Friday Ukulelinks

Gary at Ukulelia has put together a list of Christmas ukulele tabs and chords online and alerts us to the Fiesta Flea.

UkeToob interviews Merrill ‘tUnE-YaRdS’ Garbus.

Death Cab for Cutie to release ukulele song.

MP3 blogs: Muruch has eagleowl’s Sleeptide, Foggy Ruins of Time has the very big spider.

If this is your first visit here, you can find the chords/tab in those posts by clicking on the song title in red.

Christmas Ukulele: Winter Wonderland (Chords)

Winter Wonderland (Chords)(PDF)

Another Christmas song with no reference to Christmas in it but I loved the version by keonepax with Bosko and Honey I had to write it up.

In the chord chart I’ve shown the chord inversions that keonepax is playing, but it’s great to mix them up with other inversions. Here are a few possibilities.

In the solo Bosko is using quite a few sixths:

And finishes of with a cool little variation on the Hawaiian turnaround. Here’s my take on the same idea:

MP3

keonepax’s YouTube Page
Bosko and Honey

Christmas Ukulele: German Carol Tabs

Weihnachten mit der Ukulele (PDF)

As well as his classical and traditional tab book, Wilfried Welti has also put together an ebook of German Christmas carols. Some of these - such as O, Tannenbaum and Stille Nacht - are very familiar outside of Germany. Some of them are less recognisable - such as Ihr Kinderlein Kommet (O Come, Little Children). Others are entirely new to me but have great tunes such as Lieb Nachtigall. All of them are beautifully and simply arranged for the uke.

Visit Wilfried Welti’s YouTube channel.

Christmas Ukulele: 12 Days of Christmas (Chords)

12 Days of Christmas (Chords)(PDF)

Incredibly irritating to song to go through sober, but the big advantage of it is that all the numbers from 12 to 6 just require one strum of a D chord.

The best bit, obviously, is the ‘FIVE GOLDEN RIIIIIIIINGS’. I like to beef that part up a bit with these chords:

I also like to add bits of the melody into the chord accompaniment as well. And a solo version in this key is, handily enough, in my How to Play Christmas Ukulele ebook.

There are two different versions of the D chord in the chart: one with an open A string and one with the A string at the fifth fret. But you can use just one of them the whole way through if you’re not comfortable with either. I’m going to have to come up with a better way of referring to different inversions of a chord than calling it ‘alt’, let me know because there must be one. Perhaps calling it D, D’, D”. Let me know your suggestions.

Requested by Annie

Christmas With The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I find most Christmas songs unbearably bad. The only type of Christmas songs I love are the old Pagan ones that have had a thin layer of Christianity papered on top (much like Christmas itself) and one of the best, Down in Yon Forest, crops up on the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s new Christmas album. A quick lyric sample: “In the bed there lays a knight / Whose wounds do bleed by day and night / Under that bed there runs a flood / The one half runs water the other runs blood.” … and a Happy New Year.

But there’s plenty of jollity on the album as well along with a bunch of lyric changing that I’m dying to quote here and entirely ruin for you. These humorous, singalongs are enhanced by being recorded live while the more intricate songs are recorded in the studio.

But the highlight of the album for me is - as you might expect - the top notch uke playing. Their instrumental version of Wassail is a masterclass in arranging for a ukulele group - everywhere you look there’s something interesting going on and it still works as a whole - and Christmas Rose is a beautifully played waltz. They use the uke in some interesting ways; the album opens with sleigh bells imitated by playing the strings behind the nut. The uke playing highlight of the album is the album closer: a funky-ass version of Good King Wenceslas. The intro is incredible. I don’t know how they manage to build those up.

You can buy Christmas with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and listen to extracts here.
And The Ukes will be turning up on Colin Murray’s Christmas Show on Radio 1 on the 22nd December (who has some mad ukulele skillz himself).

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