If you can’t stand the sound of your loved one strumming incessantly, it might seem a little counter-intuitive to buy them an electric ukulele. Were it not for one word: headphones.

Ovation Applause

With their round backs and distinctive sound-holes, Ovation Applause tenor ukuleles are heavily based on their guitar big brother. In my opinion, they have a slightly dated look – there’s a definite whiff of Bon Jovi unplugged about them. But recently, Kaki King came along and rescued the Applause image.

Buy for: the hair-rocker in your life.

Find Applause ukuleles

Bugsgear Eleuke

Bugsgear’s Eleuke has a much more modern look. They come in a sparkling blue or a more understated natural wood.

They now have one you can plug headphones straight into, so no excuse for waking up family members with midnight strummings.

Find Bugsgear EleUkes

Kala Archtop

The Kala Archtop Tenor has a more classic look with jazzy f-holes and an archtop.

Buy for: midnight jazzers, those who find the term ‘f-hole’ endlessly amusing.

Find Kala ukuleles

What’s your electric uke recommendation?

More Christmas gifts for ukulele players

Aldrine Guerrero and his team are in the process of setting up a new site Ukulele Underground. Until it’s up and running, join up to the forum.

Speaking of Aldrine, his track Bandito Tyler is one of Dominator’s new tabs.

Wilfried Welti’s Christmas ukulele tab book (with explanations in German). More German ukulele tab on Ukulele lernen.

More tab news: Buke has entered the wonderful world of GCEA.

Beirut will be on tonight’s Later with Jools Holland. Head over the fold to see an interview with Zach Condon.

The winner of the Bushman Ukulele Contest?

foggy ruins of time has a rather fantastic mp3 from The Darlings. There’s also a cover of The Sugababes’ Push The Button on their MySpace that’s not to be missed. (I was so impressed I’ve bought their EP as a Christmas present to myself).

Wolves, Hawks and Kites have an mp3 from and review of The Burning Hell (very Stephin Merritt).

Carboard ukulele.

Uke players organise a piss-up in a brewery.
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Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (mp3)

As promised yesterday, here’s a solo version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

It’s a fairly simple arrangement. For the most part, the melody is fingerpicked and chords are strummed in between the melody notes. Apart from a couple of notes at the fifth fret, it’s all first position stuff. Easy.

For more of my solo arrangements of Christmas songs check out How To Play Christmas Ukulele.

This work by Ukulele Hunt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is the simplest Christmas song and ideal for kids.

I’ve tried to simplify the chords even further for this arrangement. For a fair chunk of the song, a C6 chord is being played (all strings open). I’ve written C6 every time but using a full C chord at the end would give it a proper ending. Other than that, there are only two other chords: F and G7.

If you’re after a more challenging version of the song I’ll be doing a solo, fingerpicking version tomorrow.

Until then, you can pass the time by heading over the fold and, since it’s the season to waste away the hours in the office playing games, shoot as many reindeer as you can.

This work by Ukulele Hunt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

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White Christmas (mp3)

I couldn’t let Christmas pass without working up a version of this tune. It’s a classic.

This arrangement keeps it fairly simple. It’s mostly just strummed chords. When you’re playing a chord based solo like this one, it’s important that you emphasise the melody notes. There are a couple of main ways to do this.

Firstly, by making the last note you hit in a strum the melody note.

Secondly, by giving a bit more omph to the chords on the melody beats. For example, in bar 6 the melody note is the first beat (the ‘I’m’), so play this chord stronger and the rest of the strums in the bar more softly.

If you like this style of arrangement, you can find more Christmas songs arranged like this in How To Play Christmas Ukulele.

If you’re in Hollywood this Friday, head over to the Egyptian Theater for their screening of White Christmas where Ukulele Davey will be leading a sing-along.

Bob Brozman’s Ukulele Tunes & Techniques (DVD)

Bob Brozman is one of my musical heroes. A quick check on YouTube will show you why. It’s not just his playing, it’s his musical philosophizing too. He’s always interesting and often highly quotable (the quote of him on my About page is from this DVD). All that meant that buying this DVD was a bit of a no-brainer for me.

The DVD has Brozman playing through different arrangements of a number of Hawaiian and American tunes tabbed out in the accompanying booklet. Towards the end, he is joined by Hawaiian guitarist and ukulelist Ledward Kaapana. Brozman’s tunes are arranged on D-tuned ukulele and Kaapana’s tunes for low-G ukulele.

The full tab list is:

Hi’ilawe, Meleana’E, The Beach at Waikiki, Ukulele Blues, Sweet Georgia Brown, I’ll See You In My Dreams and Spanish Eyes (Kaapana).

There are also untabbed performances of Ukulele Spaghetti, Tomi Tomi and L&D Slack Key (Kaapana).

The Good Stuff:

– Techniques. This DVD was a huge inspiration on my playing. Each time I watch it I’m itching to to try something new I’ve picked up from it.
– Some of the stuff Brozman pulls off is just fantastic to watch and hear.
– There’s a lot to be learnt here about how to use chord inversions and how to incorporate them into chord solos.
– Some very good examples of how to arrange the same song in different ways to keep it interesting.
– Ledward Kaapana. He’s a big teddy bear and probably the most adorable man in the world. He also pulls of tricks in L&D Slack Key that are worth the price of admission by themselves.

The Not So Good Stuff:

– Tunes. I haven’t learnt a single tune from the DVD. It’s sometimes hard to work out exactly which piece of tab is being played. Sometimes what is being played isn’t tabbed out at all. Brozman turns in a fantastic fingerpicked version of The Beach at Waikiki but all we get tab for is the strummed version. When I watch this DVD I promise myself I’m going to learn one of the songs but it never happens.
– Kaapana isn’t a natural teacher. Bob has to play both faux-naif “What ya doing there, Led?” role and the know-it-all teacher role.
– Tunings. Bob’s in D-tuning which makes chord names confusing for C-tuners (particularly if they’re a bit slow in the head like me). Led’s in low-G which isn’t really a ukulele.

Overall: Inspirational.

More Christmas gifts for ukulele players

I couldn’t imagine Christmas without this song. When I picture the nativity, I imagine Joseph screeching, “It’s KRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSS-MAAAAS.” But, I’m guessing, most people outside the UK will be completely baffled by it.

The song starts out with a series of ‘slash chords’ which need a little reworking on the uke (you can read about how to do it here) and is a little fiddly to play. But, other than that, it’s fairly plain sailing through the rest of the tune.

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday dear me, Happy Birthday to me.

I turned thirty today which makes me officially over the hill. If we were in a Logan’s Run-style future my palm-light would be blinking and I’d be running for my life – pausing only to make out with Jenny Agutter. But until the planet comes to its senses and instigates such a policy, I’m free to amble around telling youngsters how everything was better in the auld-times.

I know you’re all planning a huge surprise party for me later, so I won’t go on. I just wanted to post my tab of Happy Birthday so you can all play it to me at the party.

It also happens to be the birthday of Martin ukuleles tomorrow.

According to here, the traits of Sagittarius are:

* Fun
* Optimist
* Good-natured
* Sociable
* Spiritual
* Impatient
* Fears responsibility
* Self-indulgence
* Fanaticism
* Peter Pan syndrome
* Tendency to gamble

A terrible description of me, perhaps a better description of Martin ukes.

To Be Over midi

I was intending to post this during the second round of riff tabs, and it completely slipped my mind. Which was a shame as this is a rather lovely little intro and makes a good contrast to the heavy, crunching riffs.

This tab was put together by IanB.

Officially, the Saturday UkeTube is on hiatus at the moment. However, these five videos are just too good. I had to share them.

John King – Bach Prelude

You have to check out his other three videos as well.

Sweetafton23 – Mr Fancy Pants

Brian Hefferan – Elite Syncopations

theDesignmachine – Fat Bottom Girls

Ukulelezaza – Paper Moon