Of all the Robert Johnson songs, this one suits the ukulele the best. The quickfire chord changes make it a lot of fun to play. UOGB’s Will Grove-White listed it as one of his favourite songs to play on the uke. But this version wasn’t taken from UOGB’s slow, slinky version but based on James Clem‘s more traditional take on it.
The chords can take a whole lot of changing around. In The Baron’s version he replaces the B chord with an E7 and adds an extra G7 in at the end of the first sequence. Or you can miss that chord out completely and go straight from C to A7 (probably the easiest option for beginners).
Three old videos from people recklessly making great uke music without tagging it to make things easy for me: Watercolor Paintings (who aren’t, as I first thought, covering Mirah), Cousin Alice and Charlot Webster. Along with plenty of more diligent ukers.
15 year old uker Killian Mansfield has been putting together an album in aid of children’s cancer charity Hope and Heroes (Killian himself has cancer). The album includes collaborations with some serious musical heavyweights: Dr John, Levon Helm, Todd Rundgren and John Sebastian. If the music is anywhere near as good as the photos, I’m in. You can keep up to date with the album’s release by fanning him up on facebook.
The bill for New York Uke Fest 2.0 is filling up with acts including Tripping Lily, Ukulele Barrt, Victoria Vox, Bill Tapia and Nellie McKay. Friend of Uke Hunt, Tricity Vogue is hoping to go as well and is looking for free/cheap accommodation. If you can help her out, you can contact her via her website.
If you live in and around London, you can keep up to date with the latest happenings via Mighty Ukulele. And wherever you are, they’re also looking to keep their teacher and club listings up to date, so get in touch if you want to be added.
I couldn’t let Robert Johnson week pass without covering the Baron’s version of Come On In My Kitchen. It is a fairly standard I – IV – V progression in A (A – D7 – A – E7), so I thought I’d focus on the twiddly bits.
Here’s the intro with two typical Johnson-style descending phrases.
The A-Asus4-A crops up in the chord sections as well. As does a similar move from D7 (2223) to D (2225) and back.
And here’s the bit that doubles the vocal line in the “You better come on…” section.
I couldn’t take a look at Robert Johnson without covering slide playing. And using the slide on the ukulele seems to be a trend of late. Just in the last few months I’ve seen videos of it used by James Hill, Tomotaka Matsui (of the Sweet Hollywiians), Peter Madcat Ruth and plenty of other people. And it’s not hard to see why. It’s a lot of fun to do, you can pick up a guitar slide very cheap from almost any music shop (or on eBay) and, once you’ve got the basics under your belt, it’s a very intuitive and natural way to play.
The only problem is there aren’t any materials out there for people to learn it. So I’ve put together a mini-ebook outlining the tricks and techniques for slide playing with videos, photos, tabs and mp3s.
It’s focussed on the lap style of playing (that James Hill and Tomotaka Matsui are using) but, since I’m assuming you don’t have one of the world’s three Beltona lap steel ukuleles, it’s geared towards doing it on a standard ukulele (and re-entrant tuning).
Here are a few of the longer examples from the book:
The ebook focuses on techniques more than tabs, so it’s not really suitable for people who are new to the ukulele. I had in mind that it would be good for people who had read my blues ukulele ebook (or who were familiar with that sort of thing) and wanted to start playing around with the slide and improvising with it.
If you haven’t bought one of my ebooks before, check out my FAQ page to find out the process. If you have any other questions you need answering, you can contact me here.
Slide Ukulele Tips
For those of you that don’t want to shell out for the ebook, here are the top tips to get you started:
Find a uke with high action: If you use one with low action, you’ll always be clattering the slide against the frets. If you plan on doing a lot of slide work, it might be worth raising the action on one of your ukes.
Muting: The most important part of slide playing. Make sure you mute the strings behind the slide with your fretting hand or you’ll get all sorts of nasty overtones. You’ll also have to mute the strings that you don’t want to sound with your picking hand.
Use an open tuning: You can only play one fret at once, so it helps to tune it to an open chord. I started out with open C tuning – GCEG – but decided it was a waste having two strings tuned the same (cutting down your note choices even further). In the end, I settled on C7 tuning: GCEBb (i.e. the A string tuned up one fret).
Over the frets: Rather than putting the bar where you would if you were fretting the uke normally, you have to place it right over the frets themselves. And make sure that the bar is parallel with the frets or some of the strings will sound out of tune.
Play very lightly: You don’t want to be pushing down on the slide at all.
Upright or Lap: If you want to play fretted notes as well as slide notes, you’ll have to go upright. But I prefer playing lap style – it allows for some slide techniques that you can use when you’re playing it upright.
A while back I decided to stop paying attention to the news. I must say, I’m a whole lot better for it. Anyhoo, I just found out there’s a second great depression now and absolutely everyone is eating their shoes to stay alive. So, to keep up the doom and gloom, I thought I’d have a week dedicated to one of the great musicians from the last Great Depression. A man so po’ he couldn’t afford a ‘g’ to put at the end of walking. Robert Johnson.
For the first post in the series, I’ve written up tab for luthier Pete Howlett‘s ukulele version of Walkin’ Blues. Most of it is clearly explained in the video, but the F7 sections are a bit tricky – he plays it differently each time he goes through it. So my tab is kind of a mesh of the ideas.
Another section which threw me a little is when the main riff comes in after the F7. It sounds the same as before but it’s shifted forward a beat. What was the fourth beat is now the first beat. The first beat is now the second. And you get the idea with that one. It can be a bit disorientating, so watch out for it.
As always, it’s a lovely collection of well crafted songs. Made even more impressive by being written entirely in a single night. That’s just showing off.
I love the things that can happen on the internet. Step One: Upload some songs to YouTube as KokoKaina. Step Two: Get the drummer off of The Raconteurs to watch them. Step Three: Get signed, fly to LA and change your name to Zee Avi. And she hasn’t let it go to her head. She did the sensible thing and spent the money on a decent ukulele and tuned it for the album version.
She has a lovely, jazzy voice and kudos to her for rhyming heart with Kierkegaard. I guess she couldn’t think of one for Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd.
Suggested Strumming
For each chord in the verse, try this:
D – D U – U D –
You can use the same strum for the chorus but for the Em – Ebm transition do D – D U – on the Em and U D – on the Ebm.
And in the ba-da… bits, just two down strums each for C and D7 and one for G7.
This week’s videos include an old old clip from Tafra, a new old clip of James Hill rocking the White Stripes look, The Puppini Sisters calypsoing around and Todd encouraging us to take a ukulele break (as if we needed any convincing). Read the rest of this entry »
