For the next couple of weeks or so, I’ll be putting up the next batch in the ever popular series of Guitar Riffs for Ukulele. For those not familiar with it, the idea of these isn’t to play the full song, but throw the riffs in to give yourself or your audience a bit of a giggle at an hearing something they never expected to hear coming from a ukulele. Most of them are not written in the original key but the key that suits the ukulele the best.
I probably should have featured this one a long time ago. Although now the song is as famous for cowbell as much as for the riff.
To play the riff, you need to shift down from the fourth fret to the second. Make sure you remember to do it between the third and fourth notes of the riff or you’ll be stranded.
Harmonics are a big part of Hawaiian lap steel playing where they’re referred to as ‘chimes’ because of their bright ping sound (hence tunes such as Maui Chimes). Unfortunately, because of the short scale length, they’re much harder to produce on the ukulele.
Natural Harmonics
You produce a harmonic by touching the string only very lightly. So that if you moved your finger a tiny amount, you wouldn’t be touching the string at all. Like this:
The easiest place to play a harmonic is at the 12th fret. You have to position your finger directly over the fret bar itself rather than between the frets as you’d usually do. Pluck that harmonic and listen to what you hear. If you’ve got everything right, you should hear a bright ping that rings out and it should have the pitch of the string played at the 12th fret. If you hear a dull click, you’re pressing down too hard. If you hear just an open string, you’re not touching the string. If you hear something out of tune that dies away quickly, you’re not directly over the fret.
Playing all the strings in succession should sound like this:
As you can tell from my rather dodgy attempt, these harmonics are very hard to get right on the uke.
Harmonics in Tab
Natural harmonics are tabbed by having a little diamond next to the fret number.
Artificial Harmonics
I know what you’re thinking, “Easy peasy, lemon squeezey. Give me a challenge.” Fair enough.
With artificial harmonics you fret a note as usual and play a harmonic. To do this, you have to produce a harmonic by pointing with your index finger and picking the note.
I like to pick with my ring finger, but the middle finger or thumb work just as well.
You fret the note and play the harmonic 12 frets above it (or 5 or 7).
In this sequence I play the open C string with the harmonic at the 12th fret. Then fret at the 2nd fret and play the harmonic at the 14th fret. Then finger the fourth fret and play the harmonic at the sixteenth.
Artificial harmonics are tabbed by showing the fret played and the note produced underneath the tab. All these are have harmonics 12 frets higher than the fretted notes.
You can use this build up entire chords with harmonics.
hellogoodbye – The Thoughts That Give Me The Creeps (Chords)
I was very excited when this video cropped up on the YouTube feed on Sunday. hellogoodbye are currently slaving away in the studio and have put up a ukulele demo of a song tentatively titled ‘The Thoughts That Give Me The Creeps’. And rather lovely it is too. Obviously, I immediately picked up my uke and started working it out.
The song is in D-tuning. So start twiddling the knobs or slap a capo on the second fret.
The main strumming pattern is down, down, up, up, down.
The lyrics on the sheet are testament to why I usually just copy and paste lyrics from elsewhere on the net. I’m sure all the real lyrics actually make sense.
I wholeheartedly concur on the tightness of Yo Gabba Gabba!, if only for bringing the joys of Biz Markie to a new generation. Keep it old school, kids.
No indication when this track will be released, but there’s plenty of other hellogoodbye stuff for you to buy here and visit them on MySpace.
Step 1: Get a bunch of ukulele players.
Step 2: Play some cover songs.
Step 3: Have a good time.
Voodoo Marmalade – who declare themselves to be, “the first Portuguese ukulele band to exist,” play a number of songs that would fit into any ukulele orchestra/ensemble (Ring of Fire, Hit Me Baby…). What marks them out as something a bit more interesting is the way they throw in more recondite choices such as Zeca Baleiro’s Boi de Haxixe (best known, to me atleast, for Por Onde Andará Stephen Fry and Rachid Taha’s Ya Rayah. What do you mean you’ve heard Barra Barra?
I thought this one would be completely straightforward, but it presented a few problems. I’m still not really sure about the ending.
In the chord sheet this one, you’ll notice a few letters in brackets. They’re not chords but single notes. So where it says “(A Ab)” you play just those notes on the G string.
When you have to change quickly from Bb or B to C, it’s easier to use the Bb chord shape moved up two frets rather than the open C chord.
I had to cheat the solo a little bit to get it to fit on the uke. I’ve tabbed it like this:
But I had shift each note in bar 3 up one notch on the major scale as there’s a Bb in the original. If you’re playing on a low-G uke, you could play it like this:
Since I spend a fair proportion of my time writing about the ukulele, so it’s only natural that I’m fascinated by my uke teaching forebears and their ukulele books. One such person is NB Bailey and two of his books are currently available on eBay: A Practical Method for Self Instruction for the Ukulele and Banjo Ukulele from 1914 and The Ukulele as a Solo Instrument with Keoki E. Awai from 1916. Also available is the Sam Fox Modern Method for the Ukulele and Banjo Ukulele by H. Kahanamo.
Ukulele Photos: The Flikr picture I mentioned yesterday has cropped up on eBay along with what is titled Vintage Gay Int Photo Ukulele Banjo Violin Music Men. Although that could just be an affectionate man-hug between handsome, stylish friends.
At the more expensive end of the price scale, there are a couple of nice custom ukuleles for sale from Ana’ole and Peter Lieberman, a vintage bowl-backed/peanut soprano from Turturro.
As if I didn’t blather on about the ukulele enough, I’ve gone and set up another ukulele site: Ukulele Online. The original idea came from all the Yahoo! Answers questions I was answering. I decided I was going to answer every single ukulele question that’s ever been asked online. Then I calmed down a little. So the blog is going to consist of Yahoo! Answers inspired questions and my rambling thoughts thereon. I put it on it’s own site because I didn’t want to clutter up Uke Hunt with it, a lot of it’s going to be obvious to Uke Hunt readers and it’s not the sort of thing you’ll want to subscribe to and read religiously – just there for people who need a particular question answered.
The legendary Ukulele Force Star Wars cover album, is more talked about than it is listened to. It’s only available in Japan and if you can find an import, it’s massively expensive. But you can download a medley of clips here.
The new Hawaiian Edition of Ukulele Yes! is up. Thanks to Humble Uker for pointing it out (it’s worth subscribing for the excellent photos alone). It appears that, despite numerous attempts and assurances from the man himself, I’m still not on the mailing list. Epic fail, as I believe the kids say.
From all the darting eyes, I’m guessing that people are just reading the guitar chords and transferring them straight to uke. The trouble is Oberst plays this song with a capo at the fourth fret. That puts it close to uke territory. I’ve written the song up for a ukulele tuned one step down (so the chord shapes used are mostly those he uses), but kept the chord names the same as standard tuning to avoid confusion. It’s much easier to play this way, you avoid the dreaded E major.
My chords are a little different to the guitar ones floating around the net in a few other ways. Some of them are chords in the song that I think they’ve missed (the Bbadd9 in the intro and the C7 at the end of the verses) and some of them have been changed to make them work better on the uke (using a C as a passing chord rather than a B note, and the Gm at “But I realise that I need you…”).
The biggest problem area in the song is the F – ? – Dm progression at the end of what I’ve called the bridge section. The guitar chords use the same progression as the verse, F – A – Dm in our terms. But I don’t think that sounds right. I think he’s playing 021200 which would be Amaj7sus4 (1200) for us. It’s fairly discordant; the A and Ab are one fret apart rather than 13 and the A note doesn’t read as the root strongly enough. It does just about work in context, but I’ve written it up as Asus4 which is a little more pleasing to the ear. Those are your choices. Try them and see which you prefer.
