This week, I thought I’d go over the easiest scale around. It only has five notes in – as the ancient Romans amongst you will have already worked out. It’s also used almost exclusively in blues and rock music.

C Minor Pentatonic

The C minor pentatonic looks like this on the fretboard:

This in tab:

And sounds like this:

C Minor Pentatonic (MP3)

The minor pentatonic is a great scale to improvise with – particularly with bluesy songs. Here’s me playing around with the notes in this pattern.

C Minor Pentatonic Improvisation (MP3)

The end lick in that is easy to play and very effective. Here’s the tab of it:

D Minor Pentatonic

As with the major scale, the minor pentatonic pattern can be moved up the neck to fit with whichever key you’re playing in. Find the root note on the C string and start the pattern from there. For example, if you’re playing in the key of D minor, start the pattern on the second fret so it looks like this on the fretboard:

And this in tab:

F Minor Pentatonic

Similarly for F minor, you start on the fifth fret of the C string like this:

And this:

If you can get this scale under your fingers, next week’s scale – the blues scale – will be a doddle.

If you want to learn more stuff you can do with this scale, check out my Blues Ukulele ebook.

A while back I was knocked out by a video of Priscilla Ahn playing a ukulele song. But there wasn’t any indication of what it’s called. I begged for more information but didn’t get any. Luckily for all of us, the song has cropped up on her new album A Good Day and I couldn’t resist working it out.

She’s tuned down half a step for the studio and the live versions (but I’ve kept the chord names in C tuning to save confusion). The song uses some slightly unusual chords (C6, G9, F6). There are also two versions of the C6 chord (one with all the strings open and one in the third position). She seems to use these interchangeably on the live versions, but I’ve tabbed out the version on the record.

There’s an interesting move on the ‘Bubbles…’ part where she cycles through the diminished chords. All these chords are the same shape yet have notes in them (A, Eb, F# and C). Check if you don’t believe me (and have absolutely nothing going on in your life).

After that there’s a little single note run which goes something like this:

For the final run part of the song, she stops strumming and starts picking. The picking pattern goes like this:

If you need more information on picking patterns, sign up for the How to Play Ukulele mailing list.

Quick reminder: You’ve got until midnight on Sunday to review your ukulele and win a Kala pineapple.

Here’s how it goes sometimes: I hear some ukulele music I really like, I ask the person if they mind answering a few questions, they say ‘go ahead’, I send them some questions, they realise the questions are idiotic and offensive and I never hear from them again. I can’t offer much in the way of facts with these two, but you should definitely check out the music.

Madame Pamita

Madame Pamita – Pink Pocketbook (MP3)
Madame Pamita – Love Is Good (MP3)
Madame Pamita – No Bad News (MP3) via her website

Pamela Moore is not short of bands or genres. Her musical credits include surf guitar with The Neputas, ole time country with The Dime Box Band, punk with the Birdinumnums and all-girl Cheap Trick covers with Cheap Chick. She also has two ukulele featuring acts: The Very Special (jingles for things that should have jingles but have been overlooked by the advertising industry) and Madame Pamita (a perfect mix of ukuleles and spiritualism). Almost as entertaining as her music is her Flickr account with old time gentleman musicians and old time lady musicians

Entertainment for the Braindead

Entertainment for the Braindead’s Hypersomnia is a quite brilliant album of drowsy, spaced out, acoustic songs. You can download it all for free here and buy the CD here.

Standout ukulele tracks: Sleep, Winter
Standout non-uke tracks: Ordinary Sunday, Home

MP3

Because of my anti-football prejudice, I’d never considered tabbing this out before. With the final of Euro 2008 today (that’s soccerball to you North Americans), I thought it would be fitting and, blow me down, it could have been written for the ukulele. It also makes for a great football tune medley when it’s followed by Stars and Stripes Forever (AKA ‘Ere We Go).

Most of it is fairly simple strumming. The trickiest bits are the places where you switch from strumming to fingerpicking and the jump up to the third fret. But it’s well worth practicing (if you’re British at least).

Some really good stuff this week. I was going to include Johnny Marvin singing If You Don’t Love Me but I couldn’t embed it. So you’ll just have to go over and watch it.

Jem Cooke – Miss You Read the rest of this entry »

There have been three Jupiter Creek ukuleles crop up on eBay this week. The baritone has gone already, but you still have a shot at a concert and a tenor. There’s also a soprano for sale on eBay France.

It’s not often you see RISAs on eBay, but there’s a Meltocaster on there right now. It’s a guitarlele rather than a uke, though. And I still can’t quite come to terms with that shape.

The RISA isn’t the only strangely shaped ukulele on eBay at the moment. There are ukes shaped like a biscuit tin (strangely inelegant for a Lyon and Healy ukulele), a teardrop (I’m pretty sure that’s also a Lyon and Healy: a Venetian ukulele) and, best of all, an aeroplane.

It’s not often that there’s a ukulele I’m lusting after more than one shaped like an aeroplane, but this week that’s the case. MGM has a James Hill Signature JSM-2 ukulele up for sale right now (made by G String). I can always kid myself that if I had one, I’d play just like James Hill and no one can prove otherwise.

There’s a banjo ukulele collector who’s selling off his collection on eBay UK. There’s a Gibson UB3, a Maybell, a Bruno (made by Harmony ukuleles and an Avalon. All look very well cared for.

Most ridiculous ukulele/cavaquinho of the week: Del Vecchio Resonator. Even more strange than the uke itself is the video that’s presumably made to help sell it.

Ukulele Tonya covers the Portland Ukulele Festival.

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain interviewed on Radio 4 and written about in the Daily Express.

Todd talks to GUGUG on Folkster’s Findings.

The Rip by Portishead on Uker Tabs.

MP3s: Dent May on Fantastic Avenue, Tada Tátá on Swedesplease, Ain’t Superstitious, But has George Harrison’s Rising Sun.

“lately all I do is talk about my ukulele, but I honestly love it more than life. sometimes I just hold it to my heart and sigh because I love it so. I think maybe I’ll be a good mother if I love an instrument this much?” Quote from probably the coolest girl on the planet.

Cecil Myers the dealer with a heart.

YouTube’s little ukulele video feature made me reassess this song. I’d skipped over it fairly quickly the first time round – there are a lot of ukulele videos to watch – but I shouldn’t have, it’s a damn fine song (no such change of heart over Where Your Scar Is though) and it’s already inspired its own ukulele tribute parody.

For this song Lauren and Lena are tuned to DGBE: baritone/guitar tuning – five frets lower than the standard ukulele tuning. Other than that, the chords are pretty easy. Much easier than they make them look.

Buy stuff at Lauren Fairweather’s MySpace.

When I did my ukulele scales posts there were a few people who didn’t have a clue what it was all about. So, I thought I’d go back to basics and cover it from there.

The most common scale in all music is the major scale. You’ll hear it all over the place (pretty much every nursery rhyme, Christmas carol and national anthem uses it) and it’s the basis of all chords.

The major scale creates a particular pattern on the ukulele. This pattern can be moved up and down the neck depending on which key you play in.

C Major Scale

The most important note to concentrate on is the root note – the first one played and the last one played. For example, The C major scale starts on the open C string and ends on the A string, third fret. The pattern looks like this on the fretboard:

The tab looks like this:

And sounds like this:

There are lots of ways you can use the major scale. One is for improvising a solo. In the following snippet, I’m improvising a little melody with the chords C, F and G and using only notes in the major scale pattern.

D Major Scale

For the D major scale, you use exactly the same pattern but start on a D note (C string second fret) and end on a D note (A string, fifth fret). Giving you this:

F Major Scale

Moving that pattern up and down the fretboard will give you a major scale wherever you use it. Whichever key you want to play the major scale in, find that note on the C string and start the pattern from there.

For example, to get the F major scale, you start the scale pattern on the fifth fret of the c string which gives you this pattern:

This tab:

And sounds like this:

Love Shack has to be one of the funnest songs there has ever been. The guitar part is played mostly on the top three strings and above the fifth fret, so it fits perfectly on the uke.

There are two main parts in the song. The first is the verse part which alternates between C and Bb. The rhythm of it varies throughout, but the basis of it is this:

Verse Midi

The most important thing is to keep the chord stabs short and funky. Do this by releasing the pressure on your fretting hand soon after strumming (but leave them touching the string). The only time you let the strummed chords ring is when you’re sliding them.

The chorus part is simply strummed chords. I play them all with down strums. After the chorus is my favorite part. It requires you to bend the E string up (by pushing it towards your head). I’ve tabbed it as being bent by half a step (so it sounds one fret higher than it actually is), but you don’t have to be that accurate in this case – it’s more important to get that little rasp into it.

Chorus Midi

Requested by Jeff.