Finally, a beginner’s ukulele book that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

I’ve been moaning about the quality of ukulele beginner books for a while now. They all seem very dated in the songs they select and nowhere near comprehensive enough to cover everything a beginner should know when they out. Luckily, Mike Dickison (he of Mike’s Ukulele Page) has written the book that the ukulele deserves. He covers the basics comprehensively, but what really makes it stand out is that he conveys where the ukulele scene is at right now. There are chords for ukulele classics (Five Foot Two, Ukulele Lady), uke/punk crossovers (Anarchy in the UK, Blitzkrieg Bop) and indie ukulele (Ukulele Me).

All the basic chording, strumming and picking are put across effectively and concisely with top notch illustrations (not surprisingly).

As well as the playing side, he also covers the other essential parts of the modern uke scene that none of the other books mention: ukulele clubs, recording yourself on your computer and ukuleles on the net.

The book does have a New Zealand focus (I’m ashamed to admit that I couldn’t have named the New Zealand national anthem in either language before reading the book), but set your New Zealand prejudices aside. It deserves to get picked up and adapted by an International publisher as it’s by far the best introduction to the ukulele I’ve ever read.

Mike will be putting up extracts from the book here and you can order it online here.

To answer Vampire Weekend’s question, Lynne Truss and no one else. But plenty, of people, give a, fuck about, Vampire Weekend,s Oxford Comma, so I decided, to give it, a write, up,

Dead simple chords for this one (G, C, D and Am). And the first part of the solo works really well as a ukulele strumming solo.

The easiest way to play this is to keep your first finger barred across at the 7th fret the whole way.

This year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival kicks off this Sunday and, as ever, there are a handful of uke acts plying their wares.

Learn to Play the Ukulele in Under an Hour (How George Formby Saved My Life)

Donal Coonan (from Channel 4’s thisisaknife) and Sam Brown (not Joe Brown’s daughter) set out to show the joys of the ukulele by teaching the entire audience to play the ukulele in under an hour. Ably assisted by Sally Phillips and her ukulele machine.

Venue: Gilded Balloon

Sideshow is billed as “The Weirdest Show on Earth” and featuring, “freaks, outcasts, and attention seekers.” For some reason, they thought Jimmy from the Bobby McGee’s would fit right in. The presence of a great number of bendy and busty women convinced him to join them in Edinburgh.

Nigel Birch in Dancing On Your Grave

Or The Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs present ‘Dancing On Your Grave’ featuring Corpse De Ballet to give it its full title.

Nigel Burch has been strumming on his banjolele the Flea-Pit Orchestra for more than a decade. This year he’s been providing musical back up to The Cholmondeleys‘s twisted music hall show.

Venue: Assembly @ George Street

Liz Bentley-On-Sea

I wrote about Liz Bentley when she appeared at last years festival. This year she’ll be some aquatic strumming at the Sweet Grassmarket Swimming Pool.

MP3

Transatlantic comedy adaptations are usually a catastrophic failure (Coupling and IT Crowd are two that leap immediately to mind) but both versions of The Office are great. I may well be lynched for saying this, but I actually prefer the US version of The Office to the British one. The only thing I don’t like about both Offices is the way Jim/Tim is held up as a kind of hero. He’s much more of a loser than Micheal/David and Dwight/Gareth who actually seem to enjoy their lives and their jobs. And, worst of all, he takes his frustrations out by bullying people. Anyone with half a brain can see that Dwight is the real hero for being himself no matter how out of step with the rest of the world that might be. Anyhoo, on to matters musical.

The theme tune translates fairly well to the uke, but there are some tricky parts. There are some rapid notes on the A string that have to be picked alternately by the index and middle finger (like you’re doing a running man with your fingers). Also, the run at the end goes up to the 17th fret. My uke doesn’t have a 17th fret, so I had to do a bit of fretless playing. Alternatively, you could give it a shorter ending such as this:

The boys and their fretboard wankery are back with avengeance this week with videos from James Hill, Aldrine Guerrero, Dominator, Takashi Nakamura and Bobby Tomei.

In other news, the Ukulele versus Major League Baseball campaign is gaining momentum.

Aldrine Guerrero – Bodysurfing

There are a bunch more UU tour videos here.

James Hill – Summertime

Aldrine, Ryan and Dominator – Reason

KokoKaina – The Meadow

Rachel Goodrich – If Your Mine

Takashi Nakamura – Spanish Guitar and Ukulele Battle

Ken Middleton – The Colosseum Hornpipe

Fabio Koryu Calabro – Zbylenka Tournée

Bobby Tomei – E Ku’u Morning Dew

Poopy Lungstuffing – Why Don’t You Do Right?

The Be Arthurs – Rock Your Body

Three cheers for the credit crunch. Hip, hip. Hazzah!. Hip, hip. Hazzah!. Hip, hip. Hazzah!.

While the papers are full of doom and gloom about job losses and repossessions, the real story of the credit crunch is that eBay is crammed with people selling off their vintage ukulele collecions. Duane Hielman is selling off a pile of vintage ukes from a private collection. All ukes start at $1. Pick of the current crop are a LeDomino and an unnamed koa concert ukulele.

This seller is also selling off the family jewels including a Kumalae 3K.

This seller is flogging a friend’s instrument collection. A number of tenor Martins have already been and gone, but there’s a soprano and a baritone still left.

Of course, if the credit crunch isn’t biting you at all, you could spend a few hundred dollars on a Hello Kitty ukulele. How can they charge that much?

You don’t see K Wave ukuleles on eBay very often, but there’s one up for sale right now here.

Mike’s ukulele book Kiwi Ukulele is out now. You can buy it here. The book has endorsements from Age Pryor and George from the UOoGB, to which I can add my whole hearted supported (more on that in the not too distant future).

ezFolk has a new blog look. As an aside/hissy-fit, is it just my self interest speaking or is it a bit off that general sites like ezFolk and Curt Sheller are included in the Top 50 Ukulele Sites list?

First ever Wine Country Ukulele Festival in Napa Valley featuring workshops and performances from the likes of Herb Ohta, Jr., Keoki Kahumoku, Ralph Shaw, and James Hill.

HawaiiMusicSupply has just put up a selection of ukulele tutorials.

Does anyone know anything about Oly Arkle? His From Paris to Barcelona is rather magnificent. All I’ve been able to find out is that he’s French and he looks like this.

I long ago gave up reading ‘news’ pieces about Jake Shimabukuro, they all say the same thing. Luckily, Gary is far more diligent than I am. He found out that Jake’s new album will include a uke/cello duet and a ukulele string quartet. Speaking of Jake, Cover Me has an mp3 of his version of Time After Time.

If you’ve been watching closely, you’ll know I’m a fan of Poopy Lungstuffing. It turns out that she was a sort of proto-Avril Lavigne with the band Rosebud. This was the song as it was and here it is now. A big improvement I’d say.

The Offspring’s Original Prankster on Uker Tabs.

Take care of your hands.

Ukulala gets his make-out socks on for the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

I’m Yours on the world’s smallest ukulele.

Boodle Am Shake was written by Jack Palmer and Spencer Williams in 1926 and has been covered by a number of people since including John Fahey and The Grateful Dead. Lil Rev recently put up a ukulele version that works really well for ukulelists looking to get more familiar with chords further up the neck.

It’s well worth taking a note of the different chord inversions that crop up in the tune: the C7 played at the fifth fret (at the beginning) and the 1st position (at the end of the verse); and the G7 played open and at the 7th fret. When you’re chord soloing, you can create something much more interesting with these variations to hand.

In the instrumental section, he substitutes this descending part for the chords:

Visit Lil Rev’s Internet Junction and don’t miss his article on the ukulele and old time country music.

Compared to tabs, reading standard notation is a complete pain in the arse. For some reason, there are a few ukulele books that use only standard notation (such as the Jumpin’ Jim books and some of the Ukulele Masters series). I thought I’d knock together a short post in the hope of making all those squiggles and splatters a little more decipherable.

There are certain similarities with tab such as rhythms and repeats (there’s a full guide to reading ukulele tab here). So I’m just going over how musical notation indicates pitch.

Like tab, there are a bunch of horizontal lines (known as a stave), but that’s where the similarity ends. Notes are indicated by the position of the dots: the higher up the stave a dot is, the higher the note. The dots can appear on the lines or between them. Each time you shift up a position, you go up to the next white key on the piano (C,D,E,F,G,A,B etc.)

Here are the notes as they compare to the tab

Whether the stems of the notes go up or down doesn’t make any difference at all.

The notes that fall in between the lines spell “FACE” from bottom to top.

The notes on the lines spell “EGBDF”. If you’re not familiar with the word ‘egbdf’, there are plenty of mnemonics to remember it such as Every Good Boy Deserves Football (or any other f-word you think a boy might enjoy).

On the uke, there are two notes that fall below this: C and D. The D hangs underneath the stave, and the C is on a line drawn underneath it.

Like tab, you read music left to right with notes that are vertical are played at the same time e.g.

You might have noticed that none of the notes we’ve discussed are sharp or flat. Sharps and flats are indicated with a sharp (#) or flat (b) before the note like this:

When it comes to the ukulele, standard notation has some serious shortcomings. For one, it can’t tell you which string you’re supposed to be playing a note on (a big drawback since the uke has so many options for playing the same notes). For instance, Example 1 could equally be played like this:

Or any of a whole array of other ways.

Zach Condon quite often finishes off Beirut gigs with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Although his version is closer to Jeff Buckley’s (one of the best cover versions ever recorded).

The chords are fairly simple. One thing he does a few times in the song (and loads of times in his own songs) is play the F chord with the G string open, then hammer on at the second fret. He does a similar thing with the G chord. This time the A string is left open then hammered on.

I’ve included two versions of Am in the song (one with the A string open and one with it at the third fret). He always uses the third fret version on the C – Am change that you hear at the beginning. He throws in the easier version on a few occasions towards the end.

Kudos to Leonard Cohen for making my job easier by describing the chords in the lyrics. Why can’t all songwriters be so helpful?

Suggested Strumming

Any simple 3/4 pattern will see you through. A good one to start out with is:

d – d u d –

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More Beirut Tab and Chords
Instrumental tab for Hallelujah