Duane Heilman of Black Bear has made some strange ukuleles in the past, but he’s completely lost his mind with his latest ukulele. Inspired by the equally nutty Novax guitars, it’s a tenor scale ukulele on the upper edge of the fretboard and concert scale ukulele on bottom. I hate to think of the maths involved in that.

Relatively tame by comparison are an electric Blue Star Konablaster, and a Flying V made by Bob Hurney. I’ve no idea who Bob Hurney is, but the turtle shaped hole makes guess he’s something to do with Kanilea (who use a very similar turtle design).

A couple of National Ukuleles: This rather lovely Koa National has already been sold, but there’s a banana hued National still up for grabs.

Sweetest ukulele this week is this Kamaka soprano.

The baritone ukulele site Buke has been shut down. It did have a note saying it was for copyright reasons (which makes me nervous). I tried to email Roger to find out more, but his email wasn’t working. It’s a real shame to see it go. Anyone know any more?

With the recent UKEit festival, it’s clear good things are happening with the ukulele in Italy. You can pick up a CD of Italian ukulele acts. And there’s an Italian blog with uke chords here including Pink Martini and Hank Williams (don’t scroll too far down if you want to keep things entirely work safe).

A batch of Bluegrass ukulele tabs on Uker Tabs from Ken Middleton.

Treat yourself to a Ukulele Hero T-Shirt (or a Kazoo Hero T-Shirt if that’s more your speed).
UPDATE: Thanks to Jan for pointing out you can get a 25% discount if you sign up on this page (plenty more ‘Hero’ style tees on there too).

Nellie McKay plays her ukulele for TED (Thanks to Paul, Garatth and Catherine from SUJ).

Friend of Uke Hunt, Heather will be hosting a ukulele special on her show on CJSR tonight at 6 p.m., MST. You can listen live here or listen again here (find Q Transmissions).

Hoosierhiver tells you why your ukulele won’t stay in tune.

Mirah‘s new album, The Old Days Feeling, is more than a little bit brilliant. There are three uke tracks (Dreamboat, Take Me Out Riding and Birthday Present) and you can download Lone Star free on Amazon.

Map of Bosko and Honey’s Ukulele Safari.

Mike McCready (of Pearl Jam) has a page of ukulele tabs on his site including Soon Forget and The Who’s Blue, Red, Grey. (Thanks to Daniel)

Cool Hand Uke’s iPhone ringtones.

MP3s: New track, Megaman 9, from Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra, Allo, Darlin on Indietracks, Herohill has Jon and Roy’s High on a Hill.

This might be the reason God made sure there was plenty of distance between Hawaii and Australia.

There’s no ukulele on the album version of Rilo Kiley’s Ripchord but, judging by the clips on YouTube, it’s become a ukulele mainstay in their live show with their guitarist Blake Sennett taking on uke and vocal duties. It seems that guitarists playing the uke move up and down the neck much more often than born ukulele players. You can see it songs like this and Panic at the Disco’s Friends in Holy Spaces.

A couple of things to look out for in the chord chart. First, There’s a chord I’ve labeled A5. It’s not strictly an A5 chord but an A chord. I’ve called it this to distinguish it from the other A chord in the song.

The second, and the trickiest part of the song, is the A6 chord in the intro. It’s a big stretch and he fluffs it a little himself. It’s such a big stretch I couldn’t fit in all on the chord diagram. The diagram shows the note on the eight fret of the A string. It actually needs to be on the ninth.

This would be a simpler way of playing it.

Midi

Power chords are about the simplest chords to play – so simple the experts don’t really consider them chords at all.

They’re made up of just two notes: the root and the fifth (which is why you’ll often see them referred to as C5, D5 etc). You can find the fifth of any note by going up seven frets. For example, the C power chord (C5) is made up of C and, seven frets higher, G. Which is just the bottom two strings open.

You can create power chords all the way up the neck by playing the C and G strings at the same fret. So, playing the G and C strings at the fifth fret will give you an F5 chord.

There are plenty of classic rock riffs that have been built on just these two note power chords such as Iron Man and Smoke on the Water.

You can beef the power chords up by doubling the notes on other strings e.g. the C and G notes of the C5 chord can also be found on the third fret of the E and A strings giving you this:

There are plenty of other ways to play power chords too. Here’s a list:

Make sure you don’t play the strings that have an ‘x’ at the top of them. For the A#5 and B5 chords, you have to stop the C string ringing by either resting the tip of your index finger or the underside of your ring finger (of your fretting hand) against it.

This song is the latest colloboration between Uke Hunt and Ukulala. So here’s Laz’s video tutorial:

I’m sure you all know who Bosko and Honey are. Their Ukulele Safari has been the uke highlight of the year so far. What you might not know is that they have just released an album Just Quietly.

The album features six of Bosko and Honey’s original instrumental tracks including the blistering Black Mountain Breakdown. If you sign up as a member you can download an mp3 of the track Samidare.

Go here to buy the album and support them in their Ukulele Safari. My copy is on its way right now.

I was all ready to write up Pearl Jam’s ukulele song Soon Forget, until I started getting harassed for Rise from the soundtrack of Into the Wild. And why not? It’s a magnificent song.

Rise is played on the mandolin. The mandolin is tuned in fifths (GDAE) which makes it quite tricky to transfer to the uke, so I’ve done two versions of the chords. One of them is just the very basic chords (G, C and D).

In the other I’ve done my best to recreate what he’s playing on the mandolin and make it a bit more uke friendly. The basic chords remain the same but there are notes added on to give it extra flavour (and also to match the melody in parts).

The best thing to do is take a look at both versions and come up with your own favourite way to play it. I think using the Cadd9 is pretty much essential (and easy) and the C C-5 C5 C6 rising bit sounds great.

Uke Gal Carol has done an excellent version of Rise which you can listen to here.

Requested by Andrew, Rilrod and Whitney

Isn’t it strange how many ukulele players were christened ‘Ukulele’. Videos this week from Ukuleles Ike, Bartt, Igor and Zaza along with plenty of people who aren’t called ‘Ukulele’ but play it all the same.

Ukulele Bartt and Oscar J Valdez – Blue Suede Shoes Read the rest of this entry »

And the winner is *Trumpets Blaze*:

Bill Weigel for his review of the Ohana CK-50G Concert Ukulele.

It was a really tough decision. There were a load of great entires – I wanted at least six people to win the uke. I have to give special mention to Roberto Katigbak and Ken Middleton for their reviews.

I don’t think I can ever do another competition because I’m hopeless at deciding who wins – I can’t take the stress of all that responsibility. That’s why I’ve ended up with double the number of runners up that I’d intended.

Runners Up

Shelley Rickey, Mike Via, Todd Baio, David Massop, Ken Middleton, Jimmy McGee, Alan Brandt, Jimmy (dinoshaur), Garry Copeland, Cary Corse, Linda Wilson, Lonna Brockway, Emily Reeve, Martin Smith, Roberto Katigbak.

Additional Winners

There were a few videos that deserved a prize for bringing a huge grin to my face. Henceforth to be known as The Ventriclemouse Award for All Round Fantasticness in honour of Anne’s review of the Lanikai soprano LU-21P which is about the only work of poetry I’ve ever enjoyed. Even the comments are good (plus she got a comment from Jacob Borshard which makes me insanely jealous).

Jack33’s guide to getting a good sound out of a Mahalo
Paulina Sinaga’s Ohana review (the only person to work out that ‘Waa-waa-wee-waa’ was the instant ‘win a prize’ code word).
Michelle Flaherty’s news report.
Lee Robertson’s Fluke review.

If your name is here and you haven’t seen an email from me, let me know in the comments and I’ll get it to you.

A big thanks to Jason of ukulele for sale for providing the big prize. He’s still got a few ukes left in his closing down sale, so if you missed out on the Pineapple, you can still grab Kala Soprano or a Lanikai LU-21T.

Some dizzyingly expensive instruments from MGM this week: a pair of Lyon and Healy 5k ukuleles $22,000 the pair, and a John D’Angelico Tiple at $30,000.

On the subject of tiples, there’s a Kamaka Tiple up for sale.

The cavalcade of oddly shaped Lyon and Healy ukuleles continues this week with a Lyon and Healy bell shaped uke. As I write, bidding is lower than the price of one of Oscar Schmidt‘s bell ukulele modern copies.

Six Reasons I Wouldn’t Buy a Santini/Morelli Ukulele

1) “Hand Built by a Master Luthier” – really?
3) What the hell happened at the bottom of the fretboard? That’s the picture they use to advertise it? This is the work of a ‘Master Luthier’?
3) I could only find them for sale via one distributor.
4) This looks very photoshopped to me.
5) ‘Teacher Approved’ Thank God for that.
6) They don’t seem to have any ideas of their own.