I couldn’t resist arranging this tune for the ukulele. Having suffered through a few debilitating bouts of Neighbours addiction, I knew the tune embarrassingly well. For those of you in the developed world who don’t know, Neighbours is a low quality Australian soap full of questionable storylines, over acting and unnecessary bikinis.

The tune was written by, theme tune legend, Tony Hatch – also responsible for such classics as the Emmerdale Farm and Sportsnight. It has undergone a number of changes (you can read a frighteningly indepth history of the Neighbours theme tune here) which have always failed to bring it up to date – check out the most recent monstrosity.

The tune is so nostalgic that it’s impossible to modernise but so strong that it’s impossible to replace. That’s why my version is based on the old school theme tune. There are plenty of old-time, sentimental chords in this song for you to get your teeth into. If 80’s schlock ever comes back into fashion, this tune will be a goldmine.

Apologies to Americans who have no idea what this post was about. I’ve got the Gilligan’s Island theme coming up for you people.

Download mp3s of all the versions of the theme tune

Buy Neighbours: the Music

The best of the week’s ukulele videos over the fold

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Musicguymic has new KoAloha Sopranino ukuleles. Only nineteen and a half inches long. Aww bless.

San Francisco’s MoCFA is currently holding an exhibition on the Evolution of the Ukulele. It includes a two day ukulele festival featuring Jake Shimabukuro, The Paper Dolls and many others. If you can’t make it, you can still read another excellent article by John King.

Temporarily Distraught has the artwork and tracklisting for the forthcoming Beirut album.

BlipTV has an interview and performance from UOoGB and mad ukulele/bikini skills.

Hipsters/dupes can tune their ukuleles with their iPhones.

BKLYN Song of the Day has an mp3 of Bob Brozman and Rene Lacaille collaboration. Highly recommended.

Fretboard Journal alerts us to the danger that scented plugins pose to the happiness of your instrument.

Flame On! Rock Uke – a death metal ukulele.

Jenny Flame of Ukulele Nation has discovered a family history of ukulele. She was digging around in old family photos when she came across these two amazing photos of her great aunt in the 1940’s. It’s quite clear her great aunt knew how to rock the ukulele and tilted hat look back in the day.

SophiSoph – Smile (mp3) via her MySpace

Friend of the blog, Brian Osmucon emailed me this morning to let me know about his daughter’s music and blow me down if she isn’t great. As well as having a knockout voice, she’s chosen as excellent song to transfer to the uke in the form of Lily Allen’s Smile.

It doesn’t harm that the song only has two chords (Gm and F).

Lily Allen has a habit of writing songs that only have two chords – it gives her more time to spend on her true passion of kicking people down and stabbing them in the ear. LDN is another song with just two chords. This time F and C. You can play them in the usual open position, but if you play them this way:

Then you can recreate the guitar stabs by releasing the pressure from the chords (but keeping your fingers on the strings) just after each strum.

And if you want to play the intro, give this a bash:

Buy Alright, Still US UK

A quick round up of the most popular tabs on Uke Hunt in its three months of life in case you happen to have missed something important.

1. Beirut – Postcards From Italy

2. While My Guitar Gently Weeps

3. 12th Street Rag

4. Pink Panther

5. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

6. Rigk Sauer – Tequila

7. Brian Hefferan – The Entertainer

8. Brian Hefferan – Sailors Hornpipe

9. Earlyguard – Blue Smoke

10. Tetris duet

There’s a list of all the tabs and chords on this page.

Flight of the Conchords – Mermaids (Chords)

I woke up this morning to an excited email from Uke Hunt’s official FotC correspondent Jenny Flame telling me that last Sunday’s episode featured a ukulele song. I immediately dashed over to YouTube, stole the lyrics and started working out the chords.

After Jemaine’s appearance with a ukulele earlier in the series, it was the turn of Bret “Bret Bret” McKenzie (also of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra) to strum the uke. Although he didn’t bother playing the uke with his left hand (I assume it’s a parody of something).

Once you get passed the intro, the song itself only has two chords. The chords have names that sound like a chemical compound but don’t let that put you of. To play a Bm7, you bar your finger across all the strings at the second fret – make sure your thumb is behind the fingerboard to give you something to press against. The Amaj7 is like a normal A chord but with the g string played at the first rather than second fret.

Once you’ve got that chord change down, the only challenge is singing the song without bursting out laughing.

Buy The Distant Future US UK

Grass Stains (mp3)
You’re In Love Again Dirty Version (mp3)
Brains, Brains (mp3)via creebobby.com

Jacob Borshard has a few celebrity fans me (obviously), Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. Borshard won a song contest for the film Music and Lyrics (allegedly judged by stars of the film Grant and Barrymore) with the song Grass Stains. As a promotional tool, it easily beat the film’s other promotional gimmick: make your own 80s glam band.

After winning the contest, he made this sexy video for it – entirely by himself and without even a digital camera – and earned himself a restraining order barring him from, “Portland Public School property or any adjacent sidewalk for one calendar year,” while shooting it. (NOTE: if the police start asking you why you’re hanging around a school, “I’m making a video,” isn’t the best defence.)

It’s easy to see why they picked Borshard as the winner. His songs are full of charm, witty lyrics and adorable melodies. Those three so often go along with the ukulele.

You can download both of Borshard’s albums entirely free on his website. The lyrics for the Last Brontosaurus album on his site also have the chords for all the tunes and you can pick up the chords for a couple of tunes in a more easy to follow form on Mike’s Ukulele Page.

A couple of weeks ago I tabbed out a version of this song for two ukuleles and I couldn’t resist the challenge of doing it on one.

I combined the two parts in the simplest way I could think of: by only playing the background riff when there were no melody notes. There are two tricky parts to getting this: keeping the groove and distinguishing the melody notes from the riff. There are parts where the melody cuts across the riff in awkward ways (such as in bars 7 and 8 ) and I need some practice before I could fall naturally back into the riff. I also found the phrasing in bar 20 a little unnatural. Counting the beats (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &) and playing on the ‘1 &’ and the ‘4 &’ helped me sort it out.

I separated the melody from the riff by dampening the strings a little on the riff notes (i.e. resting the flabby bit at the bottom of my right hand against the strings very lightly) and giving the melody notes an extra bit of welly.

WS64 has done a great version of this tune. He incorporates more chord notes than I did. I particularly like his strummed sections. I like them so much I’m going to steal the idea.

The best of the week’s uke performances over the fold – including an earth-shattering performance by Tessie O’Shea and Jake coming over all Spinal Tap.

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Ukulelenurkka will be celebrating International Ukulele Day (August 23rd) in Helsinki with two days worth of top-notch gigs. Appearances from Ukulelezaza, Pete Howlett, Shelley Rickey and Scheidenbach.

After I mentioned the Tay Zonday’s viral hit video Chocolate Rain in connection with this performance, WS64 produced a fantastic ukulele version of the song. Tay Zonday and WS64 – Chocolate Rain (mp3)

A couple of atmospheric photos of Amanda Palmer and one of her many surprise ukulele performances.

Learn how to tie your ukulele strings extra firmly from the knot experts.

Mix Me A Molotov has a live mp3 of UOoGB performing Anarchy in the UK. Ukulele mp3s galore at Ochblog.

The Independent can’t resist a terrible ukulele pun either and reveals that Pete Doherty has, apparently, bought a uke.

Tedtoons of the Nashville Ukulele Society has two hilarious uke ecards: kitty ukulele and frog ukulele.

More painted ukes.

New ukulele LiveJournal group.

A ukulele playing Des O’Connor. Not that Des O’Connor.

Fluke played atop a camel.

Desperate rappers turn to Tiny Tim.