There are quite a few interesting ukes for sale on eBay UK right now. Hank’s Guitar Shop has a bunch of interesting ukuleles including Martins, Kamakas, KoAlohas, Fleas and Flukes.
Mahalo have been making Gibson Flying V style ukes for a while and now they’ve moved on to Les Pauls. You can buy them in Cherry and Black .
Also on eBay UK is this Gibson which has been attacked with a drill, but might still be worth watching.
Still in the UK, but confusingly on ebay US, is this strange “Trad Jazz Special” plastic ukulele.
There seems to be even more photos of topless ukulele girls than usual this week, but the photo that really caught my attention was this photo of a German boy from 1866. As well as the distractions of the hat and thrown, that’s a very interesting instrument he has there.
Google have recently released their Wikipedia-killer, Google Knol. The idea, I think, is that one person writes the knol and others can come along and edit it. I gave it a test run and wrote one on ukulele history. I’ve left it fairly sparse, so feel free to add to it (and any inaccuracies you might find are there on purpose to get people involved, honest).
This song is way too much fun. I’ve got a sore strumming finger after playing along with this on too hard and too long. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that Shorty Long’s Pops Bayless and Bob Guz are ukulele legends.
I couldn’t find Shorty Long’s version streaming anywhere. You can listen to a snippet here
or listen to this inferior version in another key here. But I’d suggest you buy it as it’s well worth 99c of anyone’s money.
Vipermad is made up of the same chord progression played in three different keys: C, F and Bb. This set of chords crop up all the time in these hokum type songs. It’s well worth setting them to memory. I’m a little ashamed at how long it took me to get the chords for the Bb section. I knew the other sets of by heart, but I don’t remember ever playing these in Bb before. They work well on the uke though.
I admit it, I’m overexcited about the Olympics starting. I’m not much of a sports fan, but the Olympics gets me hooked every time. Which is why I took a little time out from writing the blues ebook (that I’ve promised loads of people is coming but is really big and involved) to have a bit of fun arranging various national anthems for the uke and putting them in an ebook.
I’ve written up eight anthems chosen by the countries that visit Uke Hunt the most: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the UK, the USA plus Russia (for the benefit of my many hundred Communist readers).
I’ve kept the arrangements as simple as I could to make sure they’re accessible. If you’re fairly new to fingerpicking, they’re a good place to start. To give you an idea of the difficulty level, here’s my arrangement of Scotland the Brave:
What you get: A zip file containing a pdf file with all the tabs and notes for each anthem, individual pdfs of the tab for each tune, mp3s of all the anthems. Once you’ve completed your payment, you’ll be taken to the download page where you can get it all.
I think this is the fastest turnaround from first listen to post up since FotC’s Mermaids. It’s a fantastic song (and top notch video). A fact that wasn’t lost on the people of class and good taste who read the blog and pummelled me with chord requests. Way ahead of you guys.
There wasn’t enough room to write Asus4add9 all over the place. So wherever you see A49 use 4200. There’s also the A(alt) chord (or Aa). It’s just a plain A chord but I’ve called it that to distinguish it from the more common A chord shape.
Anyone who saw the clips from the UKEit Festival will know that Italy has a very healthy ukulele scene going on right now and it’s in no small part due to, radio and TV stars, Cappa & Drago. With their UKEit site, they’ve set out to, “create an original Italian ukulele scene, starting with those who have already mastered the instrument, working in the live scene and making records, as well as welcoming other artists from all sorts of musical backgrounds to experiment on the four strings.” And if the festival wasn’t enough to convince you they’ve really got something going on, then the CD UKEit Volume Uno should do they trick.
There’s a great variety of styles on the CD. Along with more traditional ukulele fare, there’s hip hop uke from Frankie Hi-NRG MC and Scampaforce sounding like Daft Punk’s long lost ukulele song. Other tandout tracks include Thomas Blackthorne’s cover of Tom Waits’s I Don’t Want To Grow Up (which, like all the tracks on the album, is sung in Italian), Cappo & Drago’s Paroxetina 20mg and
Enrico Farnedi’s Lena (which you can hear on his MySpace).
But highlight of the album is the incredible voice of Musica Nuda’s Petra Magoni covering Un Calpo Al Cuore (with Gaetano Cappa on uke duties) which, I should point out, isn’t anywhere near as far out as the performance in that video but just as wonderfully melodramatic.
He inspired me to tab out a ukulele duet of their version. It looks like he’s in D tuning, but I’ve written it up in C. This version differs significantly from the original, so I’ll probably do a full uke version at some point in the future.
I had a nightmare time deciding which video to feature on the front page this week. I couldn’t decide between Rod Thomas’s ukulele pop, the eagerly anticipated – by me at least – return of Hailey Wojcik and Poopy Lungstuffing’s cover of The Kink’s Oh Demon Alcohol (many times better than the pretty terrible original). Read the rest of this entry »
Purple is obviously this season’s colour. Kanile’a are producing a range called ‘Exotic ukuleles’ and a purple heart wood tenor ukulele has cropped up on eBay. This purple SG-alike is described as a ‘four string guitar’, but with a scale length of 19.5″ it’s fair to call it baritone ukulele.
A couple of nice, vintage Hawaiian ukes: 1927 Kumalae and a Nunes Taropatch.
If this banjolele looks like it’s been through the wars, that’s because it has. According to the etching on the uke, it was at the Somme during WW1. As much as I love the uke, I think lugging that thing around the trenches would be a hassle I wouldn’t need. But obviously this is my lack of battle experience talking as this photo from WW2 features a very similar 8 string banjolele.
Prize for most kitsch item I have ever seen goes to this Marilyn Monroe ukulele strumming figurine.
Herald Tribune interviews the guy who took the infamous picture of Neil Armstrong strumming his ukulele on return from the moon.
ukebucket have just released two albums: one of originals, Bad Ukulele, and one of covers, Covered. You can download the covers album for free here. And buy the originals album, and I can tell you it’s worth it, here (although if you’re stuck in the 1920s and want a rotating disc, you’ll have to wait a while).
