Hellogoodbye’s Oh, It Is Love is a very popular tune with uke players. There are a bunch of ukulele covers of it on YouTube. There are many instruments moving in and out of the tune including banjo and mandolin, which are in ukulele territory.

I got a request, ages ago, from Emily asking for tab of the twiddly bits in the song. So, here’s a few.

This is the high part played on the mandolin in the first few lines:

The part that accompanies the verse is played slightly differently by each instrument. This is a sort of uke-ified version of it:

Midi

If you’re feeling adventurous, using those higher versions of the B, Bbm and Am7 chords in the verses sounds very effective.

In the first little instrumental interlude, that part is followed by the mandolin going like this first time (but an octave lower):

Midi

And this the second time:

Midi

One last bit, for good measure. This little mando lick occurs at around 1:30

Midi

Even if you’re not planning on learning the song, it’s definitely worth taking a look at that last lick as it’s a bit of a cliche and can be used in many situations.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a short film about ukulele obsession. Obviously, it piqued my curiosity. The film’s co-writer and director Wade White was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Q: What’s the film all about?

“Ukulele” is a story about a man (Herbert) who inherits his father’s beloved ukulele. It’s a prized symbol of who his father was to the whole family and Herbert sets out to learn how to play in honour of his father’s memory. It becomes such a central part of his life, however, that it very quickly begins to encroach on his other relationships, most notably with his wife. It becomes an obsession, and things eventually come to a head. I won’t give away the ending, but needless to say it’s memorable.

Q: What made you want to make a film about ukulele obsession?

The original idea for the script actually came out of a writing exercise as we prepared for a competition called the Toronto 24 Hour Film Challenge. The idea of the competition was to write, shoot, and edit a film all in just 24 hours, so we knew our schedule would be tight. In preparation we decided to write a couple of sample scripts with a two hour time limit, to sort of put ourselves through the process. One of the scripts we produced was “Ukulele” (inspired by Tim’s son’s ukulele which happened to be in the living room at the time). We ended up using the script for the cast rehearsal for the competition and everyone really enjoyed it, which got us to thinking that it was a viable story in its own right. A little bit of editing and a whole lot of preparation later and we starting shooting the film.

That covers the ukulele part. As for the obsession part, I think that’s mostly because it’s something we can all relate too. I suspect everyone at some point in their lives has become overly enamoured with something: a person, an object, a creative endeavour. It sort of creeps in and starts taking over, all your time, all your concentration. You begin to eat, drink, and sleep it. So although in this case it’s an obsession over a ukulele, I think it reaches beyond that and speaks to something we all experience (to lesser or greater degrees) in general.

Besides, if you are going to write about obsession over a musical instrument, I can’t think of a better one to go with.

Q: Does any of the film come from personal experience?

Hmmm, I’m not sure how much I should confess here. I actually learned the ukulele way back in school in grades 4 through 6, though I don’t believe it ever become quite the obsession it does for our film’s protagonist. And I guess I’m currently a bit more of a guitar player when I do sit down to play something. But I have had other things in my life (for example, filmmaking), which have at times tended to take over. When you get involved in something very creative it can often be hard to reign things in and know where to draw the line. Other parts of your life don’t receive the necessary time and effort they deserve. Of course, “Ukulele” is a comedy and so we exaggerate that aspect of the character to good effect. So I guess in the sense of one’s artistic and creative endeavours encroaching on the rest of life, I would have to say, yes, personal experience did come into play.

Q: How did Ralph Shaw come to be involved?

Well, once we knew we were going to actually shoot the film, we very quickly decided that it was going to have a ukulele soundtrack. I mean, how can you have a film about a ukulele and not have a ukulele soundtrack, right? So with the exception of one piece, everything is ukulele-based. Our lead actor even learned a few chords and strums to lend some authenticity to the part. We discovered Ralph Shaw more or less just through searching around on the internet. We had come across some very interesting sites and contacted a few other musicians, but once we landed on Ralph’s website we more or less knew this was a guy we wanted onboard, in whatever capacity. We contacted him, told him about the project, let him read the script and the rest, as they say, is history. Ralph was very generous with both his time and music, especially considering we were a smaller operation. But he was totally on board with the idea and has been great at promoting the film now that it’s done and available on DVD.

Q: When’s Ukulele going to be available for download?

Hopefully soon. The DVD is available now of course, and we’ve signed the necessary forms that allow them to make the film itself available for download, so it’s just a matter of them transferring the film to the proper downloadable format(s). Apparently they’re still working out the few remaining kinks in having the download option in general available on the site, so when they have everything working to their satisfaction I’m sure Ukulele will be ready for download in short order. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.

If you want to get a flavour of the film, you can watch the hilarious animated introduction here.

You can buy the DVD from Film Baby.

It might just be me that remembers Freaks and Geeks, and I was mostly there for Linda Cardellini and the theme tune. As I understand it, the series didn’t even make it to the end in the US. But we got the whole thing here in the UK. Apparently, it’s now a cult hit. There are certainly plenty of people involved with it who went on to bigger things. Most notably, it was the first time actor Seth Rogen and director Judd Atapow worked together (going on to make The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad together).

The theme tune to Freaks and Geeks came from the days when even the punks wore shoulder pads and is fantastically catchy. And it has the best guitar solo shout out since, “Go, Nigel, go”: Pedal boys!

The tune is perfect for a bit of punk uke and would make a great uke club song (oh God, I’d love to hear GUGUG do this song). I’ve made the chords a little more uke club friendly by shifting them up from B to C. If you want it in the original key, you’ll have to shift everything down a fret (or tune down half a step).

For the first half of the song, the chords are C, F and G. Then there’s a key change to D and everything shifts up two frets (to D, G and A). The strumming shouldn’t trip you up either. Down, up, down, up should do you fine most of the way through the song.

As well as the ukulele festival videos from Paris and Taunton and parts three and four of Bosco and Honey’s Ukulele Safari, there were plenty of other top uke performances this week including the ever growing ukulele tribute to The Cure. Read the rest of this entry »

The must see ukulele of the week is the this pre-ukulele machete (or brahuinga) that musicguymic has for sale. It dates from the dark, dark days before the ukulele was invented and comes from a Portuguese luthier called OJ Nunes (apparently, a forebear of ukulele innovator Manuel Nunes). It’s been in a Viennese museum, so it looks to be in tip top condition considering it’s a century and a half old. A bargain at $10,000.

Until recently, you could count the number of female ukulele luthiers I was familiar with on the fingers of no hands. But, I’ve just stumbled across one on eBay. She has a couple of very fetching looking ukes up for sale at the moment: imakeukuleles.

I’m a complete sucker for rope binding, and this Mele concert ukulele has some sexy roping going on.

Ukulele Festival videos from Paris and Taunton.

Kainoa at Easy Ukulele has been uploading a bunch of ukulele tutorial videos this week. Particularly interesting are the lessons on Chord Bending and Reggae Strumming.

Jen Kwok has made it to the last ten of the Comedy section of Famecast. With plenty of uker solidarity, she has an excellent chance of winning. All you have to do is register here. Then bookmark this link and click it once a day. EVERY DAY.

Last week, I mused out loud that I didn’t think there were any ukulele groups in Ireland. Tony got in touch and told me that he’s in the process of setting one up. If you’re interested, you can get Tony’s email address here.

Ukulele mp3s up for grabs: ilovefizzypop has Portishead’s familar sounding Deep Water, and Heartache with Hard Work has an adorable uke song from The Sinister Turns.

Theme from the Littlest Hobo on Uker Tabs.

World’s smallest ukulele T-shirt.

This week, Ukulelia mentioned the Kani Ka Pila Klip – a music stand that clips on to the end of your ukulele.

Karaoke + ukulele = Karauke.

Mel Torme on ukulele (he crops up at about 2:20).

Ukulego (thanks to Andy for that one).

Baby Blues Ukulele: Part 1 Part 2.

Improve your instrument with a vibrator.

Internet coincidences creep me out.

Slap my ass and call me Sally, I should have done this song a looooong time ago.

David Ivar Herman Dune (or Herman Düne for fans of unnecessary umlauts) is a ukulele hero and his Ya Ya album is an indie ukulele classic and his Yayahoni covers are something else. And, of course, he’s done a Le Soir Ukulele Session.

I Wish That I Could See You Soon doesn’t have a ukulele in it, but the fact he plays it on a guitar capoed at the fifth fret (putting it in the ukulele range) suggests he may well have written the song on the uke.

Strumming

When I strum this song, I like to use a bit of left hand damping. Leaving that aside for now, the strum is down, down, up, up, down. If you just want a simple strum, the song will sound perfectly good.

If you want something a bit more interesting, try it this way. Create a short chord on the first strum. You can do this by strumming down on the F chord as normal, then resting the ring finger of you right hand on the strings to stop the chord ringing (and relax your fretting fingers). Then you strum down again with the strings still dampened by your finger. After that, you can go back to your normal chord shape and strum up, up, down. Do this for each chord and it should sound something like this:

There are a few variations in how chord charts are shown. But, since they’re a fairly intuitive picture of what to do, it’s not hard to work out.

The Dots

The type of chord chart I use shows the ukulele fretboard as if it’s pointing upwards and facing towards you. The strings are the vertical lines (starting with G at the left) and the horizontal lines are the frets.

Chord shapes are shown by dots at where each finger should go.

For this G chord, you play the C string at the second fret, the E string at the third fret and the A string at the second fret. Wherever there is a ‘o’ at the top of the string, that means the string is played open (it is not fretted at all).

The Numbers

The numbers at the bottom refer to the finger that you use rather than the fret. So a 1 would mean you fret that string using your index/pointer finger, a 2 would mean you use your middle finger and so on. It’s important to remember that the refer to fingers not strings (often they’re the same so it can be confusing).

For example, the G chord. You fret the A string at the second fret with your second finger, the E string at the third fret with your third finger and the C string at the second fret with your first finger.

These fingerings are just suggestions. If there’s another way of arranging your fingers, that’s not a problem.

Some, such as this ukulele chord chart, show the fingerings within the dots themselves.

Xs

You’ll sometimes see an ‘X’ at the top of the string. This means the string is not played at all. You might need to rest one of your fretting hand fingers against the string (without actually fretting it) to make sure it doesn’t sound.

Barre Chords

Barre chords, i.e. where one finger plays more than one string, can be represented by an arch over the barred strings (below) or with a black bar stretching across the strings (like this).

Chords Up the Neck

When a chord is played higher up the fretboard, the lowest fret played is indicated at the top right (sometimes it’s on the left). In this example, the C and A strings are played at the seventh fret, the E string at the eighth fret and the G string at the ninth fret.

Text Chords

Sometimes, when I want to refer to chord shapes quickly, I just use four numbers like this 2100. These refer to the fret numbers for each string in the order gCEA. So the 2 means you play the g-string at the second fret, the 1 means you play the C-string at the first fret and the 0s mean you play the E and A-strings open. Giving you the standard A chord shape.

As its title suggests, the latest album from Magnetic Fields, Distortion, is loud, dirty and electrified. As a result, there’s no ukulele at all. Even live he’s eschewed the uke in favour of a bouzouki.

Nevertheless, no one can fully recover from playing the uke and Merritt broke his out for version of The Nun’s Litany on Fair Game. So, I had to work it out and upload the chords.

Most of the chords are fairly simple. The only potential difficulty is the quick changes between G and Gsus4. Here you strum down, up, down, up with all the down strokes a G chord and all the upstrokes Gsus4.

Download the mp3 on Fair Game.

Kate Micucci – Dear Dear (mp3)
Kate Micucci – Mr Moon (mp3) via her website.

MP3s no longer available – you can buy them on CDBaby

There’s little doubt of the link between the ukulele and comic actors. From Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, through Steve Martin to Adam Sandler and William H Macy. The latest in the list is Kate Micucci.

Micucci has had bit part roles in Malcolm in the Middle and How I Met Your Mother, and a less bitty part in ill-fated Four Kings. You can watch her performances on her show reel and it’s worth watching just for the model line. According to her IMDb, she also played the role of ‘less attractive girl’ in Campus Ladies. Only in Hollywood could that even be possible. Rumours that she plays Rico in Hannah Montana seem to be a half truth.

All of which explains why the video for Dear Dear is so amusing. Her ukulele songs, or at least the ones she’s posted on line, are light, fun and catchy. She also plays the piano and guitar and creates a more serious sound – you can give those tracks a listen and a download on her MySpace (Walking In LA might be the only good song to namecheck LA, I’m sure I’ve forgotten one though). But if you’re more interested in ukulele fun, she also hooks up with fellow thespian Riki Lindhome under the name Garfunkel and Oates for songs like F**k You.

UPDATE: Kate’s appearing in Scrubs as Ted’s ukulele sweetheart. You can find out more here: Scrubs ukulele girl.

Visit KateMicucci.com.