Buy Ukulele now has a blog reviewing various ukulele products.

The Ukulizer is a ukulele chord site with some nifty gubbins allowing to switch from D to C tuning or transpose at the click of a button.

The end of Eilidh’s Daily Ukulele Ceilidh got plenty of press coverage. Most of it pedestrian and some of it moronic. By far this best was the interview in the Daily Record.

Julia Nunes wins Bushman World Video Contest. Really?

Vote for Jen Kwok in Famecast. And here. Vote early, vote often.
Aldrine Guerrero‘s Christmas Eve Eve show.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall smashes Jamie Oliver’s ukulele.

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain gig on German TV.

Jake Shimabukuro does his best orgasm-face at the tee-off of the 2008 PGA tour.

I got an email from mrfifty6 saying, “gus and fin are NOT the most punk ukulele players on youtube, i am.” Check out his YouTube page if you think you can handle the punk. Watch your backs GUGUG.

Shattered Satellite has an mp3 of Florence and the Machine covering Beirut’s Postcards from Italy.

Uke Thingy pointed me towards the definition of uke attitude. One guy who definitely has the uke attitude is the writer of Ukulele Lesson. The site is full of ukulele poetry. My favourite is, “The ukulele sound won’t interrupt the talking of business or the whisper of lovers.”

There’s a ukulele on The Beach Boys’ Help Me, Rhonda says Lost and Sound. My first reaction was, “Like chuff there is.” But, I was listening to the single version. Take a listen to the backing track for the album version and there’s definite uke action.

In: Sharon Jones, Mrs Kucinich and the ukulele. Heartily agreed on all counts. (via Ukulelia)

Ukuleles or bananas?

Happy 2008 everyone. I hope you enjoyed the holiday season and got plenty of ukulele practice in.

Over the hols I’ve been busy writing a guide to reading ukulele tab. A few people have asked me about it and I’ve had to direct them elsewhere which isn’t ideal as I don’t think there’s a really comprehensive guide around.

So, while everyone was quaffing egg-nog and kissing under the mistletoe (possibly at the same time), I was writing about ukulele tab. If you want to make up for my kissless Christmas, feel free to snog my face off in gratitude.

It ended up being 15 pages long, so I’ve divided into parts and the first is after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Uke Hunt is going on its Christmas holibobs and it’ll be back in the New Year. If you want to make sure you’re the first to know when it’s back, subscribe by RSS or by email.

A big thanks to everyone who has read, subscribed, commented, emailed and contributed. It’s been great that so many people have got involved. I’ve got some big plans for next year so have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Mele Kalikimaka (midi)

You’re still looking on the net for Christmas presents this late? You are screwed. Unless…

The big advantage with ebooks is that they’re delivered straight away (unless you pay be echeck – slogan: “Do you miss the hassle of real-world checks?”) and you can send them to anyone, anywhere instantly.

In my opinion, the best ukulele ebooks around are those available at How To Play Ukulele. Of course, I might be slightly biased in that opinion since I wrote them. If you want a more even handed view, here’s what other people are saying.

How to Play Ukulele Chord Progressions

“This is the first time someone’s explained basic chord formation and scales and transposition in a way that makes sense to me”
Mike Dickison of Mike’s Ukulele Page

I started using the book – it’s great!!! This is really a helpful and friendly guide.
Jen Kwok

I am really glad I bought your chord progression theory book. You did just a great job! I am taking piano from my daughter’s classical teacher. He is great but somewhat hardcore classical. He tried to explain some of the theory to me, but I think that your book is way more accessible and directly applicable. And this comes from me, someone who has taken theory classes in the past!
Carol Seigal

“Your ‘How to play ukulele chord progressions’ is excellent. It cleared up a number of things for me. I’m just getting into music theory and having something that relates directly to the ukulele was very useful.”
Chris Double

The “How to Play Ukulele Chord Progressions” was great. I got a better sense of hamonized chords, and their fretboard relationship. The feelings the sounds generate for different chords, and how the tension is built and released really made sense.

This ebook is key to understanding chord relationships, and I can take my music to whole new levels.
Terry Truhart

How To Play Christmas Ukulele

An excellent selection of tabs and playing tips… I highly recommend picking it up.
Chris of The UkeCast.

Just have to say again that your “How to Play Christmas Ukulele” is really terrific. There is a fair amount of ukulele Christmas music out there but very little as good as your arrangements. All of your music is very easy to play as well a lot of fun to play.
Art Crocker

The selection of songs is great. There are popular favorites, along with some that I’d never heard of before. All are arranged for beginner to intermediate. I’m definitely in the beginner camp, but have been able to play a few bars of each… Priced at $7.00, this eBook is a bargain.
Ukulele Review

The week’s best ukulele videos after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

Friend of Uke Hunt, IanB has set up a new ukulele site Uke Thingy. There’s a pleasing variety of tab there already stretching from YES to The Road to Eldorado via Van Morrison and Frampton.

WeePOP! are my new favourite record label after sending me a Christmas card with a ukulele-playing snowman. I wouldn’t have thought the entire back catalogue of Stax records could be overturned by a small card, but it just goes to show what a cheap date I am. I can heartily recommend The Darlings’ Photo EP which contains a ukulele cover of AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long – judging by the number I got, there’s less than 60 copies left – so get your skates on. Also, if you haven’t already, check out the Not Quite Rocket Science Ukulele Podcast I mentioned earlier in the year (done by the folks who run weePOP!).

Aldrine Guerrero, Danyo Cummings and pals will be doing a live web performance on Sunday 23rd at 10pm (I think that’s 8am Christmas Eve in the UK). You can watch it here.

GUGUG have recorded a CD: This is the Ukulele New Wave.

Ukulele Tonya has an impressively in depth article on humidity and your ukulele.

Google Patent Search (still in beta) has some weird and wonderful ukulele inventions. It has the original patent for the Swagerty Treholipee as well as less successful inventions such as the world’s most overcomplicated ukulele tuner (requiring three dense pages of expositional text) and a sort of banjo-ukulele-sanshin concoction.

How do you make the most special day of your life that little more special? Ukulele duet – obviously.

The Guardian Music Blog loves the ukulele and Pete Paphides in The Times reckons UOGB is, “the only ukulele-based covers band in Europe.”

Barak Obama Caucus Carol.

Great-great granddaughter of ukulele making legend Manuel Nunes posts a photo of him on Flickr.

“My ukulele has been signed by all four members of Motley Crue and Marky Ramone; I consider it to be an artifact because of this.”

One of the joys of Christmas is that Shane MacGowan is on the radio and TV as often as he should be the whole year round. Since the BBC has decided that the words ‘faggot’ and ‘slut’ are perfectly fine and it looks like being Christmas number one, here’s Fairytale of New York.

I tried a bunch of different ways to play the intro and narrowed it down to two. This one:

And this one:

I prefer the second one because of all the open strings.

I had a tendency to get a little lost in the chords during the penny-whistle parts, so I had to start counting. For the first one, after ‘…dreams come true’ and the repeat of the intro:

D,2,3. D,2,3. D,2,3. A,2,3. D,2,3. G,2,3. A,2,3. D,2,3.

The second (after the first chorus) is even trickier to follow:

D,2,3. A,2,3. Bm,2,3. G,2,3. D,2,3. D,2,3. D,2,3. A,2,3.

D,2,3. Bm,2,3. D,2,3. G,2,3. D,2,3. D,2,3. A,2,3. D,2,3.

Links

Christmas Tab ebooks

Like Mr Garrison, I’m very eager spread the love to all during the holiday season. So here are the chords for Sarah Silverman’s protest against Santa’s blatantly anti-semitic present giving policies.

I’ve written the song up in D-tuning as it makes the chords much easier to play. You can play the chords in C-tuning but they’re slightly more difficult:

Alternatively, you could play the same chord shapes as the D-tuning. This will make the tune a whole step lower.

Helen Love’s cover of The Ramones’ Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight) is the sound of Christmas as far as I’m concerned. You can download it at Filthy Little Angels. You’ll have to hunt for it on there but it’s well worth it.

For the most part, the chords are dead simple. I’ve put a C5 chord in because it’s more punk, but you can play a normal C chord there and it will sound fine.

The only tricky bit for beginners is the Fm. You can minimise the amount of finger changing between these chords by playing them this way:

Here, you’re keeping you second finger on the G-string and sliding it down to the first fret. It’s a little awkward but easier than completely changing your fingers around.

In the introduction to the original, the chords slide up from B to C a few times. The easiest way to recreate this on the uke is to play the C5 shape, move both fingers down a fret, play the chord and then slide your fingers up.

Christmas With U (mp3)
Christmas for Cowboys (mp3) via his website.

At this time of year a lot of us will be working up a few Christmas songs to entertain family and friends. Ballard C Boyd is no different. Each year he puts together a CD for family and friends and also puts it up on the net. I mention it because this year’s CD, Christmas With You, is bloody fantastic.

The standout tracks are Christmas for Cowboys (made famous by John Denver) and, an original song, Christmas With U. There’s also a secret track mashing-up Steve Harley’s The Joker and Weezer’s Undone (The Sweater Song).

You can download the whole thing here and the previous two years’ tracks here.