Mad Tea Party – Found A Reason (mp3)
Mad Tea Party – Bunny Moves On (mp3) via Nine Mile Records

Mad Tea Party are a very fun band with catchy songs and the sound of a ukulele crashing up against rollocking guitar riffs and rockabilly licks. Judging by the preview tracks put out by Nine Mile Records, their forthcoming album, Found A Reason, looks set to be their best yet.

The core of the band is ukulelist and vocalist Ami Worthen and guitarist Jason Krekel. They got together in 2004 and have put out three albums to date. Nick Beery made a documentary about them and you can watch the whole film on his blog. They (along with, bassist at the time, Lora Pendelton) make quite an eccentric bunch. If you haven’t got an hour to spare, the choice quote from Ami is, “I’m not going for the record deal, the MTV. I want to play the ukulele, and I think if I had a manager and I was on that path, one of the first things they’d tell us is to ditch the ukulele.”

Found A Reason will be released in June. Visit their website.

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello is one of my all time favourite guitar players. He’s one of the few guitar players capable of being absolutely individual and wildly experimental but still able to come up with something instantly accessible (Nick Zinner of The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs is another that comes to mind).

This riff is a good example of that combination. Take away the whirls and squeaks, and it’s actually quite a convention riff. It contains many of the same note moves as Day Tripper. Both make use of moves from minor 7th to root, and from minor 3rd to major 3rd. Harmonically speaking, there aren’t any notes in this riff that aren’t in Day Tripper. It’s a great trick to take something so recognisable (formulaic even) and make it seem completely new.

There must be something about the 26th May. Today is the birthday of Mike Dickison, Gary from Ukulelia and Mark Occhionero. Happy Birthday, guys!

It also happens to be the birthday of George Formby. For those of an American persuasion, George Formby is the UK’s version of Tiny Tim: gormless, surprisingly popular and synonymous with the ukulele. Like with Tiny Tim in the US, UK ukulelists get sick of George Formby references whenever the subject of the uke comes up. But looking on the bright side, unlike Tiny Tim, George Formby had some serious uke skills. Most of his songs have a serious solo and it’s well worth any uke player picking up some of his techniques. I quick often skip ahead to the solo when one of his tracks is on; they’re full of interesting syncopations. Matthew Richards has a very well explained tutorial on how to play George Formby’s split stroke here.

George Formby is almost exclusively associated with the banjo ukulele, but he was no stranger to the wooden ukulele. As proved by the clip of Why Don’t Women Like Me?.

Why Don’t Women Like Me? is one of my favourite Formby songs; mostly because it namechecks Lady William Hamilton. You don’t get that with Natasha Beddingfield.

It’s the version in the video, shorter than the recorded version, that I’ve written up in the chords. The first thing to notice is that he’s in D-tuning (which he used pretty much exclusively). If you prefer, you can stay in C-tuning and use the chord shapes that you’re familiar with. Other than that, the chords are pretty straight forward.

The most important thing to remember when playing Formby: don’t come in too early with your grin.

Given how hip I am now it might be hard for you to believe, but I wasn’t the coolest kid at school. During the grunge era, the cool kids like Nirvana. But I always preferred Pearl Jam (and Eddie Vedder’s later ukulele conversion proved me right).

The riff to Jeremy is very minimal. It’s surprisingly similar to Come Together – using the same notes. I originally tabbed it in the same way (using notes on the C-string at the fifth and seventh frets) but it’s so sparse it needs the C note running through. It’s even worth adding extra picks of the C string to fill out the gaps.

Featured videos from Julia Nunes, Clara Belle, George Formby and plenty of others.

Julia Nunes and Danny Tieger – Sunburnt Hand Read the rest of this entry »

I think working on Buy a Ukulele has started to drive me stir crazy. I set up a section on Ukuleliana and, gosh, there’s a lot of ukulele-shaped tat out there. A ukulele shaped sushi set? Lighter? Recipe holder? Or an inflatable ukulele?

Also, a lot of plastic ukuleles seem to turn up in the Collectibles section rather than the Musical Instruments section (which means there might be less competition for them). There’s this this Lisa ukulele (as used by Gus) with no bids, a few hours left and only $15 starting bid, a Carnival with its original packaging, and this Maccaferri currently at $10. Out-kitsching them all is this plastic uke which must be overpriced at $200. Back in the musical instruments section is a Baritone Maccaferri Islander. I love that the baritone has the same shape as the Maccaferri guitars (as made famous by Django Reinhardt).

For those of you who prefer the more refined tone of koa ukuleles, there’s a delicious Martin 3K currently attracting plenty of bids. If you’re on some sort of Brewster’s Millions type mission, you could always buy this Martin 5K and this 5K for firewood.

This Swagerty Trehopipee has got me wondering. How do you find strings for a Treholipee? The Worth double length strings might do the job.

I’m only guessing, but could the scratches on the back of this Gibson Uke-3 be caused by storing it in a pine tree?

The Ukulele for Sale is slowly winding up and is selling off his stock as cheap as he’s allowed to. Jason has also announced a competition to win a Kala Brand Mahogany Tenor (or a Lehua Soprano if you prefer). You can find out how to enter right here. He himself wins the prize of first person to bribe me. He’s offered me some stuff from his site which I’ll be giving away (if I can bear to jump on the bandwagon). Stay tuned for details.

Another ukulele competition. GX9901 of Ukulele Ghetto is giving away his Pono. You can find details on the Ukulele Underground forum.

James Hill is launching a new e-zine called Ukulele, Yes!. You can sign up for it on Ukulele in the Classroom (although I haven’t been able to get it to work or get any reply to email).

I’m not much of a festival goer, but I’m in serious danger of going to this year’s IndieTracks festival. It features a bunch of my favourite uke acts: The Bobby McGees (download one of their tracks here), ‘Allo Darlin’ (formerly The Darlings), Darren Hayman and MJ Hibbett (who seems to have been barred from the festival itself but has found a work around). Also on are The Wedding Present, Ballboy, Los Campesinos and a whole mess of bands I’m nowhere near hip enough to have heard of.

Bob, the world’s most punk ukulele player, now has his own site: Uke Rock.

John Mayer’s Heart of Life on Uker Tabs. Thanks to Nelson.

Guess which song is being played on the uke by The Wikimen on Spicks and Specks.

Article on Ukuleles for Peace.

Other festival news: Latitude has Learn to Play Ukulele in Under an Hour. It’s a comedy sketch show/ukulele lesson with Sam Brown (not Sam Brown daughter of Joe Brown), Donal Coonan (This Is A Knife) and Sally Phillips (Green Wing, Smack the Pony). Ukuleles will be provided.

Ukulele mp3s: The Richwoods have a bunch of top ukulele mp3s on their listen page, a ukulele protest song over newsreader Wendy Chioji, Dr Forrest has the Rutles’ My Little Ukulele and Ivor Biggun’s Formby take off (click the dancing cheese).

KoAloha’s blog. Not much there as yet. And I have no idea why they went with blogspot.

Ukulele in Waking Life (thanks to Minamin).

Dominic Howard from Muse with uke.

Ukulele quiz… erm… in Norwegian.

The UK’s answer to Jason Castro.

A couple of non-uke links: Soviet b-boys and full album covers revealed.

I’m breaking my ‘no Beatles’ rule once again for this post. There’s no denying that they came up with some great riffs and these are a pair of humdingers.

Come Together

Seeso did a top version of this song. That’s a great example of how to fill out a riff to make it work as a full song on the ukulele. But for our purposes, I’ve stuck with the simpler single note version.

Day Tripper

For this tab, I’ve taken advantage of the re-entrant string and barred my first finger across the third fret after the first note. I use my thumb to pick the G and C strings, my index finger on the E string and middle finger on the A string.

To go along with the ukulele songs list, I’ve put together a list of the instrumental ukulele tunes that are most associated with the ukulele here:

Ukulele Music

The list was a bit harder to get together than the ukulele song list, but I think it gives a good overview of the instrumental side of the ukulele. I’ve included links to tab where possible: I don’t think anyone has used a sentence more often than I’ve used ‘Dominator has the tab’ on that page. Dom’s tabs are all very high standard, difficult to play tabs. So, there’s a good chance I might put together arrangements aimed at mere mortals.

If you think you think I’ve made a glaring omission (very likely), leave a comment on this post and let everyone know.

The next list I’ll be working on is the Ukul-A-List: a list of the world’s best and biggest ukulelists. But it won’t just be the shredders. I’ll probably be breaking it down into different sections. As ever, let me know if you’ve got any suggestions. Perhaps I should run a poll on who is the greatest ever ukulele player.

Ace of Spades has to be one of the most air-guitared riffs in history.

The riff isn’t too hard to play on the uke. The only problem is the speed. Because it’s fast, it’s much easier to play it by strumming rather than fingerpicking (even when you’re only playing one note). Make sure you have the other strings muted (the G-string with your thumb and the E and A strings with your fingers).

The strumming pattern is down, down, up, up, down for the single notes (and all downs for the double notes).