

Also this a reet-petiting good time from Paolo Nutini, a Daniel Johnston cover with belated ukulele from Mates of State, Tift Merritt’s drummer and plenty more besides.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big enough man to admit this. I was wrong and Noel Edmonds was right. Last week I cosmically ordered a Koaloha Sceptre. This week my dealer of choice put up a Sceptre for the first time. I shall never doubt the Edmonds again. He is my new Jesus.

Summer NAMM 2010 was last week. There doesn’t seem to be as much uke buzz coming out of it as the winter event. The one thing that caught my eye was the Kala Roundabout Ukulele Amp. I’ll take one in hot pink, The Cosmos. Ukeeku has a good write up of the event.

A few DeVine Ukuleles up this week from guitar and uke maker Eric DeVine. He has an impressive client list including Jack Johnson, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready, and Kimo Hussey.

Bobbins. Frank Sidebottom died this week. You know he did. He really did.

I pity the fool that doesn’t know how to play Kashmir on ukulele. Or what power chords are.

Very interesting interview with a ukulele collector on Collectors Weekly.

Frank Skinner does a Formby-esque tribute to the vuvuzela.

Kina Grannis’s ukulele has been nicked.

John Hodgman ukes it up with Neil Gaiman and Damian Kulash.

Ukulele china bags.

MP3s: Mates of the State are giving away their Daniel Johnston cover (there is uke in it, just wait), No Modest Bear have a track from Lille.

Pictures: new ukulele painting from Amy Crehore, new member of the Bobby McGee’s? #011 ukelele.

If you hadn’t noticed, I made it back from Download safe and sound and only briefly jaloped. AC/DC were, as always, highly entertaining and completely ridiculous. The biggest disappointment was Them Crooked Vultures who only had two decent and made up for it with some interminable noodling. The band I enjoyed most, and I wasn’t expecting this, were Dillinger Escape Plan (as covered by Status Quo). They’re completely off their boxes and bloody brilliant.

Another surprise was in a Slash set that contained Paradise City and Sweet Child… the highlight was the Velvet Revolver song Slither. It’s got a huge riff and should have been in my Guitar Riffs for Ukulele series long ago.

To keep it in the original key, I’m using D-tuning (you could equally use a capo on the 2nd fret).

Listen

I have adapted it quite a bit for the uke. If you wanted to play something more faithful to the original you could go with this:

For the chorus, the chords are D – C – G. Or use the shapes for C – Bb – F in C tuning.

The fake strum is a simple technique that I use a lot in my arrangements. So it’s about time I gave it a post of its own.

It’s used in fingerpicking pieces to play full chords. It sounds like a strum but it’s just done by picking individual strings in sequence.

Here it is played twice slowly then up to speed.

Why bother?

Instead of doing this, you could just strum the strings and get the same effect. However, doing it this way keeps your fingers in position for picking individual notes. Making for much easier and smoother playing.

Here’s a quick video combining picking and fake strums.

In Tab

There isn’t any established tab for this as far as I know. I haven’t been distinguishing between fake and real strums in the past. But from now on I’ll be representing fake strums with a wiggly line like this:

You can do fake up-strums as well (although it’s more tricky and I can’t remember ever using one). But if one crops up I’ll be tabbing it like this:

You might remember a few weeks months ago I wrote a post about Sophie Madeleine looking for people to perform You Are My Favourite for her next video. The video is finished and you can watch it and grin here.

You can also buy it together with bonus gubbins and a new song. With half the money going to MacMillan Cancer support.

On to this much requested, innuendo laden song from Rocky and Balls. The chords for it are pretty simple. The only thing to watch out for is the big boy-band key change in the middle.

Suggested Strumming

For the first bar:

d – d u – u d –

Then in the bar with the quick Asus4 do:

– u d – d – d u

With the Asus4 being the first ‘d’ only. You can miss the first ‘u’ if you like.

On the A – E7 – A you can go with one down strum each.

The Bb section is the same strum with the chords just moved up one fret.

Buy it on Bandcamp

Requested by pretendings, Molly, Kim and possibly some others.