I bet the tweenage girls are squealing themselves hoarse over wee Christofer Ingle and his magnificent hair. But in December he took time out from his punishing hair care routine to record an EP of ukulele pop songs Me & My Uke. And he’s currently recording an album with fellow ukulele-EP-releasing runtogetherbandnamefrontman Forrest Kline of Hellogoodbye.
Trouble is a fairly simple three chord affair. The only tricky thing is the chord inversions I think he’s using. You could make it easier by using the more standard chord shapes: 0331 for Eb and 2010 for F.
The strumming for the verses is dead easy as well. The easiest strum of all, Strum #1 from the Strum Bible: all down strums. Just make sure you release the chord right after you’ve strummed it to get that sharp sound.
The strumming in the chorus is much trickier. It’s down, down, up, up, down, up. I’m experimenting with showing strumming patterns, so let me know if either of these make sense to you (top line counting, bottom line strumming):
1 … and … 2 …. and … 3 … and … 4 ….. and
down ……. down up ……….. up ….. down up
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
d .. d u .. u d u
For the first chord in the chorus you just play the Bb on the first strum, then you mute the strings (by resting your hand on them but not playing them) and strum the same pattern.
I first came across Madeline Ava on UkeTube and it was obvious she had a way with open and affecting lyrics. That was confirmed when I came across her CLLCT page (UPDATE: now sadly defunct). She has three albums there – keep that in mind when she discusses how long she’s been playing – including a cover of the entire Neutral Milk Hotel album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and an album of original songs Songs I’m Too Nervous to Sing for My Mom. The album is packed with poignant lyrics set to lo-fi, Kimya Dawson-style songs. It also features a tribute to puns; a surefire way to appeal to someone who names their blog after an obscene pun. So I threw a few questions her way and she was kind enough to answer.
How long have you been making music and how did you get into playing the ukulele?
My dad got me a ukulele for Christmas a few years ago. I ignored it based on the assumption that it would be really hard to learn. During the summer I picked it up out of boredom and realized that it was actually pretty simple. I actually learned my very first song courtesy of Ukulele Hunt! I started writing my own songs the summer of 2008 and played my first show that September, so this is still pretty new to me! I fell in love with the ukulele, for sure.
Some of your songs seem very personal. Are you ever worried you’ve shared too much in them?
I’m often embarrassed to play some of my songs for that very reason, but I’m embarrassed by so many things! I think being open with people you care about is something that can never be pushed too far. Sometimes I say things that I don’t mean – but my songs are always exactly how I feel… and without music some important thought might never see the light of day.
Why did you choose to cover the whole of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?
Neutral Milk Hotel has been like a soundtrack to my life as well as my friend’s lives. We’ve spent many nights listening to them or playing their songs on our own instruments. So on one level, it was because of their personal influence. I also just like the idea of taking something huge and elaborate but making it accessible to everyone. People should realize that important music can happen without theatrics. Anybody can make something epic.
Start Today – Gorilla Biscuits: People shouldn’t be so afraid of hardcore music! This song is melodic and optimistic… two things people might not expect of the genre.
If you’re American what are you when you’re in the bathroom? European!
What plans have you got for the future?
I plan on touring a bunch of nice DIY venues this summer with some music-making friends of mine. One of them, Max Weiss, is another ukulele player and is doubtlessly a boy wonder. Outside of the music world, I plan on graduating high school and having tons of pet goats.
It’s quite possible that my biggest musical influence is Bagpuss. I was completely insane for Bagpuss when I was little – particularly the music. Songs in general had a really big emotional impact on me as a kid. I had to ban my mum from singing the Spaghetti variant of On Top of Old Smokey because it would make me cry. I couldn’t work out why I cared that a meatball had rolled off a table and it wasn’t until years later than I figured out that it wasn’t the lyrics making me feel sad but the music. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I was massively influenced by the music I heard as a kid and I still love the music in Bagpuss (provided by Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner).
It’s a really simple little tune to play. Despite the strumming directions, I’m actually fingerpicking and doing fake strums (picking each string in sequence to sound like a strum) to accentuate the melody notes on the A string. You could just use normal strums but I’d recommend using your thumb to give it a warmer sound.
Plenty of ukuleles this week to make me wonder whether it was a good idea to send all my money to the Palin Political Action Committee.
More of MGM’s NAMM finds this week including a seriously sexy spalted curly mango pineapple ukulele from Pono and Orcas ukulele strings (big in Japan apparently).
If you’re bidding on this “beautifully made and wonderfull tone” ukulele on eBay UK, be careful. It looks like an Antoniotsai which usually go cheaper than the current bidding price and have a pretty poor reputation.
Warren Buffett discusses the possibility that Obama’s election is a turning point in the struggle against ukuleleism, teaching Bill Gates to play the ukulele and how the ukulele is the new stimulus package. Someone give that guy a million cool points.
It’s the summer hit of the winter. “Coz it’s a lovely sunny day.” No, it ain’t.
To be fair, he did originally release it last summer but it’s only made a splash on its re-release on the back of the album Love, Ire & Song. The album is full of neat little lyrical twists (and lesssweary than previous stuff) which makes you wonder why he spent so much time making hardcore punk with kneejerk where you couldn’t hear any words.
The chords for the song are fairly straight forward (except for the dreaded E) and there’s a nice strumming pattern in the verses:
A very deserving winner in my opinion: instantly catchy song, fun video, singalong chorus. And it’s easy to play on the ukulele: there are chords for Same Old Lines here.
I got in touch with Rod to ask him a few questions, and not only did he do that, he also recorded a ukulele version of his song Your Love Is A Tease just for us (you”ll be able to get the original versions of Same Old Lines and Your Love Is A Tease on the forthcoming mini-album Until Something Fits).
When and why did you first pick up the ukulele?
I’ve always loved the sound of the ukulele. I’d gone on a little spree of buying slightly twee instruments (glockenspiel, melodiker) for a live set, and then bought a ukulele on ebay. Then I loved playing it so much I bought a better one, and now my uke with a pick up for playing bigger gigs with my band.
How did the sock-puppet/kids’ TV theme of the Same Old Lines video come about?
I’d been talking for ages with a video director who was meant to do ‘You Get Goodbyes‘ but didn’t. I played him ‘Same Old Lines‘ and he got back to me straight away with the kids’ TV show idea, which I loved, so we worked on it together for a few weeks, and then I turned up at the studio to find this amazing set all built and painted, it was amazing!!
Have you ever been told, “It’s not you, it’s me”? And have you ever used it yourself?
I think everyone’s probably used it to some degree. Yes I’ve been told it! Although in the song it’s not about one particular time, more the line as a palm-off in general.
I heard you were supposed to be on the Today Programme talking about making a living as a musician but got bumped. So what advice would you give to someone hoping to make it in the music business?
Yeah I didn’t realise the show got bumped until I saw the other interviewee – Keith Jopling – blog about it. Advice … well not to expect anything to happen very quickly. Work as hard as you possibly can, explore as many avenues as you can for being creative, be resourceful and I guess set yourself a goal and just keep working at it. I’ve been working really hard at this for years now, and set up my own label to put stuff out. It’s taken a long time and a lot of re-working my live set (from solo acoustic, to band, to solo with loop pedal, to loop pedal plus band) to get people to take notice.
How’s the debut album coming along? And how has it been working with Boom Bip?
The debut album is coming along well! First though, there’s a limited run mini album (first 4 singles plus bsides and remixes) out on March 2nd called Until Something Fits while I finish off the debut album proper.
Working with Boom Bip was amazing. He’s an incredible producer and musician, and I’d been following his work for years, so getting chance to spend over a week working with him and swapping ideas was just great. We’re both really happy with the two tracks we did together. I can’t wait to put them out!
What can we expect from you in 2009?
I’ll be doing a little UK tour around the mini-album release, then I’m playing at SXSW in Texas, which I’m so, so excited about. There’s a Welsh theatre tour in May with Devon Sproule and probably a coupe of festivals come summer. And the proper album will be finished. Maybe even a few more ukulele versions if there’s the demand for it… So quite a lot I think!
I think moving, separation from friends, love of life, acceptance of death, and the strength of love all play out through these songs. All of them, to me, are driven by our move from hectic Providence, RI to pastoral Rochester, VT. Home to Be was the first song I wrote since moving — we have a river right out our front windows, and the wind whips through the valley in winter, so it felt right that we were borne along to our new life on the back of the north wind.
Other songs like Bear Cubs, Orion’s Belt, and Bird on the Wing are pretty much open appeals for people to show their better rather than their worse sides.
Kansas James is the spookiest one for me. I had a (remarkably coherent) dream one Friday night that John Wayne was in “my cabin” (what cabin??) somewhere out west and he told me his story (that is, the one of the cowboy whose sister is killed in the song). I immediately wrote it down when I woke up and it became the song, complete with the chorus that references /Big Rock Candy Mountains/. Well, a few hours later, a friend calls us up to tell us another friend’s brother has been murdered in Boston. Sometimes I get the feeling that overtones are channeled via people who know one another over long, long distances.
There are plenty of references to nature on this album how much does your environment influence the songs you write?
You’re right on the mark with that question! Environment is what focuses the sound and subject of my music dramatically. I think places and the feeling of certain places is extremely important to anchor a song in reality.
Nature figures largely in my songs because it’s lasting, tangible, and a clear signifier of “good” in the world, at least for me. Nature in my songs is often written in direct contrast to what people do to each other and the world in general — people are constantly at odds with their consciences, beliefs, and ideals just as they are at odds with what lets them live their lives in the first place. Many of my songs are reflective on these contrasts.
What connects with you about the old songs and styles?
Oh, hmm. I’m a closet historian, for one thing, so I’m always in search of older and older recorded music. I don’t consider my songs true old-time songs or folk songs, though a lot of my techniques are somewhat borrowed from old styles that I enjoy.
I think what most connects me to older American music is that the sounds and ideas you hear in it are closely tied to the landscape and people’s day-to-day struggles — which often run straight down a river of history right to our times, today.
A lot of folks think of “old-time” as a handful of tunes that’ve been played-out and a lot of old ideas that can’t make anything new. I understand that assumption as a lot of modern old-time and traditional musicians shun deviation from a few particular styles and a big box of similar tunes as if anything outside of their little house is against their “bible” — but as a student of musical history, especially early American music in various styles, I can easily say that a lot of what’s considered “traditional” now was very new and very much alive and changing back then.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I really value our musical legacy as a people and see no problem in continuing it to make new songs and interpret different styles in different ways.
How did you get into instrument repair?
That’s an easy one! I used to take apart guitars, fix them, and sell them as a hobby, and as a way to fund purchases of new gear. Arriving in Vermont, with a bunch of my grandpa’s old tools, and needing to make work for myself, I set out to make my own job doing something that relates to my different passions — music, history, and working with my hands.
What’s the best uke you ever played?
They don’t exist. After working on a zillion ukes I can say that I appreciate good, light construction, but that I’m especially excited to see how so many older makers made fantastic ukes with widely varying sound — all of them great to play and hear, and all suitable to different situations and different players. I own my favorite one: a c.1920 Regal built all out of koa, with a sweet, powerful, and bell-like tone — perfect for banjoey fingerpicking. My favorites after that, and significantly more “professional” in terms of build-style and looks, are a c.1925 Lyon & Healy “American Conservatory” concert-scale banjo uke and a c.1920 unmarked koa soprano with rope binding that I just sold recently. That last one had a very nice bright, but full sound.
You seem like quite a prolific songwriter. How do you keep the ideas coming?
Oh, yes, I have to admit I have a bad habit of writing a lot. I have a lengthy back-catalog of songs that I have on my “to be recorded” list. I think in the last couple years alone I’ve written about 150+ songs, some better than others, some half-finished and waiting. I think that for a songwriter who really loves his or her craft and respects it, one can’t help but keep writing. Every moment of your life when you interact with anyone else, bits and pieces of what can be songs eventually, fall into place. Every time you ask yourself: why do I think this? Why are things this way? What’s really going on here? — is a chance to write a song. Looking at the world with wide eyes, and coming to respect everything in it, and especially your fellow peoples’ lives and your own life, means that there’s fertile creative ground on every inch of soil around you.
Songwriting for me is also therapeutic — I tend to write songs when I’m trying to understand myself or someone else and what I’m thinking about or they’re thinking. Some people can get a little cross with me when they see themselves in a song of mine, but like as not I wrote the song about myself! Humans are treasure chests of strange contrasts — and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I loved your Queen Anne’s Lace EP, any plans to do more electric stuff?
I always plan to do more electric but it hardly ever pans out. Wood and wire is where my heart’s at and inevitably songs get recorded in the manner that I wrote them. I do have a bunch of older songs collecting moss, though, and have been planning to record them in the manner that I wrote (and used to perform) them: an electric guitar, a bit of reverb, and two mics — one with some echo. I’ve even got a title I’ve been meaning to use: Jake Wildwood Sings the Songs of His Youth.
What can we expect from you in the future?
In the near future I have two albums I really, really want to work on: one will be shorter, like /Home to Be/, and entirely made up of a set of songs I wrote on a single cold night in December, each one about a particular tree, bush, shrub, flower, that I’ve come to know up here. The other one will be full of the many more recent songs that I felt didn’t fit with the feel of Home to Be. Both albums I’m planning to play a bunch of different instruments on each song, and uke will weave in and out of forefront and background. In fact, as far as the “green” album goes, I penned the tune for each of the songs on a re-entrant baritone uke, which was a nice change of pace.
