I love Google. It’s about the most fantastically useful product there is and it’s free. And it sends me more people than anyone else. AND it keeps coming up with little gadgets that I can’t help but test out. The latest one I’ve taken advantage of is Google Custom Search to create this:
You type in the band or song you want to play on the uke and it searches the trusted ukulele sites for tabs and chords for that song. I haven’t decided whether it’s useful or not. But, it’s there if you want to test it out.
Google Sets is a strange one. You type in a few words and it spits out more words in the same group. I tested it out out with “tenor, soprano, concert” and it came up with the right answer.
Jonathan Coulton has already put up the chords for the tune he wrote for the game Portal. But the J-Dog don’t roll with tabs. So I thought I’d have a stab the fingerpicking bit in the first part of the song.
The song is played on a low-G ukulele and the picking pattern is T, I, M, I (thumb, index, middle, index). This pattern makes up the majority of the first section of the song:
Then moves on to this pattern for the turnaround:
Far be it from me to tell Jonathan Coulton how he plays his own songs, but I’m fairly sure there’s a 7th note in that A chord. He has it as a plain A chord on his write up of the chords, so I may be completely wrong.
The second time around, the series finishes off with a sweep of a Bbmaj7 chord.
If you don’t have a low-G uke, you can play it the sweetafton way. She uses the same chords but the picking pattern is slightly different.
Videos from two quite sickeningly talented 12 year olds this week along with more gnarled and creased performers such as the New England Ukulele Orchestra, Aaron Keim, Victoria Vox and a bunch more.
There seems to be an affinity between dolphins and ukuleles. I don’t know why dolphins are chosen so often over other animals. Makala ukuleles deck themselves out with dolphin bridges, there’s this custom ukulele from Todaro and this Tahitian ukulele.
Another animal on the uke: black bears. There are two new ukuleles from Duane Heilman of Black Bear Ukuleles. One’s a concert size the other a baritone. And there are also a couple of his old ukes available from other sellers a Kamaka style pineapple ukulele and a Lyon & Healy 5K Shrine replica with its distinctive bowed-out triangle shape.
After all their exposure from Jason Castro’s performance on American Idol, Oscar Schmidt are going all out with the koa OU280. At $649, it’s a big step up from the budget ukuleles they’re associated with. Also new from Oscar Schmidt is an electrified version of the OU5 (the ukulele played by Jason Castro).
Weymann ukuleles are best know for their banjos and banjo ukes but they also sold wooden ukes made, at certain times at least, by Martin. There’s one on eBay at the moment, and there’s not much argument that it’s a Martin.
Fong Songs has an mp3 of Jake Shimabukuro doing Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. And Indiemuse has Broadcast 2000’s Get Up and Go (best know to UK ukers as that song off of the e.on ad).
Almost all the ukulele tuning notes online seem to be for standard tuning. So I thought I’d knock together tuning notes for some more out of the way tunings.
Re-entrant C-tuning
g,C,E,A
Sometimes referred to as standard tuning. It’s the most common ukulele tuning.
Re-entrant D-tuning
a,D,F#,B
Used to be more popular than it is now. Most of the old song sheets from the ukulele heyday are in D-tuning. Nowadays, the only place I really see it used often is with Formby acolytes.
Low-G Tuning
G,C,E,A
This tuning (with the g string an octave lower than in standard tuning) is becoming more popular – particularly with Hawaiian players. It offers a greater choice of base notes which can fill out the sound when you are playing solo ukulele. This tuning is most often used on tenor ukuleles.
Should probably be called the ‘Canadian tuning’. It’s used extensively by James Hill and Chalmers Doane. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember it being used anywhere else.
Slack-Key Tuning
g,C,E,G
The tuning is most often used in the slack-key style of playing (from Hawaii). The A string is tuned down a whole step to G. This produces a C chord when all the strings are played open. The G string can be either low or high (in this case, it’s high).
Baritone Tuning
D,G,B,E
The baritone ukulele strings are usually tuned the same as the top four strings as the guitar: with the strings going from low to high. It is possible to buy strings for baritone ukulele that allow you to play in re-entrant tuning with a high-D
B-Tuning
The standard C-tuning with each string tuned down half a step (one fret). It’s particularly useful for playing in uke unfriendly keys like B and E which often crop up in guitar-based songs.
C#Tuning
The standard ukulele C-tuning tuned up half a step (one fret). So it’s half way between C and D tuning. You can recreate this tuning on a C-tuned uke with less hassle by putting a capo on the first fret.
Other Tuning Methods
Using a Tuner
If you don’t trust your ear to tune the uke (or you want to check you’ve got it right), you can use a tuner.
If you’re tuning at your computer, you can download the AP Tuner free and it will tell you the pitch of each string as you play it. The readings should be this for standard tuning:
G = G4
C = C4
E = E4
A = A4
Don’t worry about being bang on 00.0. One or two either way doesn’t matter much.
For tuning away from the computer, you can use a ukulele tuner. You can find out more about them here: ukulele tuners.
Tuning to Pitch Pipes
In days of yore, when dragons roamed the earth, there was no such thing as computers, intertubes and digital tuners. In order to tune their ukuleles, our forefathers had to toot on an ancient whistles known as pitch pipes. They work like a harmonica and a have on hole for each note of the ukulele. You blow the note and tune to it. Dead simple and they break down a lot less often than fancy digital tuners.
Tuning to a Piano
The C string of the ukulele corresponds to the middle-C of the piano. This video should help you find middle C.
Here are the other notes you’ll need:
From left to right: C, E, G, A
Tuning to a Guitar
If you’re playing with other instruments, you have to make sure you are in tune with them. Even if you’re both out, so long as you’re out by the same amount, it’ll sound right.
For standard, re-entrant tuning, you can find the tuning notes here:
G = E-string (high E-string) third fret.
C = B-string first fret.
E = E-string open.
A = E-string fifth fret.
Tuning the Ukulele to Itself
Sometimes, you’ll have nothing but your ukulele. On these occasions, you’ll have to tune the ukulele to itself. This might mean that the strings aren’t exactly right. However, so long as the strings are in tune with each other (all of them out by the same amount) it’ll sound right.
Start with the C-string. So long as it sounds like it’s in the right range, use that as your base note. Play the C-string at the fourth fret and tune the E-string to this note.
Play the E-string at the third fret and tune the G-string to that.
To get the note for the A-string, you can either play the E-string at the fifth fret, or the G-string at the second fret.
Strum through a few chords and if all sounds well, you’re good to go.
Jason Castro/Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Click here for Chords)
I never thought I’d be putting this song on the blog. But, when I realised even Simon Cowell isn’t too hard-hearted and cynical to be won over by a song’s charm, I reconsidered my position. Despite the obligatory American Idol warblings, I thought Jason Castro made a pretty good stab at the song.
His version of the chords are simpler than Brudda IZ’s – particularly since the intro is missed off – which makes it ideal for beginners. The strumming pattern varies throughout the song, but good starting place is:
Down, down (pause)
Up, down, up
Up, down, up
Up, down, up
Van Morrison picking up the ukulele for his latest album isn’t quite as incongruous as the likes of Portishead and Panic at the Disco using the uke, but it’s certainly an unexpected development.
True to the title, Van keeps this song simple. Lyrically, it’s the same old, “Walking down the street, Waaaa-hoor-hoor-king dooooown the street, ba-dap-dum-dee-dup,” he’s always been doing, and musically, the chorder is very simple. For the most part it’s just switching between F and Bb.
For the introduction, this little part is picked out (and repeated with various slight variations):
MJ Hibbett has spent most of his musical life knocking out Billy Bragg/Half Man Half Biscuit type punky numbers on mundane aspects of English life (particularly football and antiquated digital technologies) with his band The Validators. But he’s gone solo and picked up the uke for his most recent album A Million Ukeleles (sic). The album comes complete with ukulele chords for all the songs which you can download here.
Mark was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.
Q: How long have you been playing the uke and what made you take it up?
It’s been nearly two years now, as I got my first one as a birthday present. I’ve always liked the idea of them, probably due to a season of George Formby films that were on one year during the school holidays, which me and my brother lapped up when we stayed with various Nans! I also read an article online which gave some brilliant advice for playing uke – if you can’t play a chord, play an easier one, and if you can’t play an easier chord just stop playing and sing louder. That’s how i play the guitar anyway, so I thought the uke might be the instrument I was meant to play all along!
Q:What made you decide to make a solo album? How’s it different from the Validators stuff?
I always write a lot more songs that we manage to record with The Vlads, partly because we’ve all got proper grown-up lives these days and don’t have as much time as we’d like to get together to do stuff, and partly because they don’t like some songs as much as others! We were talking about this in the pub after a practice one night, and as I’d been doing some demoes in a proper studio (just round the corner from my work) Tim, our drummer, suggested that I put them out as a solo album. I think he meant it as a way of stopping me nagging them to play certain songs! I leapt on the idea, but rather than release those demoes I used it as an excuse to buy myself a new four-track!
The title track of A Million Ukeleles is the triumphant story of a teacher who sets fire to the school’s recorder collection, replaces them with ukes and sets off a country wide ukulele obsession.
Q. What’s the story behind the song A Million Ukeleles?
The idea to write it came from reading a succession of articles about how easy and fun it is for children to play the uke, combined with my own experience of playing it and loving it. The actual content, though, comes from years and years of me getting wound up about Traditional Music Teaching. When i was at school music lessons seemed to be more about dissuading kids from music – we playing boring songs on recorders and glockenspiels that made a horrible dreary noise, were forced to learn music theory and classical instruments, and if anybody stuck with it they were made to play the violin, a ludicrously difficult and unpleasant sounding instrument for a child to try and
play!
Because of that it was years and years before i discovered that, actually, making music is a piece of piss and doesn’t require a classical education. It’s EASY to make music, and the easier it is the more fun it is, and it struck me that all the difficult language, the over-valuation of technical virtuosity and sneering and rudimentary players is designed to stop people from having any fun, and keep the joy of music contained within a small elite. I know this is hardly an original observation, every ten years ago punks or rockers or whoever come out with it again, but when I started playing the ukelele and discovered how much fun it is, and also how much “serious” musicians sneer at it, it struck me that the humble uke is an ideal symbol of the power of fun, easy music making.
The song most associated with MJ Hibbett and the Validators is probably Fair Play Trophy. A song regularly updated to document the travails of the England football team in major tournaments. For those of you sensible enough to follow such happenings, England failed to qualify for this year’s World Cup.
Q: Does the lack of English involvement in the World Cup mean no new versions of Fair Play Trophy this year?
For me, that’s the only good thing about it! I’ve re-written that song about eight times now, for various championships, and to be honest I’m heartily sick of it, so when we failed to qualify I was one of the few people in the country who were actually relieved!!
Q: Can we expect to hear more ukulele stuff from you in future?
Very much so, yes. In the past The Validators have been a bit wary of
ukelele songs, but recently Tim and Emma’s daughters discovered them,
and this weekend Frankie, our bass player, bought one of those Flying
V ukes, so we may have a full set of converts one day! There’s also
some ukelele on the new band album which we’re recording at the
moment, and in February I wrote a whole album’s worth of songs for
February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org), many of which were PACKED
with ukeleles!
I think The Godfather would have to be my favourite film score of all time. In terms of recognisability, The Godfather theme is second only to Star Wars. The piece (also known the Love Theme and Speak Softly Love) crops up in all three Godfather films in a wide variety of guises. It was written by Nino Rota who also wrote most of the music for Fellini’s films.
By far the most difficult part of playing this tune is teasing out the melody from the backing. You don’t have to worry about it too much in the first few bars – the only accompanying notes are the 3 – 2 – 0 at the start of the third bar. But once it gets into bar six, they switch between melody notes and accompanying notes regularly. Make sure you listen carefully to the original so you know what’s what.
