Slotted Headstock Ukuleles

No doubt due to the influence of Jake, there seem to be more and more, classical guitar style, slotted headstock ukuleles cropping up. As well as the high end stuff like this custom Mana’e tenor, more mid-range brands like Kala are turning out ukuleles like this and this.

Natural finish Polka-Lay-Lee.

If you’re asking five grand for a ukulele, you could give us more than one small photo and a two line description.

The perfect gift for a KoAloha fan: a KoAloha fan.

Uke kitsch of the week: ukulele teapot.

Ultimate Uke, Bendy Uker: Friday Ukulelinks

Ultimate Ukulele is a new ukulele tab and chord site from Uke Hunt friend Joe. Tunes already up include Coldplay’s Life In Technicolour, The Killers’ Mr. Brightside and Pacman.

It looks like I might have overestimated people’s ingenuity when it comes to finding things. If you see a message on any posts telling you something that seems blindingly obvious, it should disappear after you’ve looked at a few pages. It’s what Seth Godin would do (if he played the ukulele).

Humble Uker alerts us to Tomas Kubinek who can do strangely erotic things whilst playing the ukulele.

Lineup for the 2008 New Zealand Ukulele Festival announced.

Come back here with my name, Uke Hunts! (Thanks to Lonna for spotting that).

Steven Sproat will be workshopping at the Irish Ukulele get together.

J-Hob snaps the KazooKeyLele guy busking in Edinburgh.

On the MP3 blogs: Old Blue Bus has a track from Mad Tea Party and Culture Bully has Suzanne Vallie.

If music were sport.

Obama Ukulele Songs

I’ve been officially disengaged from politics since February 2003, so I wasn’t going to mention the election. But the trend of ukulele Obama songs is impossible to ignore.

As far as I’m aware, the first uke Obama song was Barak Obama Caucas Carol back in December but really took off with the formation of Ukes for Obama. You can find the chords for the Ukes for Obama songs on this page. Ukes for Obama are part of CNN’s competition to find the best short film of the campaign. You can vote for it here.

And here are a couple more Obama songs:

Ukelilli – Vote for Obama (Chords)(PDF)

You can buy Ukelilli stuff on her website.

Sylvie Simmons – Million Ukulele March

The Million Ukulele March is, British writer, Sylvie Simmons’ attempt to get a million ukuleles to pledge their support for Obama. You can sign up for the march (it’s virtual – you don’t have to get off your arse) on MySpace.

Listen to the song on MillionUkuleleMarch.com and

In the interests of balance: the only pro-Republican uke featuring video.

Ukulele Strumming for Dummies

I get quite a few emails asking me about strumming, so I thought I’d put together a ‘How to Strum a Ukulele’ post. This is how I strum – any resemblance to good technique is pure coincidental.

UPDATE: For a more comprehensive coverage of the subject check out my ebook on ukulele strumming. And there’s also a healthy section on strumming in my real-world book Ukulele for Dummies.

Strumming Hand Position

1. Make your strumming hand into a loose fist.
2. Hold it infront of the centre of your chest.
3. Point towards your left boob (or right boob if you’re left handed).
4. I like to have my thumb steadying my strumming finger. It gives it extra strumming support.

Where to Strum

If you strum your ukulele too close to the bridge it sounds very tinny (which might be an effect you want sometimes) and the strings have very little give there. The ‘sweet spot’ on the soprano and concert ukes are around the point where the neck hits the body. The sweet spot for tenors is a little closer to the bridge than this.

Strumming Technique

As any teenage boy will tell you, moving your arm rapidly up and down gets tiring very quickly. When you strum, use your wrist rather than your whole arm.

When you strum down, you should be hitting the strings with your nail. When you’re strumming up, with the fleshy tip of your finger.

Swing/Shuffle Strums

Lots of forums of music popular on the uke use swing time – such as Hawaiian, jazz and blues. In swing time the down strum lasts twice as long (ish) as the up strum like this:

This makes a simple up, down strum sound much more interesting.

Simple Strumming Patterns

You can create some more interesting strumming patterns by keeping the same up, down motion but not hitting the strings on certain strums. In this clip the actual strums are down, down, up, up, down. But I’m doing a constant up, down motion (I strum down, miss the strings on the up strum, strum down and up, miss the down strum, strum up and down, miss the up strum).

You can learn more strumming patterns here.

Chnking

You can funk up the strumming a little with a few ‘chnks’. With a chnk you strum down and hit the strings with the underside of your hand, so you get a percussive sound from the strum. In this clip I strum down, up, then a chnk followed by an up:

Dead/Muted Strums

Dead or muted strums are another way of creating a percussive click from strumming, but this time you’re creating it with your fretting hand. To create them, you stop the strings ringing by laying your fingers across all the strings like this:

Advanced Ukulele Strums

Once you’ve got the basics down, you can start checking out the advanced stuff.

Matthew J Richards’ tutorial on George Formby’s Split Stroke
Cool Hand Uke strumming PDF
COVEYWOOD’s favourite ukuleles strums
Ukulelezaza’s Ukulele Strums Revealed

Hafdis Huld – Who Loves the Sun?

Hafdis Huld – Who Loves the Sun? (Chords)(PDF)

Former GusGus singer, Eurovision hopeful and elf hunter, Hafdis Huld did a lovely ukulele version of Velvet Underground‘s Who Loves the Sun? which you can listen to on her website.

I thought this song was going to be easy to work out and play, it wasn’t. There are very few open chords in the song – most of the time you have your index finger clamped across the fretboard. By the time I’d finished working it out, my hand was sooore. To stop that happening, you might want to throw in a few variations for chords like G.

For the strumming, down, up, chnk, up will get you through most of the song.

At various points in the song, there’s a repeated D-Dsus4-D move. I’ve written it up as just D – Dsus4, but it’s more complicated than that. Here’s how it goes.

The strumming is just down, up all the way through that.

Monday Exposure: Ben Lerman

Ben Lerman – The Big Gay Paradise (MP3)
Ben Lerman – Not A Cub (MP3) via BenLerman.net

Ben Lerman is another hilarious uke-comedian from the ukulele comedy capital of the world New York. It’s only fair to those of you with a delicate disposition to stay well clear. But the rest of us who like to chuckle at song parodies involving genitalia and hot, sweaty man-on-man action can sit back and giggle our rocks off at his Ace of Base parody.

Donate and download the rest of his album Ukelear Winter on his website.
Watch Ben Lerman on Ukulele Disco.

This is Halloween

This Is Halloween (Tab)(PDF)

MIDI

This song comes from the Tim Burton film Nightmare Before Christmas. And ‘nightmare’ is about frickin’ right. It’s full of key changes, time signature changes and nothing is played the same way twice. What I’m trying to say is: EPIC FAIL.

I’ve only been able to tab out the first section of the song and time has run out. Hopefully there’s enough there to get you going.

In the arrangement I’ve tried to capture as much of the backing as I can. It’s mostly chords with a few little runs thrown in.

More Halloween Tabs and Chords here.

Requested by Mongoose Mania and Chris.

UkeTube

James Hill and Ralph Shaw – Yodelele Lady

Rebecca Fonoimoana – Its a Pity
Read the rest of this entry »

Lacewood, More SpongeBob Ukuleles and Ethel Formby

Some ukes made of unusual wood this week. Kala have a new range of ukuleles with lacewood bodies and spruce tops including this concert and an eight string baritone. Then there’s this bamboo ukulele.

But you really can’t beat koa for a handsome uke. Just check out the grain on this Peter Bermudez and on the back of this KoAloha tenor.

Another week, another shape of SpongeBob SquarePants ukulele. This time it’s a pinapple ukulele. If The Simpsons is more your thing, there’s a pink ukulele featuring Maggie and Lisa.

Ukulele Photo of the Week: George’s kid sister Ethel Formby.

For fans of ukulele kitsch, there’s a ukulele dish.

Friday Ukulelinks

A big thanks to everyone who’s written to me saying nice things about How to Play Blues Ukulele. I’m completely knocked out by how well it’s been received. There was one small hitch, a couple of the examples got lost somewhere. If you bought the ebook – you should have an email from me. If not, you can download them here:

Example 34
Example 35

That caused a bit of a mix up with a few of the track titles as well (the file names are correct but Examples 15 – 33 had the wrong names in the MP3). Sorry for any confusion caused.

On to the real uke news…

The US version of the ad for Wii ukulele. Just as bad as Wii ukulele ad #1.

Ukulele Tonya has a write up of the Wine Country Ukulele Festival and Uke Gal has one in the works. A few videos of the festival have cropped up and James Hill and Ralph Shaw‘s unusual duet is my favourite so far.

Chord charts for those weird people who are either left-handed or play baritone (or both).

Songsheet Generator: I couldn’t get the chord shapes to show in ukulele mode, but you might be more successful.

Buy an Amy Crehore t-shirt between now and Halloween and get a signed drawing – dang, wish I’d have waited.

Peter Delaney‘s EP Duck Egg Blue is now available outside of Ireland and Oslo. You can pick it up on his MySpace (which I’ve just done).

Strange ukuleles all over the place in this photo.

Lock your doors, the ukulele killer is on the loose.

Dent May‘s debut album announced.

Learn CSS with the ukulele. Everybody now, “H1 curly bracket property colon value semi-colon curly bracket…

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