The gentleman to your left with the scary eyebrows is indeed me. I’ve finally got round to doing an About Me and I’ve upload some of my uke tunes. But be warned, the quality is highly dubious.

If you have any suggestions for the site, requests, complaints or suchlike; I’d love to hear from you. You can leave a comment or send me an email. I promise I’ll reply no matter how sick and deviant your suggestions. In fact, the sicker the better.

Only a precious few hours left to bid on this beautiful uke from Duane Heilman of Black Bear Ukuleles. As well as luthiering, Heilman also makes quirky, ukulele based art. Sometimes it’s hard to work out where the ukuleles end and the art begins.

The collision of rictus-grinned morning TV host and the morose wit of Stephin Merritt was always going to produce hilarity. The look on Merritt’s face seems to shoot the words, “I’m going to set fire to your house and watch the smoldering remains through a huge spyglass.” I can only pray that the song’s final line of, “Everyone you despise will die so smile,” was followed by the words, “Here’s Tom with the weather.”

Merritt and Daniel ‘Lemony Snicket’ Handler have worked on a number of projects together and have, apparently at least, been friends since childhood. Handler is a fine accordion player and appeared on The Magnetic Fields’ (Merritt’s main band) album 69 Love Songs. Merritt returned the favour by forming The Gothic Archies with Handler and recording songs to accompany the Series of Unfortunate Events books. The two are a partnership made in heaven (and also a fine comedy duo).

Smile! No One Cares How You Feel has a simple repeating uke figure throughout – making it ideal for anyone learning to fingerpick on the ukulele.

The best approach to picking this is to assign a finger (or thumb) of the right hand to each string. The thumb on the g string, the index finger on the C string, the middle finger on the E string and the ring finger on the A string. The picking pattern is:

Thumb, index, middle, ring, middle, index, thumb, index (then repeat… a lot)

Once you can pick that pattern without thinking, you shouldn’t have any problem playing the song and scaring TV hosts.

I never really understood people who get sweaty-palmed over album covers. But I do love to browse the various sheet music cover galleries online. This example of Red Rose Rag is particularly good. It’s sexy in a way that you never see on album covers anymore; it’s relaxed and has an off-duty cool about it – completely lacking in the desperation you usually see now. And she’s smoking; which is the coolest, sexiest thing anyone can do (until your lungs turn to dust and you start coughing black phlegm – that’s a little less sexy). You can download the cover and the score for the song here.

The woman pictured is Dolly Connolly, wife of the writer of this song Percy Wenrich and singer in her own right. Wenrich (known as “The Joplin Kid” – reference to his place of birth rather than the earlier famous ragtime composer Scott Joplin) wrote a number of popular tunes in the first few decades of the 20th Century – largely in the ragtime style – with Red Rose Rag being one of his most popular. Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned before, even professional writers are unable to spell ukulele correctly. So, it’s no surprise that humble eBay sellers get it wrong too. Luckily, there is a way to exploit the illiteracy and carelessness of others for your own greedy, money-grubbing ends. Read the rest of this entry »

A quick round up of my favourite ukulele videos uploaded to YouTube recently (in no particular order).

Mark ‘JazzUkes’ Occhionero – A Blossom Fell

A version of a song best known, to me at least, in a version by Nat King Cole. The chords for which you can find here.

Brian Hefferan – Foggy Mountain Breakdown

A blistering version of the tune made famous by the banjo of Earl Scruggs. You can see Scruggs playing the tune along with Steve Martin (yes, the ukulele playing Steve Martin), Jerry Douglas and Albert Lee here.

Mercedes Landazuri РEl Chulla Quite̱o

Shigeto Takahashi

There are plenty of great performances up from the recent New York Uke Fest, but this one caught me completely by surprise. I had, and still have, no idea who he is. But, judging by these performances, I want to hear a lot more from him.

There are some occasions so dull that only a significant amount of alcohol can get you through: weddings, baseball games, a day at work. High on the list has to be spelling bees. A group of writers in San Fransisco came to the same conclusion and put together a drunken spelling bee. After successful spellings of words as complex as “verisimilitude” and “anamnesis”, one word felled three contestants in a row. That word: ‘ukulele’.

Another time drinking is necessary, is at karaoke. I always insist I will not do karaoke unless I can do the song Tequila – I am entirely unwilling to sing any more than three words. But give me a uke and I’ll play this tune all night. Read the rest of this entry »

My belief that the ukulele is a force for goodwill between all in the world rivaled only by industrial quantities of marijuana took a beating today. It was reported that kids at a school in Guam were using ukulele’s to smuggle implements of destruction to mutilate fellow (willing) classmates with. There are no shortage of people who value the uke for it’s noggin’ battering qualities. Thou shalt not use ukuleles to get into girls’ pants/Use it to smash over their heads.

My faith, however, has been restored by Night of 100 Ukes. Read the rest of this entry »

Given Arcade Fire’s penchant for strange instruments such as French horns, the hurdy-gurdy, the sackbut and the Tuvan nose-banjo, it’s a huge oversight of them not to have used a ukulele.

Happily for us, their latest single, Keep The Car Running, fits very nicely on the ukulele. Read the rest of this entry »

“The ukulele is a noble little instrument… anyone serious about music will eventually come to play one.” Bob Brozman.

Like West Ruislip Golf Course Clubhouse, you play ukulele twice in your lifetime; once when you start out and once when you’ve seen it all.

Thanks to it’s suitability for tiny fingers, it’s ease of learning and the fact that, unlike the recorder and the violin, it produces a noise preferable to being violently stabbed in the ear with an ice-pick; it is becoming the number one choice for school instruments.

The general assumption seems to be that the ukulele a great instrument for kids to get to grips with music before they move on to play a proper instrument. Not only does this massively underestimate the potential of the uke, it is also legally inaccurate. The matter of the ukulele’s status as ‘real instrument’ rather than toy was decided by the American Federation of Musicians in New York in 1950.

For the experienced musician the ukulele presents something invaluable: restrictions. It creates the challenge of creating exciting and interesting music with a limited number of notes. It forces more harmonic ingenuity and more creative rhythms. The ukulele proves the adage that it isn’t size that matters, it’s what you do with it that counts.

There are few instruments in the world that can compete with the ukulele. It’s inexpensive, portable and easy to learn. It can be used as a cheerful novelty or to express heartbreak. It can give a simple strummed accompaniment or for displays of great virtuosity. It’s the greatest instrument the world has ever known.