A quick bit of time sensitive news before we get down to business. There’s finally a legit and legal download of the tab for Jake Shimabukuro’s version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Even better you can access it for free today. It is a bit complicated, though. If you have Guitar Pro (the tab program I use) update to version 6.1 then click the mySongBook tab. If you don’t, you can download the mySongBook viewer free and find it there. You’ll only be able to see the tab free for 24 hours. After that you’ll have to buy it for two euros. UPDATE: Looks like it’s blocked in the US. Bummer. UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Seems like it’s blocked in Australia and Canada too. Double bummer.

With that out the way, here’s this year’s quiz.

Instructions:

- Grab a piece of paper
- Display your uke knowledge
- Check the answers here (no peeking)
- Leave your score in the comments along with your dangs/woohoos.

Name That Chord

What chords are these on a standard C-tuned (gCEA) ukulele?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Name That Celeb

Which famous person is ukeing in these pictures?

6.

7. Half a point each.

8.

9.

10.

Name That Singer

Who is singing these ukulele songs? (Looking too hard at the black boxes is officially cheating)

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Name That Ukulele

What brand are these ukuleles? (You don’t have to name the model but I’ll be suitably impressed if you do)

16.

Photo by: Monsieur Gordon

17.

Photo by: Metal Chris

18.

Photo by: TEDxHonolulu

19.

Photo by: Vicki and Chuck Rodgers

20.

Photo by: cartoixa

Name That Note

In tab for standard C-tuning (gCEA) what notes are these? (e.g. C, D, Eb)

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

Name That Cover

Which act are these ukulele orchestras covering?

26. Baines Ukulele Orchestra

27. Ukulele Orchestra of the Western Hemisphere

28. Hull Ukulele Group

29. Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra

30. Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Go here and check your answers.

Past Quizzes

Ukulele Quiz 2010
Ukulele Quiz 2009

Chuck Berry – Run Run Rudolph (Chords)

An easy 3-chord Christmas song. And the benefit of being a twofer since Little Queenie (worth clicking for the video) is exactly the same.

Suggested Strumming

You can just stick with a simple down-up pattern with a bit of emphasis. Like this:

d u D U d u D U

Or you can throw in a few sixth chords like this:

I’m doing all down strums on this:

 
Strum

Twiddly Bits

An essential Berry intro:

 
Intro

And a not so essential harmonized outro:

Buy the MP3

This week’s selection contains the most popular video I’ve ever featured on UkeToob.com: Raymond Penfield’s Addicted to Love. Universal 5 star votes and it’s not hard to see why.

Also up this week: The Jive Aces, Imelda May, Injured Birds using a banjolele in a new way and plenty more besides.

You can blame YouTube for this week being shorter than usual. They took away the x button that allowed you to get rid of videos in your subs box (even after you’ve watched them). And then they took away the two pages that still let you do that. So I’ve probably missed a whole load of good stuff.

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I’ve got my hands on a new ukulele! It’s an aNueNue harp ukulele. I’m still getting to grips with it but I’ve done a couple of videos with it: Here Comes the Sun and Albatross. I’ll be doing a review of it next year but you can read Tim’s thoughts right now.

Two sweet looking (and very expensive) DeVine ukuleles: DeVine 1 and DeVine 2.

1928 National Style 3 Resonator.

John Wayne lunch-boxalele.

Young man with ukulele.

Ukulele Hall of Famer and world’s oldest performing professional musician, Bill Tapia has died at the age of 103. Ukulelists paying their respects include Ralph Shaw, Lil Rev and Bartt. You can read an interview with him on Fretboard Journal and watch a clip from his documentary.

Kimo Hussey present a TV show dedicated to the ukulele. You can watch episode 1 of The Uke Project here and episode 2 here.

Aquila have had to stop making real gut strings due to mad cow disease. Before you panic, it shouldn’t affect their bionylon and nylgut strings (thanks to Zym).

Ian Whitcomb has a new book on the way Ukulele Heroes: The Golden Years (thanks to Ron Hale) And Guitar Muse has seven more books for musicians.

8 necked guitar/bass/ukulele/mandolin.

Thanks to phi for pointing out that tabs for the Jonathan Coulton song I posted last week can be found here.

Jim D’Ville’s ukulele tune is the soundtrack to every cat video.

Molly Lewis recounts playing for Stephen Fry.

In a hurry? Tune your ukulele with a drill.

New releases: The multi-talented Lil Rev has a new album out and a book of poetry on the way, Salwa Azar’s For America, Ariel Rubin’s Big Spoon.

Free Christmas ukulele music: Leftover Cuties, Tricity Vogue, Phredd’s pirate Christmas and Kahiwa’s Christmas down under, Darren Hayman, Steffaloo, The whychristmas? podcast.

No Hawaiian category in the new slimmed down Grammys. But the ukulele is represented in the 2012 nominations list by Eddie Vedder’s Ukulele Songs. My nominations for Ukulele Album of the Year are:

Givers – In Light
Leftover Cuties – Places to Go
Emily Scott – i write letters i never send
Tune-Yards – W H O K I L L

Leave yours in the comments.

I’ve just put out the 2nd edition of How to Play Christmas Ukulele. The main points of feedback I got from the first edition were:

- Make the arrangements easier.
- Make the tabs bigger.
- Do videos.

So that’s what I’ve done.

I’ve made the full arrangements simpler. There’s less fancy fingerpicking – they’re mostly just using the thumb of the right hand. And even simpler still, I’ve done melody-only arrangements (so you’re just playing one note at a time) with chord boxes for the backing.

There are videos for all the full arrangements and MP3s for all the melody arrangements (they’re made so you can adjust the balance on your speakers and play along to the chord backing).

The book has a new look and the tabs are easier to read.

If you bought the first edition, you should already have an email letting you download the new edition free. If not, send an email to howtoplayukulele@yahoo.co.uk with the email address you used to buy it and you’ll get the second edition.

The price is $9. But if you use the code “armadillo” (type it in the box on the left – without the quotes – then hit ‘Update Cart’) before 18th December you’ll get $2 off.

Click the button below to buy it or go to How to Play Ukulele to find out more.

How to Play Christmas Ukulele $9 $7 with the code “armadillo”.

What You Get

Once you’ve paid (payments handled by PayPal) you’ll be taken to the download page and receive an email with a link to the page where you can download a zip file containing:

- Tab for full arrangements 11 Christmas tunes for standard tuning (gCEA re-entrant). You can watch videos of all of them being played on YouTube.
- Tab and standard notation for the melodies only with accompanying chord boxes.
- A pdf file containing performance notes for all the tunes and descriptions of some of the techniques used.
- MP3s of all the melody arrangements. You can hear the melody being played and – after a bit fiddling with your balance knob – use them as a backing track.

If you haven’t bought an ebook from me before you might want to read the FAQ page for more information. And if you’re using an iPad or any idevice, you’ll need to download to your computer, unzip and transfer the files from there.

The Full Arrangements

Here are the videos for all of the full arrangements:

Auld Lang Syne
Deck the Halls
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Good King Wenceslas (Rocky Version)
Good King Wenceslas (Traditional Version)
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Here We Come A-Wassailing
In the Bleak Midwinter
Silent Night
Sussex Carol
The Holly and the Ivy
Twelve Days of Christmas

Melody Arrangements

 
Auld Lang Syne

 
Deck the Halls

 
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

 
Good King Wenceslas

 
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

 
Here We Come A Wassailing

 
In the Bleak Midwinter

 
Silent Night

 
Sussex Carol

 
The Holly and the Ivy

 
Twelve Days of Christmas

Buy It Now

Click the button below to buy it or go to How to Play Ukulele to find out more.

How to Play Christmas Ukulele $9 $7 with the code “armadillo”.

If you’re looking for some Christmas tunes to get your teeth into, have a go of these:

Chords

12 Days of Christmas
A Christmas Duel – The Hives and Cyndi Lauper
All I Want for Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey
Christmas for Cowboys – John Denver/Ballard C Boyd
Cold Outside – Julia Nunes & Wade Johnson
Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
Give the Jew Girl Toys – Sarah Silverman
It’s Cliched to be Cynical At Christmas – Half Man Half Biscuit
iPod X-mas – Hello Saferide
Let It Snow
Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight) – The Ramones
Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade
No Christmas – Zee Avi
Present Face – Garfunkel and Oates
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Santa Baby
Silver Bells – She & Him
The Christmas Song – Weezer
The Christmas Song Song – Rocky and Balls
White Christmas
Winter Wonderland
Year End Letter – Garfunkel and Oates
You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch

Tabs

German Christmas Carols
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Instrumental)
Jingle Bell Rock
Jingle Bells
Mele Kalikimaka
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
O Christmas Tree (Single Note Version)
Rudolph the Red Nosed Raindeer
Silent Night (Harmonics Version)
Silent Night (Single Note Version)
Sleigh Ride – U900 / The Ventures
White Christmas

She and Him – Silver Bells (Chords)

Good to see Zooey Deschanel busting out the ukulele for this cover of Livingston and Evans’s Silver Bells on She and Him’s Christmas album. Also good to see that she’s handled being constantly referred to as ‘adorkable’ without having sprayed crowded streets with machine-gun fire.

Suggested Strumming

Zooey goes with mostly just down-strums all the way through. It’s in 3/4 time so do three down strums each for the C-Cmaj7 bit and six strums for everything else.

If you want to vary it up, you can replace a set of three down-strums with:

d – d u d u

Buy the MP3

The guy playing ukulele in this clip is Benny Wenda. He’s also a leader of the movement to free West Papua from Indonesia.

He’s been living in the UK since 2003 when he was granted asylum after escaping arrest and torture in Indonesia. He now faces arrest and deportation after the issuing of an Interpol red notice.

On Radio 4′s Today program an Indonesian ambassador claims he’ll get a fair trial. Which doesn’t seem likely judging by Amnesty International’s report on Indonesia. The Indonesian government accept that torture takes place and calls it, “unprofessional”.

I heard about Benny from Jimmy off of the Bobby McGee’s:

I met Benny on a bus in Brixton coming back from a gig about three years ago. He had two beautiful little girls on his knee and a ukulele tucked under his arm. I had mine on my lap, we nodded in some kind of uke brotherhood recognition and we started talking.

Benny told me that he was a tribal leader in exile from West Papua, that he had been forced to flee the country under increasing fear for his life from the Indonesian government.

He had been recording a CD of ukulele freedom songs, “everyone plays ukulele over there!” he told me. We had lovely chat, He seemed like a lovely guy and when we shook hands and said “bye” at Victoria, he gave me a leaflet about his “Free Western Papua” cause.

Six months later, totally unrelated, at a music festival on the south coast I met a young lady who came over and started talking to me about my ukuele. Her neighbour played and had shown her how to play. In the silly serendipitous way the world works it turns out her neighbour was Benny and we spoke about him and his daughters and his story, we’ve been friends ever since….

Today I heard on BBC Radio 4 that Indonesia were putting pressure on the British Government to have Benny extradited. According to the Indonesians he is a wanted criminal, an arsonist and murderer.

I don’t believe them.

I don’t know the ins and outs of his case and I certainly don’t know enough to pontificate on the situation in West Papua. But I do know it’s wrong to threaten to send a guy back to a police force that tortured him and continues to torture others.

You can find out more about Benny and Free West Papua on FreeWestPapua.org. And you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

Videos this week include Jonathan Coulton, Dante in various states of facial hairedness, Phredd celebrating his new Martin and plenty more besides.

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