Love Shack has to be one of the funnest songs there has ever been. The guitar part is played mostly on the top three strings and above the fifth fret, so it fits perfectly on the uke.

There are two main parts in the song. The first is the verse part which alternates between C and Bb. The rhythm of it varies throughout, but the basis of it is this:

Verse Midi

The most important thing is to keep the chord stabs short and funky. Do this by releasing the pressure on your fretting hand soon after strumming (but leave them touching the string). The only time you let the strummed chords ring is when you’re sliding them.

The chorus part is simply strummed chords. I play them all with down strums. After the chorus is my favorite part. It requires you to bend the E string up (by pushing it towards your head). I’ve tabbed it as being bent by half a step (so it sounds one fret higher than it actually is), but you don’t have to be that accurate in this case – it’s more important to get that little rasp into it.

Chorus Midi

Requested by Jeff.

The Darlings – Emily (MP3) via WeePOP!
Elizabeth Darling – I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend (MP3)
Elizabeth Darling – Oh No! Another Email From You! (MP3) via her website.

It’s a tough job being a songwriter these days. A good 90% of songs are about getting together and splitting up and you can’t write an honest, story song about either of those anymore without including email, texts, MySpace, Facebook etc. But the pop song has really moved beyond letters and phonecalls. Any reference to more modern means of communication is open to ridicule (such as from Bill Bailey at about 5:40). The only song that comes to mind that includes texting without sounding contrived is The Arctic Monkeys’ The View from the Afternoon. All of which is a roundabout way of me saying I like Elizabeth Darling’s songs.

The first I heard of Elizabeth Darling was when WeePOP! released The Darlings’Photo EP. The EP has sold out but you can still download Emily and stream officially the best ukulele AC/DC here. They’ve since changed their name to Allo Darlin’ (probably due to the fact there are 6,000 bands called The Darlings) and Elizabeth has been putting up a bunch of demos on her website which are some of the best ukulele-pop songs I’ve ever heard.

Allo Darlin’ MySpace

Where can I go without my ukulele? In tribute to the classic broken ukulele sketch, here are the chords to the Sesame Street theme tune.

The tune starts off with a bit of blues shuffle which goes like this:

All the strums are down strums apart from the next to last one in the second and fourth bars.

I prefer to make it more hardcore and bluesy like this:

For the “…tell me how to get…” part you can just play F7 and G. But I like to double the melody like this:

Requested by Artifus.

I think I should probably change the name now that YouTube have stolen it. Anyhoo, this week I was really impressed with Jake Wildwood. He’s put a whole load of old timey uke and non-uke videos up this week. You can download all his albums for free on his website.

The Barnkickers – One Less Tear Read the rest of this entry »

A question to anyone who has ever played a harp ukulele, does that extra bit make any difference to the sound? I suspect the sound is rather besides the point since they look so great. Black Bear have come up with a great looking Concert Harp ukulele.

Another question: Does anyone know anything about Hudson ukuleles? They’ve been all over eBay UK. All being sold by the same seller (whose website you can visit here). They remind me of Kala ukuleles. Compare the Hudson HUK-SMC to the Kala KA-SC.

The Ukuleliana section of Buy a Ukulele has to be my favourite. There’s always some strange and wonderful junk in their (between the hula dolls and Lilo & Stitch stuff). Some of the photos are just great: chimp with uke, Oliver Hardy with uke, women with ukes, sailors with ukes. My favourite of them all, despite it being mislabeled ‘ukulele’, is this one. I’d love to know why the dapper gent on the left has a yo-yo.

Technical difficulties abound: It looks like there are a few problems with the RSS feed updating. The emails and the feed itself seem to be fine. If you resubscribe by clicking here, it does return the latest posts (hopefully). Also, there was a problem with the tab and chords page in Internet Explorer and now all the tabs and chords are on one page.

Just one day left to enter ukulele for sale contest. But still plenty of time to enter my Review Your Ukulele competition to win a Kala Pineapple.

There’s still work to do on it, but as of now the Buy a Ukulele section of the site is officially open. It’s been prettified and has a load of reviews of various ukuleles (gosh, a lot of people have Lanikai ukuleles).

If you can’t wait until Friday for your ukulele news fix, you should follow Ukulele Hero. He covers everything ukulele related on the web (and I mean everything).

YouTube had a front page covered in ukulele videos earlier this week, along with Ukulala on the YouTube blog and Aldrine on the LA Times blog.

Join JoCo on stage in NYC and uke-out.

Rush’s Closer to the Heart on Uker Tabs.

MP3s: Frekvens has Thos Henley, Stop Okay Go has Mareva Galanter’s version of Bang, Bang, Hero Hill has The Burning Hell and Popsense has Mirah‘s Engine Heart.

UOoGB on the Beeb next Tuesday and Saturday. (Thanks to both Garys for that).

Worst film review ever: “Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly’s recent ukulele session for Le Soir featured a cover of Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. and it was a bit of a cracker. The requests came in and here it is.

The first thing you’ll have to do to play this is to start attacking the tuning pegs. He’s in a tuning that I’ve never come across before: A, B, F#, B. That’s a D-tuning with the D string tuned down three frets to B giving an open B7 tuning. But even that’s not exactly right as he’s tuned a little flat as well.

Once you’ve got that done, the intro goes like this:

The chords for the verse are a simplified version of the intro. It’s very sparse, just the two B strings open with a descending note on the F# string.

The chorus opens up the sound a little by adding a note on top of those chords.

Note the five at the side of the first chord. That means that the chord diagram starts at the fifth fret (so you are fretting at the fifth and seventh frets).

When you’re strumming these, keep a steady up down rhythm going. You can create a funky, syncopated effect by muting some of the strums (covering the strings with you left hand fingers so that the strings just produce a click when you play them).

If you don’t want to mess with the tuning too much, you could just tune the C-string down three frets to A and capo at the second fret (or just play it in the key of A).

If you are desperate to keep the ukulele in C tuning, you could play the intro like this:

Requested by Cardboardfrog and ukulellama.

The second in the ‘What ukulele do they play?’ series. The good news: if you want to play the same ukuleles as Zach Condon, you won’t have to spend anywhere near as much as if you wanted Jake Shimabukuro’s ukulele. They’re actually fairly bog-standard ukuleles, not that expensive and would be a good choice for beginners.

He seems to have two main stage ukuleles:

Bushman Jenny

Irrefutable evidence. Looks to me like a BU7TV.

Lanikai

Irrefutable evidence. Looks to me like an LU-21T.

Other ukuleles he’s been spotted with:

Fluke: On the set of the video for Elephant Gun he Postcards from Italy on the Fluke that’s featured in the video.

Samick: In this photoshoot. It’s the only time I’ve seen him with a Samick, so I don’t think it’s a regular player of his. It looks like a UK70.

Beirut Ukulele Tab and Chords

UPDATE: YouTube are featuring ukulele videos today. And totally stealing my shit.

More Canadian ukulele. Basia Bulat’s debut album, Oh, My Darling, kicks of with this short and sweet ukulele ditty.

The intro is pretty simple. You’re just playing the G,C and E strings open and sliding down the A string.

A similar thing is played during the outro but with triplets and an F chord making this a bit trickier.

I think it’s being played with a pick, so no fancy triplet strums. Each triplet is down, up, down which means you’ve got two down strokes next to each other.

UPDATE: TheAquaticSloth has video tutorial for Before I Knew here.

Having founded the New York Ukulele Ensemble and the New York Ukulele Festival, Uke Jackson is a bit of a ukulele legend. His latest project is the musical Sex! Drugs! & Ukuleles! written with Ragtime musician and historian Terry Waldo. I drilled him for more info.

Where did the idea for a ukulele musical come from?

The short answer is my imagination. Basically, I was looking for a way to bring the ukulele into my art as a playwright, which became my main vocation in life when I was 21 years old and my first play was produced. The show is unusual in that it juxtaposes 2 styles of music – contemporary corporate bass lines and throbbing beats, and trad jazz – and it incorporates this as a theme without being didactic. At its core, the show is about the transforming power of music and love, and the eternal transcendence of the human spirit – all things I passionately believe in.

Can you give us a quick overview of the plot?

Here’s the text that appears at the beginning of the video:

“SEX! DRUGS! & UKULELES!
The Story

At the end of the 21st Century, after an environmental and economic collapse, everything is controlled by the One World Pharmaceutical Corporation. Much of what is considered normal today is abnormal in this dystopian future. Abnormal behavior is treated pharmaceutically. Sex is illegal. Drug evasion is illegal. Making music is illegal, unless you’re a member of the corporate controlled Top 10.

Three young outlaw ukulele players meet in secret to play their music, until a mysterious stranger changes their lives forever. After a series of comic twists and turns, the trio find themselves in the Top 10. The ukulele players start a revolution. Corporate control collapses. Love and music return to the world, forever.”

I think that pretty well covers it

Is the ukulele inherently anti-establishment?

It would be intellectually dishonest to ascribe that kind of quality to any musical instrument. I know ukulele players who are variously conservative, liberal, radical, and apathetic.

You’ve done a huge amount to promote the ukulele in recent years, what inspires you?

Well, it’s certainly not other ukulele players, though many of those folks are wonderful people. I love the sound of the ukulele, and its size makes it charming for me. There’s no question that the ukulele produces a joyous sound, and lots of smiles. I would have to say it’s the music that inspires me, as it should be.

What are the plans for the future of Sex! Drugs! and Ukuleles! and the NY Uke Fest?

These are two very different subjects. NY Uke Fest is undergoing a transformation. My son Jesse, who co-produces the event with me, is busy on this front. There have been a number of requests to have the Fest all under one roof, so we’re talking mainly to some large midtown hotels. We’re also seeking corporate sponsorship for the whole shebang. It’s coming along well. We’ll be updating the web page soon, with info on submitting for 2009.

I’ve actually been working on Sex! Drugs! and Ukuleles! for considerably longer than I’ve been working on NY Uke Fest. Right now, Sex! Drugs! and Ukuleles! is my main focus. I’m working with a small group of very accomplished people “in the biz” to bring the show to Broadway and subsequently to London’s West End. There’s also been some interest from producers of television and movies. I’m open to all possibilities that represent a step forward for the project, but my main focus right now is getting the show up on Broadway.

Broadway is a very expensive proposition. The total budget is $10 million. Money is only part of it, of course. We’re about halfway there. There’s also casting, and then finding the right theater, which is a huge part of a successful production. Fortunately, I’ve been able to surround myself with very capable and experienced people. It’s big business, but, like the ukulele, it’s a lot of fun.

If you want to catch Sex! Drugs! and Ukuleles! or you’re looking to fund a Broadway musical, you can find out more on their website.