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.

C, F and G

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

Plus Am, Dm and Em

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

Plus D

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

Plus A and E7

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

Plus Bb

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

More…

Mastered all those? Tackle more:

Easy ukulele songs
Beginner ukulele lessons

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.

Suggested Strumming

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.

Chord Inversions

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:

Verse with inversions (MP3)

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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).

Ukulele murder.

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.

Links

Buy the original version
More TV theme tabs
Alan Hawkshaw’s Grange Hill Theme

I’ve had a few people ask me what I use in my playing and in putting together the site. So I thought I’d list everything I’ve been asked about (and a few I haven’t). And I’d be interested to know what you use: to record audio, make videos and, of course, what your favourite ukulele is. So do leave a comment.

Ukuleles

What size/make ukulele do you play?

I’m a fully paid up tenor-man these days. My favourite at the moment (by some distance) is my KoAloha Sceptre. But I still have a soft spot for my Ohana which I use regularly.

For quiet and electric playing I use my RISA. My EleUke sucks giant monkey-balls.

Accessories

What tuner do you use?

Mostly my ears but sometimes a Kala KC-02 clip-on tuner

What strings do you use?

Aquila.

What capo do you use?

Shubb mandolin capo. But be warned, it’s not suitable for smaller ukes.

Do you use a loop pedal/effects pedal?

I have a Boss GT-10 which does a whole mess of crap.

Tabs and Chords

What do you use to make your ukulele tabs?

Guitar Pro 6. I’m also using Sibelius (for the top secret Operation Exploding Carrats) which is massively over-priced and complicated for ukulele tabs. I’m beginning to loath it with every fibre of my being.

What do you use to make your chord charts?

I make chord diagrams in Guitar Pro. Then I put together the chord sheets in OpenOffice. I also use OpenOffice for the ebooks but I’m thinking of switching to iWork for both.

Recording

What mic do you use?

The most recent ones have been done with a sE Electronics USB2200a. I’m not a big audio guy so I want something I can just plug into the computer and have it work. This mic is great for me. Pricey but it sounds good and is very easy to use.

Before that I was using a Zoom H2 which is handy for away from the computer recording, equally suitable for use by idiots and much cheaper.

What software do you use to record?

GarageBand. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best book/place to learn this (and iMovie)? I’m still a Mac noob. Before that I was using Audacity.

What do you use to make videos?

I’m not qualified to offer anyone advice on this. I just use the camera in my iMac and iMovie.

Blogging and Site

What software do you use for blogging?

The site is powered by WordPress. It’s hard to think of a reason why anyone would blog using anything else.

Who designed the site?

The site and logo were designed by Ben Lew. Who did a great job. The theme before that was one of the Revolution themes. If you’re really hard core, the theme before that was Cutline.

What do you use to sell your ebooks?

I use eJunkie to sell my ebooks. They’ve been really great. Cheap, monthly flat fee and I’ve never had a serious problem (I can’t even think of a minor one). I started out with ClickBank and they really sucked. It was expensive and I didn’t want to be associated with the junk products that mostly use it.

Misc.

Things that no one has asked about and don’t have an obvious effect on the site but without them the site would suck or possibly not exist.

Online Storage

DropBox A must for anyone who uses more than one computer and finds themselves endlessly uploading to thumb drives. And free (up to a point).

Reading

I reread these regularly to make sure I never do something stupid like getting a job.

Seth Godin The Dip
Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance
Anneli Rufus Party of One
Steve Pavlina 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

Listening

This American Life

Watching

TED
Ira Glass on Storytelling Part 3 is essential for anyone who makes anything they care about (and dovetails with The Dip

A song to support the embattled ukulele brother Billy Corgan. I think he was remarkably restrained. I would have Axled the guy.

Besides that, it’s an incredible song. And a complicated one. No two verses, chorus or bridges are the same. Getting it to sound right on uke takes some finangling. So the pdf is a bit messy and it’ll require some explanation.

Tuning

Even the tuning isn’t straight forward. It’s tuned down, but not quite half a step. Here are some tuning notes.

Tuning Notes

Intro

For the intro I’ve written it up as the full guitar part – with the occasional added C note on both the G and Em chords. If you’re playing along with the song, you can just play straight G and Em chords. Which is what I’ve written up when this section pops up later in the song.

Intro

Main Riff

A fun little fingerpicking riff to play. I’m picking with thumb covering g and C; index finger on E string and middle finger on the A string.

Main Riff

This is Riff 2 in the tab. Riff 1 is just the first two bars of this.

Bridge

Not too much to worry about here. But watch out for the final C chord. In the first bridge it lasts two bars, in the second it lasts one bar.

Chorus

In the chorus I’ve thrown in the string part as well. It is slightly tricky to play. If you want to avoid it, Am would seem like the obvious choice. But, and I can’t explain why, G sounds like the best chord to me.

Chorus

And I think that covers it.