One day I’m going to cave in and buy the phono fiddle ukulele.

An interesting Italian ukulele on eBay UK. The neck engulfs the body – makes more sense than having the scratchplate in the guitar positioning.

Ukulele converted into a balalaika = good idea.

Announce yourself as a ukulele dude/babe on your Neon bag or T-shirt.

Uke kitsch of the week: Ukulele Santa.

With the How to Play Blues Ukulele ebook being harder to finish and a much bigger hit than I had expected, October has been a bit of a crazy month. I’ve decided to take a little rest from the blog, so after today there won’t be any more posts until next Friday.

The Online Ukulele Tuner has got a new design. Looks a whole lot worse, but it lets you select different tunings for individual strings. Although not, strangely, common uke variations like low-G and baritone tuning (you can find those on my ukulele tuning page).

Tom Jones and Colin Murray do a ukulele version of It’s Not Unusual (download part 5). It is quite unusual.

The Daily Record chats with Mr KazooKeyLele.

Steve Earle, Eric Drew Feldman and some people who I must admit I’ve never heard of join the Million Ukulele March. Only 999,952 to go (would have been 999,951 if they’d bothered to accept my add). And Ukulala finds what looks like a non-photoshopped picture of Obama with a uke.

More Wii ukulele: Flea Waltz, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

I definitely shouldn’t have laughed at this.

Does anyone know where i can find a picture of a chimpanzee holding a ukulele aloft through a car sunroof?

I’m not a fan of all music that has come out of Jamaica, but I love rocksteady. So I was sad to hear of the death of the ‘Godfather of Rocksteady’ Alton Ellis last month.

The chords and strumming pattern for Rocksteady are fairly simple. The strumming is just down on every off-beat (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and).

The biggest challenge is to make sure you keep the strums short and sharp. There are a couple of parts to this. Once you’ve strummed the chord, release your fretting hand. This will stop the fretted notes. You can use this technique alone if you use chord shapes where all the strings are fretted such as this inversion for A minor.

The second part is do dampen the strings with your strumming hand just after playing the chord. I do it by carrying the strum though and bringing the palm of my hand to rest on the strings.

For a bit of variation on the chords, I really like the sound of Dm7 and Em7 in this progression.

Step 1: Wake up in the morning and feel around for your shoes.

Step 2: Learn the chords C, F and G7. Play four bars of C, two bars of F, two bars of C, a bar of G7, a bar of F and two bars of C. Repeat.

Step 3: Noodle around with the blues scale.

Step 4: Learn the BB King blues faces.

Step 5: Read How to Play Blues Ukulele.

OK, you knew that was coming. If you haven’t got your hands on a copy yet, you can buy it here.

If it hadn’t been introduced by the incredibly irritating Grimshaw I might have given this song a long enough listen to realise there’s a cute little ukulele riff in it. As it is, it’s not until now – months later – I realized it was there and got round to tabbing it up.

It sounds like it’s being played with a pick – ugh.

Little Bit

I first ran across Welsh indie rockers Toy Horses on YouTube. Suitably impressed, I badgered band ukulelist Tom into answering a few questions.

Your ukulele playing in Toy Horses is very different from the usual uke fair. How did you develop your style?

I started playing the uke a couple of years ago after hearing George Harrison’s Brainwashed album. I’ve always played the guitar previously so I kind of thought of it as a mini guitar and played it like that. In fact I’ve never really played much lead before but when you’ve only got four strings it’s easier to get your head round! I think it’s such a great songwriting instrument too. I have written many songs on the ukulele that I would never have written on the old six string.

What’s in your ukulele collection?

Not a lot!! My electric Risa which I love to bits. I had such feedback problems with my acoustic uke, also it’s a bit of a talking point at gigs. Not many people know what it is. My only other uke is a Vineyard, it’s pretty good instrument but does start to go out further up the frets. Actually I lied ‘cus I do have a third, the trusty £10 mahalo, that’s the one that got me started on this uke trip!

What can we expect from Toy Horses in the future?

Toy Horses have only been going since last December but we’ve had a great run of luck. As well as quite a bit of radio play we are in the final of the Intel unsigned bands competition in Camden in November. We are also off to Clonmel in Ireland for the final of a songwriting competition which features my uke heavy tune ‘But What About The Future’

In January we head off to Nashville to record a few tracks with Ken Coomer(Wilco) and in breaking news we’ve just found out that we are playing SXSW in Austin Texas next March!

Where can people get their hands on Toy Horses stuff?

MySpace. We currently put our songs up as and when we record them and let people download them for nothing! ( there does seem to be a problem with the myspace player at time of writing this) This is subject to change of course if we become global superstars!!!! :o)

Theres also a few different little videos floating around youtube.

Anyone who likes our stuff is welcome to leave heaps of praise on the myspace page. We love that!!!

On a semi-related matter, does anyone know what happened to MySpace downloads? Ever since they changed to the new player, I haven’t been able to get anything.

Quantum of Solace? What of what?

I’m flabbergasted that Bond is still going. The whole idea is outdated and they ran out of ideas decades ago. The theme tune, on the other hand, still sounds fantastic.

I’ve been working on this arrangement for an age (I think Sean Connery was Bond when I started) and it’s tough to play – I cock it up a couple of times in the mp3. I’ve tried to cram as many parts of the original onto the uke and there’s a great deal of changing between picking and strumming.

Bar 2: Not a triplet, but I use a triplet strum in this bar: down, up with index, up with middle.

Bars 3 – 6: The bass line crops up on the G string played with the thumb along with strums (up, down, up) on the other three strings.

Bars 7 – 14: This is where it starts to get really tricky. You’ve still got the bass line on the G string and the strums on the E and A strings, but now you’ve got the guitar part on the C string as well. A good rule of thumb (and fingers) is to pluck the G string with your thumb when there are no other notes and strum when there are other notes. There are also quite a few rolls in this section.

Bars 19 – 26: Another step up in difficulty with the brass section. The bass line is still going, but this time it’s moving over the strings.

Bars 28 – 33: Finally a bit of a rest. You can just strum out this section.

Outro: My favourite part of the tune. I love the last chord: Cm6add9.

There’s a simplified version of this tab here.

It’s an old joke, but I’ve never seen it done as well as this (thanks to krabbers for the tip-off). Other videos this week include Seeso taking an early lead in the Bushman Contest, Carl Ray Villaverde ripping up Keep Your Eyes on the Hands and plenty more. Read the rest of this entry »

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 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.