I’m pleased to let you know that Uke Hunt’s little sister site is now up and running.

How To Play Ukulele

Whereas Uke Hunt has the short, daily posts, How To Play Ukulele features the really in depth ukulele know-how that you can get your teeth into.

I’ve written two ebooks (in pdf form with mp3s and midi files) that now available to buy:

How To Play Ukulele Chord Progressions – This book spills the beans on all the tricks of writing chord progressions. The first part of the book deals with building families of chords which sound good together and how to fit them together to give them momentum. This section is geared towards relative beginners (people who know the basic chords).

The second part shows you more advanced ideas – playing with different types of chords. It also, in my favourite section, tells you the chord tricks that The Beatles used to create their legendary songs (with the intention of ‘borrowing’ them for your own songs).

How To Play Ragtime Ukulele – Contains full tab for seven ragtime tunes including 12th Street Rag, Tiger Rag and Maple Leaf Rag. It also comes with a pdf file with a brief history of ragtime, all the elements you need to create your own ragtime tunes, and performance notes for each piece.

This book is aimed at intermediate players and more advanced players who have some experience with fingerpicking.

So click here and head over to the site. If you have any questions that aren’t answered there or you’re experiencing any teething problems, please send me an email.

Here’s the intro tab for Fire (including the short riff that crops up through the song):

Listening to this, I think I should have included it in my Top 10 Guitar Riffs. It boggles my mind that just four notes can be so effective. If you don’t fancy playing the riff as it’s tabbed above, you can also play it like this:

The chords are simple: D and C for the chorus. There’s also an A just before the guitar solo and it shifts up to E – D for a few bars near the end.

Hendrix tuned his guitar down one fret, so if you want to play along you’ll have to do the same with your uke.

Download Fire on Amazon

It’s the annual Catholic Burning Festival in the UK tomorrow (or Bonfire Night as we’re supposed to call it now- it’s political correctness gone mad)) and Winger wanted songs with ‘fire’ and ‘burn’ in them. The suggestion alone made me scared of what she might do if I didn’t comply, so here’s the first one.

This song by the Tiger Lillies is the song with the most ‘fire’s and ‘burn’s (running Arthur Brown’s Fire into close second) and it’s dead simple to play (just C, F and G7).

Download Start A Fire on Amazon

(Dear Mr Amazon, get your arse into gear and let people outside the US download mp3s too.)

Rigk Sauer’s Quickie Version of Swedish Ukulele Festival in Gothenberg

Jens Lekman
A man walks into a bar
You are the Light
Jens Lekman at “Ukulele-festivalen” Part 1

Bengt Nordfors
Net med ukulele I
Som folk g
Net med Josefssoon
Ode to Brother Anders
Bengt Nordfors on Swedish Nyckleharpa Keyed Harp(Old Swedish Instrument, for the curious):
Nyckelharpa á la Napoli
Bach on Nyckelharpa

Grushagen Bros
“Jag stÃ¥r över lagen” – I’m above the law
“AvgÃ¥!” — &mode=related&search=
The Fuglesang Song (Swedens first astronaut Christer Fuglesang is scheduled to go into space with the next space shuttle in december 2006. The Grushagen brothers wonder why. What has he done that is so bad? They can think of a lot of people they’d rather send into space, with a one way ticket.

Thomas Allander
AKA “ukulelemannen” ( The Ukulele Man) demonstrates a few of his rather special ukuleles at the Ukulele Festival in Stockholm 2007

The Ukulele Conspiracy in Helsinki 2007
Folsom Prison Blues

Swedish Art Video with ukulele background music
Andra Världskriget – Sanningen

Sweden Videos
Lappland (A German video of Northern Sweden)
Sweden (from Lappland in the North to Skane in the South)

And Finally…

News from the opposite end of the globe. New Zealand holds its first Ukulele Festival today. Players include James Hill, Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, and Sione Aleki. You can watch a video of Hill and Aleki playing with, event organiser, Kevin Fogarty here.

Thanks to Tegan for the heads up on this one.

There’s a new French record label dedicated to ukulele music Ukulele Division. They have their own releases as well as imports by the likes of Victoria Vox and the New York Ukulele Ensemble.

Roger at Buke has really been knocking out the baritone ukulele tabs of late.

Lots of ukulele cover love on the mp3 blogs. Best of all, Turn the Page has a live mp3 of Zach ‘Mr Beirut’ Condon playing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah live. LA-Underground has Ema and the Ghosts covering Fulsom Prison Blues. And Highrize has Dan Kelly doing Nothing Compares to You.

Nellie McKay with Ryan Adams on David Letterman (on the second song).

Fiddly-day-dee-da. It’s a site dedicated to the Irish Ukulele, so it is.

More ukes at the Electric Proms this week. The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain joined the Kaiser Chiefs for a rendition of Ruby. You can watch the performance here.

New Magnetic Fields album, Distortion, is on the horizon.

The Wowzies sing Ukulele Island.

Sheik Uke Al-Hilaly: a painted uke by Joel Tarling.

Another week, another Fluke. This time it’s a Tiki Mug Fluke.

I do like a ukulele with a bit of history to it – even if that history means nothing to me. This 8 string Martin is advertised as being, “used in ministry by Dorothy Hall,” (search me), “she also played this instrument with Andre Crouch” (haven’t the foggiest on this one either). Even though I don’t know who they are, I like the idea of Dotty Hall bashing out hymns on her Martin while Andre (I think they mean Andrae) Crouch preaches it. But for that price I’d expect it to be made from pieces of the true cross.

Other ukes don’t come with a back story but have plenty of bumps and bruises to tell their history for them. This Lyon and Healy bell ukulele is charmingly faded and scratched. And I want to cuddle this Jonah Kumalae soprano.

More polished, but equally sweet is the Jupiter Creek electric ukulele. Which seems like a bargain at $245 to me.

Way cool, Mum! Sonny D ukulele.

I go out of my way to avoid charity albums put together by celebrities, but I’m making an exception for Big Change: Songs for FINCA that was released on iTunes this week.

There are three reasons why I’m making an exception: the celeb is Natalie Portman, it includes tracks by some of my favourite performers and it’s for a cause I believe in.

The big news is that it contains an exclusive track from Beirut, My Night With the Prostitute From Marseille. You can stream the track on EW. It also has tracks from other faves of mine Antony & the Johnsons, Angus and Julia Stone (if you’re not familiar with them check out Mango Tree), Devendra Banhart, Norah Jones and Tokyo Police Club.

FINCA provide loans, insurance and savings plans for people on very low incomes. The money is lent mainly to people setting up small, family business in developing countries who would otherwise never be able to get a loan and get their business started. I’m a strong believer in this type of charity. The money is spent in the way the person receiving it thinks best, helps them lift themselves and their family out of poverty, gets repaid and goes on to help more people (97% of loans are paid back on time). You can read more about them on villagebanking.com.

IODA (the company releasing the tracks) are even nice enough to be giving away Sean Hayes’ contribution (see below). So head over to iTunes and download the Beirut track at least.

Sean Hayes
“Turnaroundturnmeon” (mp3)
from “Big Change: Songs for FINCA”
(ioda)

Buy at iTunes Music Store

After endlessly playing the Hawaiian turnaround this week, it was inevitable I’d end up playing Ukulele Lady at some point and drag out Petty Booka’s version. I went over to Alligator Boogaloo to check their tab for the intro and found I was playing it differently to the way they have it tabbed. I reckon this is how it goes:

Their variation on the Hawaiian turnaround starts at bar 7.

You can download an mp3 of the introduction of Ukulele Lady on this page.

Buy Let’s Talk Dirty In Hawaiian: The Best of Petty Booka

The Elected – At Home (Time Unknown) (Chords)

It’s getting difficult to work out exactly what independent bands are independent of.

Anyhoo. This is a short little ukulele ditty that cropped up at the end of The Elected’s Sun, Sun, Sun album. The song is only 40 seconds long but it packs plenty of chords in. There are even three different F chords in it. If you’re not comfortable with the more difficult shapes, you could use the standard open F chord for all of these.

The trickiest part to get right is the ending. There are some quick changes between C and F with the final F being played half way up the neck. For the final change, play a C chord then start to slide your third finger up the neck. You have to be quite accurate and stop at the 8th fret. Once it’s there, barre your first finger across all the strings and strum the chord.

Requested by Suzanne

Buy Sun, Sun, Sun

You’ve only got a couple of days left to polish up these tunes before the big night:

Addams Family Theme Tune

Chopin – Funeral March

Dance Macabre

Ghostbusters (Duet)

The Gothic Archies – Freakshow

London Bridge Is Falling Down

The Misfits – Dig Up Her Bones

The Misfits – Halloween

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)

Twilight Zone Theme

Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London

This is Halloween (Theme)