I’ve been playing with Yahoo Pipes again. This time I’ve set up a pipe which, in theory at least, lets you search a number of video websites (including Midnight Ukulele Disco) for ukulele videos.

Ukulele Video Search

The Ukulele Video Search Pipe searches for ukulele videos on: Midnight Ukulele Disco, Google Video, YouTube, Yahoo! Video, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Break. The term ‘ukulele’ is already embedded in the pipe.

All you have to do is type in the number of results you want to see and the person or song you want. For example, 30 results and ‘Craig Robertson’ will return his videos on MUD and YouTube.

Unfortunately, Yahoo Pipes is in beta and I’m not all that proficient on it so this pipe is quite temperamental. The pipe originally contained the site Grouper but when I searched for ‘Craig Robertson’ it had a disturbing tendency to point to a man being kicked in the balls (NSFW – unless you work in Abu Ghraib).

Video Search: If for some inexplicable reason you want to find a video which doesn’t include a ukulele, you can search using this tube.

Be sure to check out the Ukulele Blog Aggregator pipe while you’re there.

Blog Updates

The eagle-eyed obsessives amongst you may have noticed a few changes around here recently:

1. I have set up a Tab & Chords Page with songs listed alphabetically rather than in the unhelpful date order.
2. There’s a Contact Page where you can send me an email directly from the site.
3. You can now read Uke Hunt by email by putting your address in the form below or in the sidebar. Or you can subscribe to the feed by clicking the orange button in the sidebar or the big one to the right. This takes you to a page where you can select your chosen reader and sign up. If you’ve no idea what I’m on about, read this introduction to feeds and immediately improve your life forever.

There are some inventions so perfect and unlikely that their inception can only be put down to a moment of pure genius. For example, who was it who first stood on beach, looked down at the sand and thought, “You know, I reckon if we melt that down we could see through that.”? And who was it that got so bored one winter’s evening that they went rummaging through the tool shed and decided to play a saw with a violin bow and created a ghostly wail. Luckily for us they did as musical saw and ukulele make a near perfect combination.

The British electronic music scene isn’t the first place you’d expect to find a saw and ukulele player but the entire genre can be justified for producing one, Mara Carlyle. Carlyle has appeared on records by Plaid and Matthew Herbert. Her scene stealing vocals quickly earned her a record deal. She released her debut album, The Lovely (sadly not a Debbie McGee concept album), in 2004 and the fantastically named EP I Blame Dido a year later.

But she first came to to my notice with her uke and saw version of Jamie Lidell’s Game for Fools (which appeared on his album of remixes Muliply Additions). The original version of the song is an Otis Reading style but from Carlyle’s version you’d think it was written for ukulele. It’s a masterclass in ukeing up song.

Buy Mara Carlyle

Once you’ve mastered the Earlyguard piece I posted before this would be the perfect follow-up. It uses similar techniques but in a more complicated way.

The introduction to this piece always reminds me of Earlyguard’s fellow German Beethoven. The tune then moves into picking notes across the strings. This time in groups of three and two as well as all four. The tempo of this piece changes a great deal and to help play the faster sections, rather than play all notes with the thumb as in Blue Smoke, he plucks the A-string with his index finger. This gives his thumb more time to move to the next set of notes. If you want to make it easier still, you could pluck each string with a different finger

Written down, this piece looks like just a series of arpeggios. But listen to Earlyguard playing it and it’s clear that it’s full of melody. Be sure to accentuate the melody notes. These are the notes played on the lowest string except in bars 20 and 21 where they are on the 1st string.

Visit Earlywolf.

The best of the week’s uke videos behind the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole isn’t going to let being dead for a decade slow him down. He has just released new album, Wonderful World. The album features classic IZ tracks with a full orchestral backing. I’m not sure how much an orchestra will add to his music. He’s at his best when it’s just him and his uke. The video of his performance of White Sandy Beach at Amazon is absolutely captivating.

George Hinchcliff of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain was interviewed on News 24 whilst images of death and destruction were flashed up behind him.

Showdown and The Ukulele Bandit (or Ryan and Jake to their mums) have set up a new website The Ukulele Connection. Amongst other features, they celebrate the perfect combination of dragon and ukulele.

Are you a 300ft tall banjo-uke player? Today is your lucky day.

Ukuleles on the audioblogs: Old Blue Bus on Ukulele Ike. Cousins Vinyl on Sammy Kaye’s Making Love Ukulele Style. Dublin Opinion has live Beirut tracks. Update: Rewritable Content has a live recording of Beirut including two new songs. Cousins Vinyl also have a uke remix Making Love Ypsilanti Style.

If anything can save the world the ukulele can.

Britain no longer has a ukulele playing prime minister.

The Chicago Tribune writes up the Chicagoland Ukulele Jam Festival.

Hawaiian ukulele museum.

Whether it was the wartime rationing, it’s phallic nature, or the fact that bananas have no bones; the banana was something of an obsession in wartime songs. If you hadn’t guessed by the title, the hat and the mid-YMCA pose, this is a novelty song. As with any good novelty song, this burrows into your head so deeply it would take a drill to get it out. And after having it rotate in my brain for an hour today, the drill option looked quite appealing.

In the verses, it’s worth emphasizing the melody notes of the chords (usually the note on the highest string) and you might need this little beauty:

Requested by Bromley Plonker

The ukulele – thanks to it’s naturally comedy – has cropped up a fair few times on The Simpsons Principle Skinner, Krusty the Clown, Martin and Moe have all been seen strumming the ukulele on one occasion or another. Last week, Zack Kim post this eye-popping version of The Simpsons theme. I’m assuming that, unlike Kim, you don’t have two guitars, eighteen fingers and six brains. So I’ve tabbed out a much simpler version for the uke.

This version, not in the same key as the original, starts with ‘The Siiiimmmp-sooons‘ and cuts to the final main phrase (the way it is on the Simpsons episodes that are so crammed with gags they have to cut the intro short).

I’ve already mentioned how much I enjoy Earlyguard’s tunes. He has a very distinctive style (added to by his RISA solid) which is relaxing and hypnotic. So, when I heard him complain that he hates tabbing in his explanation of this piece, I felt I had to give it a go.

The tune follows the same simple picking pattern though out: starting on the forth string and picking through each string individually. Earlyguard uses his thumb to pick all the notes which gives it a warm, rounded tone. However, you might find it easier to pick each string with a dedicated finger (4th string = thumb, 3rd string = index finger etc.).

The risk with this piece is that, if you don’t put enough feeling into it, it could sound like a practice piece. To avoid this, you need to play with the speed of the piece and with the dynamics – which Earlyguard does wonderfully. For example, you could play the first two bars of the tune strongly and the second two more quietly – creating an echo effect.

I plan on tabbing more of Earlyguard’s tunes so be sure to check back here.

I highly recommend you check out Earlywolf – Earlyguard’s collaboration with fellow UkeTuber WS64.

At last, a tab I can get right (sort of)

Henry Mancini is probably the most famous writer of TV and film scores. Many of his themes are so memorable as to outlive their original source; such as Baby Elephant Walk (from the forgotten film Hatari) and Peter Gunn (from the hipster detective series of the same name).

Mancini’s theme for the Pink Panther films (and later TV show) strikes the perfect balance between detective intrigue and humour. My version of it – which slips into another Mancini detective theme A Shot In The Dark – was developed from a guitar arrangement by Colin Reid.

The main trick to get right in this tune is the balance between the melody and the chord accompaniment. You should concentrate on keeping the melody strong and at the forefront while while the chords are more soft and only played between the melody notes. I’ve tabbed the chords very loosely as I usual improvise the rhythm for the accompaniment. For expert use of this style check out Ohta-San.

Tricky sections of this piece are bars 9 and 13. Although these bars are essentially the same, you need to finger them differently or you’ll come unstuck. I’ve put the left hand fingering I use in these section underneath the tab and done the same for the run in bar 20. I should say that, even though I don’t do it in the video, it would be best to repeat the first section of the tab as it is the most recognisable part.

The tune finishes on the ‘International Man of Mystery Chord’. This chord is an Am7M. It contains a minor third but a minor seventh giving a double identity which has made it almost ubiquitous in spy and detective themes.

One final consideration: it’s absolutely essential that you play this tune on pink strings.

Requested by Fran.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s new album, Precious Little, is available from their website. You can download a track from the album – Joni Mitchell’s (He Played Real Good) For Free – on Horse Latitudes.

Bake yourself a Cakelele. Aloha-licious.

All four presenters of Resonance FM‘s ‘perfect accompaniment to a chocolate Hob Nob or recreational self abuse’ Glue Peter are learning the uke and indulging in all things ukulele. Their last ukulele special featured, Duke of Uke mainman, Matthew Reynolds and live music from Hefner‘s Darren Hayman. I’ve been promised more uke content in the future. Listen online at 3.30pm (UK time) every Saturday.

Amanda Palmer is playing Creep again. This time with The Gossip’s Beth Ditto and a puppet. (DailyMotion seems to be down at the moment – there’s a shorter, lower quality version here)

Play the Lilo and Stitch air ukulele.

How to settle a ukulele fight.