You’ve only got a couple of days left to polish up these tunes before the big night:
The Gothic Archies – Freakshow
The Misfits – Dig Up Her Bones
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)
This tune has to be one of the most downbeat ever written. It’s so deep and gloomy it makes Leonard Cohen sound like Samanda. That means it’s not entirely convincing on the usually light and sprightly uke. The Funeral March is probably best played as a little throwaway joke than a serious piece.
This website quotes the painter Felix Ziem on the writing of this piece.
Some time later Chopin came into my studio, just as George Sand depicts him – the imagination haunted by the legends of the land of frogs, besieged by nameless shapes. After frightful nightmares all night, in which he had struggled against specters who threatened to carry him off to hell, he came to rest in my studio. His nightmares reminded me of the skeleton scene and I told him of it. His eyes never left my piano, and he asked: ‘Have you a skeleton?’ I had none; but i promised to have one that night, and so invited Polignac to dinner and asked him to bring his skeleton. What had previously been a mere farce became, owing to Chopin’s inspiration, something grand, terrible and painful. Pale, with staring eyes, and draped in a winding sheet, Chopin held the skeleton close to him, and suddenly the silence of the studio was broken by the broad, slow, deep, gloomy notes. The ‘Dead March’ was composed there and then from beginning to end.
My favourite game with this tune is to play it as slowly as I can without slipping into a coma.
This work by Ukulele Hunt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
London Bridge Is Falling Down (midi)
There’s something very sinister about most nursery rhymes. Most real nursery rhymes. The ones that have been passed down through the generations, not the ones that have been passed down from purple dinosaurs. They’re quite often used in horror films (such as The Haunting) and this particular tune was co-opted for the Silver Shamrock theme in Halloween 3.
There are a few of ways you could pick this tune. Each time two notes are picked together, you could pick them with your thumb and index finger. This is a perfectly good way of doing it, but I prefer another way.
I position my hand so that each finger has its own string (those of you that have signed up for the fingerpicking course will be familiar with it) but I’ll use my thumb to pick the bottom note of each pair. So, the first note of bar 1 I’ll pick with my thumb and index finger. The first note of bar 2 I’ll pick with my thumb and middle finger. It seems a strange way to do it, but it’s the way that feels most natural to me. Experiment with these two (and any alternatives you can think of) and see which feels best to you.
Suggested by West
This work by Ukulele Hunt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
You can download an mp3 of this song and many more here.
New York Ukulele Ensemble – Vampire Luck
You can download an mp3 and get the chords for this song and a couple of others here.
Waitswatcher – Scary Uke
Michael Wagner – Spooky Uke
Petty Booka – Sophisticated Hula on Ghoul-A-Go-Go
Mark Occhionero
(Played at Mike DaSilva’s Studio in Berkeley and made a special broadcast from Boston to Berkeley, Ca for our second club meeting!)
Pork Pie Hat
Body & Soul
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
When You’re Smiling
BUC Lesson (When U Smilin’)
Sleepy Eyes (At Mike DaSilva’s Studio)
See YouTube for about 40 more
Melvern Taylor
Sad & Blue
Sad & Blue (Art Video version)
Andrea (MT and the Fabulous Meltones) — &mode=related&search=
Sleepy Eyes
Craig Robertson
Kirtland Murder Barn
Sawing a Lady in Half
Mermaid
She Likes to Pull the Wings Off Flies
Masochism Tango
Houdini
The Hypnotist
Craig Robertson also has a new album out, That Dress, which includes Sawing A Lady… and She Likes To Pull…
Fran Spain
5 Foot 2
All of Me
Hone A Ka Wai
Sweet Georgia Brown (Risa Solid)
Singing in the Rain
Keep up to date with the latest Noir-ings at Ukulele Noir.
The Lars Larrson lists were compiled by The list was compiled by Jeff West of the Berkeley Ukulele Club and had to be rescued from a hole at the bottom of the internet.
A series of video tutorials on strumming in French – but you’ll get the idea (thanks to Jeff for the heads up).
Midnight Ukulele Disco has come up with another winner this week with a session from Hailey Wojcik.
John Harris continues The Guardian’s championing of the ukulele. Apparently, Morrissey was a big fan of George Formby and The Smiths edition of The South Bank Show kicked off with Formby (and Morrissey is officially the only man ever to be more northern than George Formby).
Harris’ article also mentions the View whose lead singer, Kyle Falconer, this week turned up with uke. He arrived onstage to fill Amy Winehouse’s high-heeled shoes to sing Valerie with Mark Ronson. You can watch the whole performance here (the uke makes an entrance at about 1 hour 10 mins).
The ‘ukulele kills the recorder’ story trundled on and even made it onto Have I Got News For You.
Grab an mp3 of Jens Lekman doing a ukulele version of Your Arms Around Me (as well as other tracks) on False 45th.
Check out the completed Hula Girl and her tiny uke on Leeward Lounge.
Princess Maxima of the Netherlands gets the gift of uke (click on ‘NA’ for the big action).
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London (Chords)
Dead simple this one. There are only three chords (D, C and G) repeated over and over again.
If you want something a bit more challenging, the piano riff fits quite nicely on the uke too.
I was watching another enlightening and inspiring tutorial by Mark Occhionero today, this time on Little Grass Shack (you can get the tab on the YouTube page). It set me off vamping around in a Hawaiian style (despite the freezing cold weather) and playing the most Hawaiian lick I know:the Hawaiian turnaround. In its simplest form (in the key of A), it goes like this:
Make sure you play it with plenty of lazy swing.
This phrase can be chopped and changed in many different ways. Here’s a popular one:
It can be extended and messed around with as much as you like:
Duet Midi
Uke 1 Midi
Uke 2 Midi
This record is, as far as I remember, the third record I ever bought – after Chas ‘n’ Dave’s Snooker Loopy and Van Halen’s Why Can’t This Be Love (yeah, I was one of the cool kids). It might just be the nostalgia, but I can’t get enough of this song. Bustin’ does, indeed, make me feel good.
I’ve written this up as a duet, but I think it would sound great in a uke group/orchestra/ensemble. There are easy chords for the newbies, the riff for the intermediates and some fiddly bits for the show-offs.
The intro is the only spooky bit of the song and works well on its own as an atmospheric bit of music. You can play it all on the uke, with a bit of fiddling, like this:
The riff that kicks in after this is a bit of cobble-together of the bass and the chords. It works well against straight chords and sounds great when the high riff joins in.
The trickiest section of the song is the ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghost’ section (and not just the need for turning a blind eye to double negatives). In some of the bars the chords change a beat before you’d expect them to – making them more difficult to keep track of. The synth riff also gets a bit tricky with the added harmony (bars 21 and 22). If you’ve got space on your uke, you might try playing it this way:
I’ve put up midis of both the ukes individually so, even if you’re as lonely and smelly as I am, you can play along and make believe you have a friend. If you want to play along with the original, you’ll have to tune down by half a step.
One thing about this video passed the young, fresh-faced me by but has just shocked the living bejesus out of the old, haggered me. Near the end, there’s an appearance by a very young, very gawky Al Franken. Scary indeed.
Check out Sean Gordon’s version of Ghostbusters on the uke.
Suggested by West and Retrovertigo
UPDATE: Ian did a fantastic version of this based on the tab.
The Gothic Archies – Freakshow (Chords)
I could let Halloween season pass without revisiting the Gothic Archies. The chords are fairly simple (so long as you’ve got the hang of playing Bb). The biggest challenge is keeping a straight face and a deadpan voice while singing lines like, “Real people question how someone took a lobster’s face and put it on a cow.”
Scream and Run Away would also be suitable for Halloween performance.
Suggested by Olly
