I got so many people emailing me about Beirut chords and when Saltatory was going to be back up, I decided it would be quicker just to set about tabbing the whole Beirut back catalogue.

Gulag Orkestar (Chords)

The first part of this tune is played very loosely, so it’s tricky to keep up with the chords. The Dm – A – Bb flat move is one that’s common in flamenco playing.

Prenzlaurberg

I couldn’t find lyrics for this song and I haven’t got a blind clue what he’s singing, so you’ll have to go without a chord chart for this one. Luckily, the chords are straightforward. They’re Ebm – Abm – Bb all the way through. The chords aren’t too difficult to play in standard tuning, but they’re made even easier if you tune up half a step or capo at the first fret. That’ll make the chord shapes Dm, Gm, A.

Brandenburg

Dead simple chords: Dm – Gm all the way through. You can jazz it up a little and follow the mandolin by taking your index finger off for the last few strums of the chords (creating a Dsus2 and a Gsus2 respectively).

Postcards from Italy (Chords and Tab)

Mount Wroclai (Idle Days) (Chords)

This one really does require you to use a capo or tune up a fret if you’re going to play in the original key.

Rhineland (Heartland) (Chords)

More of those F and Bb add9 chords that crop up in most of Beirut’s ukulele based songs.

Scenic World (Chords)

The cheesy drum machine cracks me up every time.

Bratislava

Another song with that flamenco move in. The chords are A – Bb all the way through.

The Bunker

The first half of the song is G – Dm7. The second half is Gm – C – F.

The Canals of Our City

Another one with impenetrable lyrics. I’m 96% sure the first few lines are, “Wolves gone over the sea, but nod for me/Watch now, I ho lay na ho had I and no tie, no tie.” The chords make a lot more sense. They are G – Dm throughout.

After the Curtain

A tough one to get sounding right on the uke. Using the chord progression D – Gsus2 – D – Asus4 is about as much sense as I could make out of it.

That’s it for Gulag. I’m working on Flying Club Cup (which should be done by this time next week) and Lon Gisland and others (by the week after). There’s already some of that stuff up on the Beirut chords page.

Shigeto Takahashi – 12th Street Rag (mp3)
Shigeto Takahashi – Lover (mp3)
You can download a bunch more on the mp3 page of his website.

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned Shigeto Takahashi, but he’s been a busy chap since then. He’s played his uke on top of Mt Fuji, at Yosamite, and at Nikko. He’s recorded an album’s worth of material. He’s produced tabs for the Japanese ukulele magazine Rolling Coconuts. He’s been on a mini US tour after Mike DaSilva was so impressed with his playing he invited to perform in Berkley.

And little wonder. Shigeto plays with tremendous verve and has an irresistible charm. His repetoire is largely the traditional ukulele music, but he injects it with a new spirit and vigour.

It’s great to see how successful the ukulele is in Japan. I wish I knew more about what was happening on the Japanese ukulele scene. Maybe I should learn Japanese. How hard can it be?

His website.
His homemade tabs page
His YouTube page.

I’m off to see Juno this week and even if it doesn’t live up to the hype it’ll be worth sticking with it to the end to hear Antsy Pant’s ukulele tune Vampire.

Antsy Pants started life as a collaboration between anti-folker and Moldy Peach Kimya Dawson and twelve year old ukelelist Leo Bear Creek. The project grew to include a whole raft youngsters.

Vampire is sung and uked by Leo and it’s a very cute song. The chords are dead simple.

From what I can make out, Leo plays the ukulele left handed but strung in the right hand way (so the strings are upside down). It got me thinking about it, and it actually makes more sense this way up. D chords and E chords (the bane of uke players) are much easier to play this way round and none of the other main chords are more difficult than the usual way.

Requested by Anika

James Hill and his imaginary friends, Dent May and his Magnificent Ukulele, bolomusic and his two necks and plenty more.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ukulele Review will be launching a competition today. There’ll be three concert Fleas up for grabs along with a whole load of other goodies (including my ebooks – which are, of course, the real draw). Make sure you stay tuned for it.

Uke Thingy has been knocking out ukulele tabs for classic guitar riffs including Day Tripper, Eye of the Tiger and Crazy Train.

Mike has a few new chord sheets up on his ukulele page including more Mountain Goats and No Surprises.

Uke Hunt friend Andy (AKA zym) has start his own blog ilovefizzypop (every time I read that name I start singing Helen Love’s I Love Indie Pop – no bad thing). As well as ukes, ilovefizzypop covers monkeys, games and robots. What more could you want?

A big thanks to Gary for drawing my attention to a two part audio documentary on the uke at The Human Chorus. It charts the ups and downs of the ukulele’s popularity from its introduction in Hawaii up to the 1990s and includes chats with Jim Beloff and Herb Ohta.

NukeDoc has a video showing you how to change the strings on your ukulele. Including using a power-drill to take the wrist work out of all that peg turning.

Buy yourself a handmad ukulele bag from Sugar Kane. (KDUS got there first)

Jake Shimabukuro has a new look website including a page packed with ukulele videos.

Daily Growl is a long term fixture in my feed reader. It usually covers the latest, hippest folkies (which reminds me: listen to Thao Nguyan if you’re into that sort of thing), so it was a very pleasant surprise to see The Fabulous Heftones as the Valentines Day choice.

How did Robert Plant deal with the stresses of the Led Zeppelin reunion? “I just lay in a dark room playing my little ukulele.”

The uke appears briefly amongst the lingerie models in The Raveonettes video for Candy. (Well done to uncle budd for spotting that one).

Art Ukes at Celtic Connections festival. (More pics here).

“Here’s a tip: if you are thinking of buying this ensemble, accessorising the look with a ukulele will make all the difference and help to bring out a certain music-hall je ne sais quoi.” Sound fashion advice from Laura Barton in The Guardian.

A novel solution to loose tuning pegs.

Am I shallow for judging ukuleles almost entirely by how sexy their headstock is?

Clockwise from top left:

Martin 3K: It’s a classic shape. Sharp, sleek and sexy. Been ripped of a million times.

Gibson Mele ukulele Inelegant in comparison.

Fluke: Part of the rip it up and start again approach of the Fluke. One thing most people prefer about friction tuners is they don’t stick out to the side ruining the line of the headstock. But, because it’s so unusual and distinctive, the Fluke gets away with it.

Ukulele Ike plastic ukulele: Good, old fashioned celebrity endorsement. There’s a bit of a mystery as to who made this ukulele. Tiki King (who would have a much better idea than me) says it’s, “probably made by Mastro or Carnival.” I was under the impression that all Maccaferri (Mastro) ukes had a zero fret (which the Ike doesn’t). And the headstock is different to most Carnivals’ rounded design. To me, it looks closest to the Mauna Loa. If anyone has more information on this, I’d love to know.

KoAloha Superconcert: The KoAloha headstock is instantly recognisable. It’s a very modern design. I thought it had a slight air of satanic menace about it, but Ukulele Ghetto pointed out that it’s actually inspired by the Okami’s Christianity. Superconcert is the brunch of ukulele sizes.

Transatlantique (sometimes referred to as Transatlantic) is tucked away on the Elephant Gun EP – which is pretty hard to find itself. The only place I’ve found it available is on on eMusic. That’s a real shame as it’s one of my favourite Beirut songs – and, judging by the number of requests I’ve had for it, a favourite amongst uke players.

The first part of the tune uses common Beirut tricks. He always seems to be playing that Fadd9 and hammering on to the F chord. Next up is the old descending note trick. The G, E and A strings form an F chord through the whole section. The only note that changes is on the C string (which moves down a fret each time). Don’t be put off by the F(2). This isn’t a strange chord you’ve never heard of – it’s just to distinguish the two different versions of the F chord that crop up in the song.

Thanks to Mitch for sending me his version of the chords. My version is slightly different. So, if you think my chords suck, see if you prefer his. You can find them on the Beirut tab and chords page.

More Beirut ukulele tab and chords here.

Listen to Transatlantique here.

Get on eMusic

If you were hoping for a Valentines song today, you came to the wrong place. Zym has a very fitting ukulele song for today. Go there.

I’ve had a few people asking me if I could put some of their tabs up on Uke Hunt. I’d like to keep the main bit of Uke Hunt for my stuff, so I’ve set up a new area where people can upload their own:

Uker Tabs

You can put tab or chords up in text or you can upload pdfs, midis or whatever you think people will find useful. Add any hints and tips people might find useful and feel free to include a link to your own website. It was set up for uke tabs, but there’s no need to stick just to that. If you have something burning to say on the subject of ukes, go ahead and say it and let people read it.

If you’re interested in taking part, check out the How to Use page then go to this page and sign up.

If you’re more interested in reading than writing tabs, go over, bookmark it or subscribe to the RSS feed and wait to see what turns up. There’s already been a tab of the Family Guy Theme tune by doubleclix, Arlo Guthrie and The Strokes.

You wouldn’t believe how many people turn up at this blog after searching for ‘wild thing ukulele tabs‘ and leave disappointed. Well, no more.

The song was written by Chip Taylor, later recorded by The Troggs but probably most famous in the guitar-burning Hendrix version. All three of those versions are in different keys (Taylor in E, Troggs in A and Hendrix in Ab) and, as luck would have it, none of those keys make for easy beginner chords on the ukulele.

About Transposing

For the most part, playing guitar chords on the ukulele isn’t a problem. The chords for guitar are the same as the chords for ukulele – if the chord is A for the guitar, it’s A for the ukulele as well. However, sometimes the guitar chords are awkward to play on the uke. If this is the situation, you can move the chords around to make them fit more comfortably on the uke. This is known as transposing.

The version of Wild Thing above shows the chords The Troggs used and is in the key of A (i.e. A is the chord where the song feels settled). It includes the E chord which uke players always hate. You can get round this by moving all the chords up or down the same number of frets so it’s in a new key. The most uke friendly keys are C, G and F.

For Wild Thing, the first version I wrote out is in A and this version is in G:

Wild Thing (Chords in G)

Since G is two frets lower than A, you have to move all the chords down two frets. So the D chord becomes a C chord, the E chord becomes a D chord and the G chord becomes an F chord.

There’s a very handy automatic chord transposing website that makes this easy. You just throw in the chord sheet, tell it what key you want the chords to be in and it’ll spit out the new chord sheet.

Michael Garfield – It Hurts So We’re Not Dead (mp3)
Michael Garfield – The Cartographers (mp3)

It’s not often you hear the ukulele coupled with keyboards, distorted guitar and crashing drums, but judging by Michael Garfield’s music, it should happen much more often.

Michael is something of a 21st Century Renaissance man. He’s an artist, multi-instrumentalist, philosopher, evolutionary biologist, raiser of consciousness and writer. Here’s how he describes his approach to music:

I have an insatiable drive to innovate, to integrate depth and technique, to grab you and pull you with me into awe – a commitment to intelligent, evocative, forward-thinking music that forbids me from settling into a comfortable niche. These songs are fingers pointing at the moon: that locus of mutuality, beneath tracings of persona and circumstance, where we meet in oceanic silence amidst the noise.

I could go on quoting him all day, but I’ll just give you one more:

I understand my own role as a musician and songwriter as it appears within the context of a unified and harmonic universe, as a gesture of the same omnipotent principles that express everything.

He has an absolutely fascinating blog covering topics from light to polyamory to the ‘exaptation of the guitar‘ (I had to look it up too).

But what interests me most, is his music – and quite some music it is. I think he’s one of the most innovative musicians around using the ukulele. The moment when the distorted guitar starts up against the uke in It Hurts… is just perfect.

And he doesn’t plan on stopping the innovation. He tells me he’s recording the first ever touchstyle ukulele piece (leave a comment if you know different). Touchstyle playing involves no plucking or strumming but uses both hands hammering-on and pulling-off notes on the fretboard. You can watch Michael using this technique on guitar here (is that the bassline of No One Knows mixed in there?).

His album, Get Used To Being Everything, is available to buy pay-what-you-want-style on Songslide. As well as these two uke tracks, there’s plenty to savour on the album. I was blown away by the opener Autocatalysis. And you can do your thing for charity by buying the collaboration album The Dream Is Valid – A Benefit Compilation for Kiva Org

He’s a fascinating guy and a gifted musician. Definitely worth keeping track of in the future.

Michael Garfield on MySpace
Zaadz Visionary Music