I am completely in love with my iPod Touch. Not in that way. It’s not like I make out with or anything (and everyone who tells you they’ve seen me making out with it is lying because I always make sure the curtains are shut first). It’s a deep, caring, understanding love that will never die (until something better comes along – just like with person love). So, of course, I availed myself of the various ukulele related apps available and here are my findings (the prices are those in the UK, but I expect the US ones are comparable).

UkeChords

What it does: Shows you how to play chords. It’s similar to Sheep Entertainment. You select a pitch and a chord type and it has shows you how to play the chord on a fretboard.

Good Stuff: Simple, attractive, easy to use layout. Comprehensive. Shows three chord inversions for each chord. Indicates the interval (root, 3rd, 5th etc.) for each note. Lets you hear the chord.

Not So Good Stuff: If you try to select a chord with more than four notes it craps out on you. Granted you’d have to drop a note, but it would be useful to be shown suitable options. C tuning only. Vertical display only.

Price: £1.19

Overall: Excellent app. The best one I’ve tried for the uke.

UkeChords on iTunes

Scale Buddy

What it does: Show scales for the ukulele and many other instruments. You select the key and the scale and it displays all the notes in that scale on a plain text style fretboard (with the root notes in green).

Good Stuff: Good selection of scales – 16 in all from essentials like minor, major, pentatonic and blues to more unusual scale such as super locrian and kumoi. Includes C tuning and baritone.

Not So Good Stuff: Fairly nasty to look at. Can’t hear the scales being played. In the vertical display the fretboard is cut in half – so best to use it horizontally. Goes with ‘ukelele’.

Price: £1.19

Overall: It’s a handy reference but there are a lot of improvements that could be made. Worth the money.

Scale Buddy on iTunes

PocketGuitar

What it does: Virtual ukulele (and guitar). You can watch Gio Gaynor rocking out with his here.

Good Stuff: Fun to have a mess around with – particularly dialing up the reverb and distortion.

Not So Good Stuff: It takes a lot of practice to get the hang of it – more than I’m willing to put in.

Price: £0.59

Overall:

PocketGuitar on iTunes

Lelele no Onsan

What it does: Plays notes for you to tune to.

Good Stuff: Simple. Free. Low and high G tunings.

Not So Good Stuff: The notes don’t sustain for very long. It would be much easier to use if you could just switch the tones on and off.

Price: Free

Overall: It’s free. Why not?

Lelele no onsan on iTunes

Guitar Rock Tour

What it does: Guitar Hero/Rock Band game. Blobs come rolling down the screen and you have to touch them at the right time to play the music. Not strictly a ukulele app, but it has four strings, so I’m claiming it.

Good Stuff: Top game and very addictive. May yet rescue the guitar solo from oblivion.

Not So Good Stuff: “Ouch, my thumbs”. Liable to lead to rockstar tantrums. P!nk and Avril. Loading… Loading… Loading…

Price: £3.49

Overall: I’ve wasted far too much time on this game. Don’t buy it if you’ve got things you need to do (except buy it anyway).

Guitar Rock Tour on iTunes

There are also some tuning apps, but I haven’t tried them out as I don’t have a mic for it. So if anyone has, let us know your opinion in the comments.

MP3

Probably the most famous chord riff ever and very popular on the ukulele thanks to the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain version. These chords are in the same key as those used in the UOGB version.

Sophie Madeleine – Take Your Love With Me (The Ukulele Song)(MP3) can be downloaded on Bandcamp

Turns out my prediction that Rocky and Balls would be on Boing Boing in three weeks was wrong – it took three days (I may have hastened that process). It turns out that Sophie Madeleine – the Balls half of Rocky and Balls – has a back catalogue of knock-out ukulele songs. So I quizzed her for more info.

As a multi-instrumentalist, what particularly appeals to you about the ukulele?

It’s tone and it’s simplicity. It makes such a happy little sound. I found that I always ended up falling into the same patterns on a guitar when writing, so I tried to write on a uke and started coming up with a completely different style of song. It’s also so much nicer to pick up and play than a guitar – it’s quite a dainty little instrument!

I’ve seen mention of Life. Love. Ukulele. What is it and how can we hear it?

Love.Life.Ukulele is an album made up of mostly ukulele-based songs, and they all run on the themes of love and/or life (funnily enough!). There’s even a song specifically about my first ukulele! I made it last summer during my MA in Songwriting and it is currently unreleased. You can hear some of the tracks from it on my myspace profile. It will be released and available to buy online soon, so stay tuned… [UPDATE: It’s now available on Bandcamp]

What three songs should everyone listen to right now?

I could shamelessly plug my own music here, but I shall resist the urge.

I’m afraid I can’t think of any ukulele based songs, but three songs I can’t get enough of at the moment are:

“I’d like to walk around in your mind” by Vashti Bunyan (because I wish I’d written it myself.)
“True love will find you in the end” by Daniel Johnston (an acquired taste, but I think it’s naive and simple and beautiful).
Lastly, “She’s a rainbow” by the Rolling Stones (just because it makes me happy).
UPDATE: I’ve just heard that song “Oh What A Day” by Ingrid Michaelson on a tenor uke and have fallen in love with it.

Being an official master of songwriting, what are your top songwriting tips?

Firstly, collaborate. Writing with other people is great. I haven’t hit it off with ALL of the people I’ve written with, but you never know what’s going to happen, and you could come up with something amazing. I also find that talking to other writers and gaining their perspective on things can inform or inspire my own writing. Songwriters are generally very nice people too!

Secondly, it sounds strange, but I find that spending time NOT songwriting is really important. If I’m stuck with a song I just have to go and do something else. As long as it’s a task that’s not too taxing or distracting I find that I continue to write the song without realising it, and before I know it I’ve thought up a solution. It just takes the pressure off I think.

What have you got planned for this year?

Aside from trying to get my album released, I’m going to be working on a couple of other projects in various forms of collaborations. I’m already writing a new album, but most importantly, I am currently rehearsing with my band. We’re preparing for some shows around London and my hometown Brighton.

Buy Sophie Madeleine songs on Bandcamp. I highly recommend The Stars

More Sophie Madeleine

Beard Song (Chords)
Rocky and Balls – I Heart You Online (Chords)
The Stars (Chords)
Take Your Love With Me (The Ukulele Song)(Chords)

MP3

With Mmmbop fever gripping the ukenets, this one was an inevitable inclusion.

It’s really important that you let the notes in this riff ring into each other and you need to keep your middle finger glued to the C string (requiring some pinky action of the G chord shape).

I never thought it would happen but there’s a ukulele cover of The Beatles I like. But you still won’t find it in this week’s roundup as she also has a heartbreakingly brilliant original song. As much as I like light-hearted ditties about facial hair and bunnies, I love it when people sing a song and really mean it. Read the rest of this entry »

With all the excitement over the new Flea and Fluke designs last week, I completely the missed the new mahogany Flea and Fluke ukes.

I don’t know why more people don’t include sound and video clips in their uke sales. It certain helps if you’re a shit-hot player: it must help Jake Wildwood – add him to your favourite sellers – who does it with his items (and the quality of his pictures are a lesson to all eBay sellers). Two instruments taking advantage of having talented owners at the moment are this Martin Taropatch demonstrated by Aaron Keim and this Martin taropatch put through its paces by ukulelezaza.

The new f-hole Eleukes have turned up on eBay UK. Including the rosewood model which I hadn’t noticed before. [UPDATE: No wonder I hadn’t noticed it before. According to Ken, these are imitations. Which makes the listing very misleading. I’ve contacted the seller and BugsGear and I’ll let you know if I hear back.][UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: BugsGear have confirmed it’s all on the up and up. Clearwater are an OEM.]

There are plenty of copies of the Roy Smeck Vita Uke around, but here’s an original.

Can the ukulele be sexy? I think this will answer your question.

You can listen to excerpts from James Hill’s upcoming album True Love Don’t Weep on his website.

Chalmers Doane has posted all nine of his and the Halifax’s uke albums on his site. And the music is as kitsch as the covers. (Via HUG).

And related to both those, the new edition of Ukulele Yes! is up. (I wish they’d put up an RSS feed. I completely missed the last one. And I’m still not subscribed despite numerous attempts and assurances from the man himself).

Ukulele Cosmos has been shut down by its host for using too much bandwidth. Stay away from Bluehost and scammers who recommend it. They’re a notoriously crappy host but they’re very generous to affiliates.

Des Cordes et Dubois has a very challenging tab of Allegretto Op. 30 by Mauro Giuliani.

Jimmy McGee tells us how to be annoying with a ukulele yet fails to mention the most annoying song to play on the ukulele.

Ukulele spotting: Phil Jupitus and Lauren Laverne uke it up in a caravan – at around 5 and 9 1/2 minutes (thanks to Andy for that). The Saturdays break out the uke for Comic Relief at 1:50 (should I be worried that I find the uke the most exciting part of that video?).

Jake Wildwood‘s other half, Bonnie, has these cute banjolele-playing gnome doodads for sale (it took me a while to realise that’s a pipe rather than some Gene Simmons gnome action).

Taking the Flying V concept one step further.

Baby Bosko. Awww bless.

MP3

The Beastie Boys’ Fight for Your Right is pretty much the first bar of Smoke on the Water over and over. They’re all power chords, so you can play them on all four strings or, if you want to keep it simple, just on the G and C strings like the Smoke riff.

A link section of the site is probably long overdue. I was working on the assumption that I could just mention interesting sites as they came along. But I’ve been convinced of the benefit of something more permanent where people can go to find out what’s worth reading on the web.

With that in mind I’ve set up a Ukulele Links section. You can add your own site to it on an ‘I link to you, you link to me’ basis (which does mean you can’t add MySpace/Facebook and the like with their ‘You do know you’re leaving MySpace/Facebook, right? If you do you’ll probably get robbed and punched,’ pages).

Which is another reason why I did it. People were demanding a link in my sidebar in exchange for a link from their site. And I don’t just give those away. I’m really choosy about those links and their only really for people who inspired me to start the site and help be right from the beginning. So that part of the site should keep those people happy too.

There’s also a facility on there to submit articles. So if you’ve got something pressing to say – a gig or uke review, some playing tips – feel free to submit it. If it’s good stuff, I’ll certainly be linking to it from the main blog. You can also include a link or two to wherever you like with your article without the need for a link back.

The part of the site is brand new and is based on software I’ve never used before. So there’s a good chance you’ll come across a bug. If you do, I’d appreciate it if you let me know (in the comments or by contacting me). You can also suggest any categories you think should be there.

MP3

Time for another series of guitar riffs for the ukulele. The idea with these riffs isn’t to play the whole song, but to throw them in to your playing for a bit of light relief (like the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain on Orange Blossom) or just to prove that the ukulele can do more than just strumming Tiptoe Thru the Tulips. The riffs are arranged in the key that I find easiest to play on the uke, so aren’t necessarily in the same key as the original.

This set of riffs is a bit more heavy on chord riffs. Since they tend to work better on the uke, they’re a bit more suitable for full uke covers. And The Hives’ Hate To Say I Told You So works great on the uke in the original key. The only other part in the song is the G in the chorus.