The best of the week’s ukulele videos after the cut

Read the rest of this entry »

Lire ceci en francais(Google Translate).

Bonjour et bienvenue a La Chasse a Uke. There has been a big surge in the popularity of the ukulele in France in the last couple of years. The amount of hits this blog gets from France is topped only by the USA (thanks in no small part to King David Ukulele Station). This is set to continue with Julien Dore winning the French version of Pop/American Idol. Already, friend of the blog, nobo has been telling me that every time he takes out his uke he is met with shouts of, “Oh, like Julien from Nouvelle Star.” With his good looks and interesting voice, it’s not hard to see how he won. But his ukulele could do with a good tune up.

Cet Air-La was originally recorded by Ye-Ye girl France Gall, but the version Dore plays is much closer to that by April March (who will hopefully get the recognition she deserves after featuring heavily in the soundtrack to Tarantino’s latest flick). The simple chords and relaxed tempo make this an ideal piece for beginners. Those wanting to stretch themselves a little more can try the chord solo in the outro.

This creates a few large stretches. Although Dore, plays the first bar of this by placing his second finger on the 3rd fret, I strongly recommend you use your first finger. It makes the leap up to the 7th fret and back much simpler.

Thanks to nobo for pointing me in the direction of this clip

There are a great many ukulele blogs out there, it’s tough keeping track of all of them. That’s why I’ve saved you a great deal of trouble and combined them into a single Yahoo pipe:

Ukulele Blog Pipe

This clubs together:

4th Peg, All Things Ukulele, Chiyodad, Doifter, Dominator, Eastern Ukulele, Fretboard Journal (uke posts only), Heftone, King David Ukulele Station (Babelfish translation), musicguymic‘s world, Nalu Music, UK-Ukes, Ukecast, Uke Hunt, UkuLady, Ukulele and All That Jazz, UkuleleLand and Ukulelia. If there are any more that deserve to be on there, please let me know.

Unless there’s a post about being ’13 ans’ and living in La Rochelle, I can’t understand a word of King David Ukulele Station. So I’ve also set up a pipe delivering just King David Ukulele Station in English. Although this is Babelfish English so far from perfect. Also the feed seems to revert to French if you try to subscribe to it (in Bloglines at least). Pipes is still in Beta so hopefully this will be resolved.

Since the number of French visitors I get is topped only by the USA, I’ve also set up a feed of Uke Hunt en Français. It would be interesting to know how good the translation is.

Finally, Brian Hefferan has also set up a pipe. His includes new Flickr photos and YouTube videos amongst other delights.

I’ve finally got round to uploading a couple of videos to YouTube. I’d resisted previously due to my embarrassement at the hideous facial gurning I do when playing. But there were a couple tunes that required more than an mp3 to get the full effect.

I had to demonstrate the KoAloha Pink Crystal Colored Ukulele Strings generously given to me by the lovely Jenny Flame. And, well, you can see for yourself why the Smeck tribute above had to be a video.

Let me know what you think.

“Play something I’ve heard of,” a cry I often hear from elderly family members who are less than impressed with my Roy Smeck imitations. The fact is, no matter how technically adept you are, most people want to hear something they’ve heard a million times before. I suspect that, after ripping through the 24 caprices, Paganini’s grandma screeched, “Play that one off the cigar advert. You know the one.” Luckily, everyone recognises Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer.

Read the rest of this entry »

While at university – while the sensible people were out drinking, dancing and sharing venereal diseases – I was holed away in my room testing myself on Pareto optimality and trade coefficients with flashcards. It was, therefore, a huge disappointment to the geek in me that there were no flashcards online for learning uke chords.

Luckily, the wonderful and talented Jenny Flame has created some great looking flashcards for all the major, minor and seventh chords.

Uke Chord Flashcards

Simply print off one side of the pdf onto card, turn it over (being careful to check how your printer feed works) and print the other side, then cut them out (preferably fretboard side up). The idea is to look at the chord name side of the chord, play the chord on your uke, then check you are correct. Alternatively, you look at the chord side and think of the name. If you have a friend (unlikely as it is) you could have yourselves a game of flashcard war.

These cards are a great idea of Jenny’s. Be sure to join her MySpace group Ukulele Nation.

RISA have a spanking new site and a deal to distribute Ko’olau and Kolo ukes in Europe. To celebrate, they have launched a competition to win anything on the site. Anything, that is, except the Liberace of ukuleles and the combination surfboard-ukulele which I hope is in development.

There’s a dangerous shortage of ukuleles in the UK . So says The Times.

Metronomes are a very under-utilised device in the uke world – I know I could benefit from using one more regularly. Ukulele Tonya has added an interesting piece about using a metronome to her list of excellent articles.

Aldrine Guerrero has a series of ukulele instruction videos for you to watch for free on Iamhawaii TV.
Vote on whether this T-shirt gets made.

Obscene ukulele cartoon.

A ukulele love story.

Check out the best ukulele YouTube vids I’ve come across this week after the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having been mention three times on this blog in the last week, this song has officially reached the status of ‘zeitgeist’. Amanda Palmer’s version has caused a stir in blogville; Julien Dore won Nouvelle Star yesterday; and, friend of the blog and friend of the stars, Susan Tobacco pointed me in the direction of the above version by Lady Carol.

The trickiest part of the progression is the G – B move. If you’re having trouble with it you can substitute in this alternative version of the B7 chord which is just the G chord with every finger moved one string closer to your face:

Suggested Strumming

Palmer uses this as her main strum:

d – x u d u x –

She varies it a bit so feel free to do that in your own version.

Links

Buy the Radiohead version
Buy the Amanda Palmer version
More Amanda Palmer chords

There seem to be a great deal of frightfully posh indie boys and girls emerging from London/Brighton at the moment. When the tunes are as catch as Jack Penate’s Spit At Stars there’s little wonder why.

I’ll forgo any in-depth analysis of the ukulele techniques needed for this one. It’s much more important that you perfect the Penate bandy-legged dance. My advice is to cultivate the look of a long lost Gallagher brother and study the Breakfast Club dance scene non-stop for a month.

Buy Spit at Stars for a reasonable amount in the UK