Wow, Mirah’s new album The Old Days Feeling is incredible. Very sparse and low-fi, but the songs are fantastic. It’s a compilation album of various rarities and these albums are usually for completest fans only. While there are a few tracks on the album that don’t make much of an impression, most of the tracks are great unpolished pop songs. And there are a bunch of ukulele songs on there. Best of them is the ukulele-riffery of Take Me Out Riding which originally appeared on Pink Skull’s Zeppelin 3.

The song is made of up two main riffs. This one in the verse:

And this one in the chorus:

Jenny Jenkins – Birdwatchers (MP3)
Jenny Jenkins – Chance (MP3)
Jenny Jenkins – River (MP3) via Bicycle Records

The fact Jenny Jenkins shares her name with an old folk song makes it difficult to find out much about her or find any videos. I tried a Google search for ‘Jenny Jenkins ukulele’ and the first hit was me (and I’m no use at all). What I do know is that she appeared in a musical with Mirah and she makes some very nice ukulele songs.

Buy her album Oventoucher on Bicycle Records.

After complaining that the Isaac Hayes obituaries kept going on about Shaft, I’m going to be a complete hypocrite.

It’s the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s version of Shaft in this video that I worked out the tab from (Director: “They’re playing Shaft. Quick, get me a shot of the only black guy at the Cambridge Folk Festival”). But with all those ukuleles on the go, it’s a compilation of parts.

The main chords are Fmaj7 and G6, but I haven’t always tabbed the full chord. For example, in the intro I’ve got the Em chord shape (all the notes in Em are in G6). This makes it easier to keep the sound of the chord short by releasing the chord right after you strum it.

For the next section, I’ve combined the chords with the melody. If you want to play just the melody, it’s the highest note of each chord.

Next up is the bass riff which, obviously, doesn’t entirely work on the uke. The way I’ve tabbed it, it’ll be right on a low-G uke. On a high-G, it’s not quite right but still fits.

There are a couple of places in the song where you really need to use a pick: playing over the bass riff and over the verse. In the tab, where you see a single note with two diagonal lines under it, that means you are tremelo picking semi-quavers (sixteenth notes).

Buy Precious Little

And if you’re yet to be convinced that Isaac Hayes’s real talent was for songwriting, you should download the mp3s from Soul Sides.

In this week’s videos: James Hill breaks out some hip hop beats and a pair a chopsticks, Byron Yasui, Lyle Ritz, Ledward Kaapana, Bob Brozman, Joel Eckhaus and Jim Beloff play together, while Craig Robertson and Phredd participate in Take Your Daughter to YouTube Day. Read the rest of this entry »

I caused a bit of a run on the Mahalo Les Paul copies when I mentioned them last week. eBay are now all sold out. You can listen to krabbers on his here. Obviously, I couldn’t resist. Mine arrived this morning and I’m very happy with it. It has some of the failings you’d expect from a cheap uke (the intonation is off further up the neck and the paint job is a bit shoddy in places) but the action is great and it plays very easily. I’ll have to get some Aquila strings on it and give it a real test.

Andy pointed out that Mahalo are also making Telecaster copies. I’m not so keen on them. Without the scratchplate on them, they look quite misshapen. But I am tempted by the Kiwaya K Wave Telecasters, and there’s this one currently for sale at £99. It’s a butterscotch (my favourite colour of telecaster) which, according to the Kiwaya website, is now discontinued.

UPDATE: Ambient Doughnut has put up a video demo of the Mahalo Telecaster:

Heather found this very nicely decorated Dresden Dolls themed uke.

MGM has a Bass ukulele up for sale at the moment – it’s the size of a baritone ukulele but, apparently, it’s in the range of a double bass. You can find out more and listen to it here.

I wish Weissenborn had made more ukes. There’s a nice early one here, but what the hell was that guy thinking with that description?

Gosh, it’s been quite a week for Uke Hunt. Probably one of my favourite blogging weeks ever. To stop this post being too self obsessed, I’ll keep it brief. This week I’ve: been mentioned in the New York Times, been asked if I want to work on a real life ukulele book by a real life publisher, been banned from ezFolk, and found out I had a world exclusive on the review of Clone Wars which had unwittingly meant the BBC was breaking the Clone Wars review embargo (a guy from the BBC emailed me telling me they’ve temporarily taken the video down and wanted to know how I found the Kermode uke post two weeks before they published it). I haven’t stopped laughing all week.

You might not have realised it from my previous references to it, but the NY Times article wasn’t entirely about me. It was mostly about Jen Kwok. Congrats, Jen. Now she’s a big star, we can say we knew her back when she was making uke playing, pipe cleaner dolls fellate Rabbi Bob L. Mensch.

I have to take umbrage at Jim Beloff’s quote in the article: “If you were a poor guitar player, you suddenly become a pretty good uke player.” If you’re a lousy musician, you’re a lousy musician on any instrument. Perhaps the ukulele will suit you more, but the idea that you automatically become better when you play the ukulele is bullshit.

Speaking of which, Gawker calls bullshit on the ukulele trend.

James Hill graphs out a new track.

Aldrine Guerrero ditches his talking cock in favour of Jake Shimabukuro.

Ian Chadwick has in depth reviews of a whole bunch of ukuleles.

Ukulele Tonya visits the Windy City Uke Fest.

Ladybugs Picnic on Uker Tabs.

Photos from the first Irish Ukahuli.

Stop Okay Go has an mp3 of Robin Gray’s These Days and an interview with the man.

Buy your own bobble headed Bob L Mensch. “Watch Him Bob at the Waist as he Davens.”

You can hear this track on their MySpace.

I thought I hated this song. What I actually hated was Bonnie Tyler’s voice because I love the version by WIUO, everyone’s favourite ukulele orchestra (well, everyone who matters).

The best part is the intro with one uke playing the melody and one uke providing fingerpicked backing.

If you have no friends, you can still fill in your own chord accompaniment if you move the melody around a little. For example, you can play bars five and six like this:

Buy their EP on the WIUO website.

Requested by Andrew

I’m currently trying to convince myself that buying another ukulele wouldn’t be a huge waste of money. There are far too many people in the world that can’t understand the need for one more ukulele. So here’s a list of reason you can trot out whenever you need to justify another uke purchase to yourself, your spouse, your parents or your debt counselor.

1. Size: Sopranino, Soprano, Concert, Super-Concert, Tenor, Super-Tenor, Baritone.
Tuning: C, D, Low-G, Low-A, Slack Key.
Construction: Mahogany, Koa, Banjolele, Resonator, Electric, Plastic, Sapele, Mango, Spruce, Cedar
Strings: 4, 6, 8.

That’s 1,050 combinations (koa concert ukulele etc). Bare minimum.

2. The value of the dollar is falling like a drunken gymnast. Buying a ukulele from Hawaii is basically currency arbitrage. Technically, I’d be making money (this one doesn’t work if you live in the US).

3. In the age of mass production and synthetic materials, it’s our duty to support skilled craftsman working with wood.

4. I have a tie that would go perfectly with that uke.

5. The strings on this uke need changing, and I really can’t be bothered.

6. A new ukulele will expand my sonic palette and inspire me to previously impossible artistic achievements. Buy a ukulele that isn’t at least twice as expensive as all my current ukes put together is a false economy.

7. I have a spare humidifier.

8. MGM is offering free international shipping on that one.

9. I need to buy one now to avoid getting caught in the Christmas rush.

10. The kids can go without school shoes. It’ll toughen them up.

We need all the help we can get. So add your reasons/excuses here.

Most of the obituaries of Isaac Hayes focus on the three S’s: Scientology, Shaft and South Park. But his biggest contribution was being half of the best song writing duo (along with David Porter) at the greatest record label of all time (Stax). He wrote the most underrated song in history The Soul Children’s The Sweeter He Is and the legendary Soul Man as recorded by Sam and Dave. With Hayes’s death, Sam Moore of Sam and Dave is one of the few remaining soul legends.

Soul Man works very well on the ukulele – the syncopated rhythms certainly help – but there are a lot of parts to it, so pay attention.

The intro goes like this:

Then it’s into the main riff.

The basic chords for the chorus are just G and F. The brass break is:

But you could play it strummed like this:

The high guitar part can be played like this:

And the low guitar part at the end of the chorus:

For the ‘Grab the rope…’ section, the chords are Eb – Bb – C – C# – Eb. That provides a key change, so now you have to play the intro one fret higher:

And the riff, which is quite tricky:

Winter Coats via their website

It’s seems I’m a little late writing about Foreign Loren, they split up at the end of April. Nevertheless, they made a bunch of excellent uke tunes that are well worth checking out.

With plenty of waltzes played on ukulele, accordion and trumpet, there was always a danger they’d end up sounding like Beirut. A danger, I’m happy to report, they haven’t bothered avoiding at all. They even covered Postcards from Italy. They might have been Beirut copyists, but they were very good Beirut copyists. Songs like Seaside, We Collide (which you can download on Foggy Ruins of Time) and Winter Coats are better than a few Beirut songs I could name.

You can buy Foreign Loren tracks on their MySpace