Legendary guitar string maker, Ernie Ball have started making ukulele strings. Check out Got a Ukulele’s opinion and Southern Ukulele Store’s comparison.
HChicago Museum’s history of the Harmony company (via @hermanvdc).
Lupita Nyong’o has been learning ukulele in order to play a zombie teacher.
Window Shopping
– Outdoor Banjolele Carbon Nickel Clear.
– 1930’s Martin 5-K.
– Final Fantasy Sabotender Cactuar Ukulele which looks insane and can’t possibly be worth what they’re asking for it.
I’ve been a fan of Ariana Grande as a person since the classy way she handled the Manchester bombing. I haven’t been a consistent fan of her music but thank u, next is a winner. Firstly, there’s the tasty chord progression. In the key of this arrangement it goes:
Second is that great vocal run leading into the chorus (bar 20). It’s very quick so I used campanella picking to play it. If you prefer, you could use hammer-ons and pull-offs like this:
And, third, her use of the Scotch snaps rhythm in the chorus (first cropping up in bar 24). Which goes like this:
Coupled with half-time Scotch snaps in the intro and outro:
A few great snippets from Irish musicians to get you in the mood for St. Patrick’s Day.
If you like these short tabs, you can find lots more on my Instagram. And there’s more Irishy tabs and chords here.
It’s St Patrick’s Day this Sunday so time of the traditional Pogues chord post. This time I’ve gone with their cover of my favourite early- Dylan song When the Ship Comes In.
The two songs are in the same key but they do contain a fair few differences so I’ve written up both.
And if you want more Irish songs you can find all of them on the site here.
For the main strum I like to use:
d – d – d u d –
Do that once per chord except:
– Four times for the G in the intro.
– Twice on the G at the end of the even numbered lines in the verses.
– Twice on the Bm in the fifth line of the verses.
The tempo is pretty rapid on this one. So if you want an easy strum you can just use all down strums. Making the intro sound like this:
Or you could go with d – d u d – which makes it sound like this:
The tune in the solo fits pretty nicely on ukulele. I’ve introduced a little campanella run in bar 6. To prepare for it I suggest barreing across the 7th fret at the start of bar 5.
Buy the Dylan version
Buy the Pogues version
More Irish tabs and chords
Tracklist
The O’Pears – Bleak Midwinter / River
Andreas and Corey – Carmen
EatMyUke – Queen Medley
Ukulele Bartt Warburton – Love of My Life
Stevon Artis – Fences
Mandy Harvey – Release Me
Daniel Estrem – Andantino by James Hook
Gerald Ross – Skip It
Paul Hemmings – It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Paul Hemmings’ Duke Ellington covers. Now you can pick up the Duke On Uke tab book of his arrangements.
I stumbled across a Cliff ‘Ukulele Ike’ Edwards track I was unfamiliar with on The Internet Archive with some fantastic ukeing and his trademark deranged scatting: When My Sweetie Puts Her Lovin’ On.
Window Shopping
– Andreas David Samples the Duane Noble Harp Ukulele.
– 1920’s S.S.Stewart taropatch.
– 1961 Martin Tiple.
– 30s/40s Jetel banjolele.
– 1916 Ditson.
On Video
– Feng E returns to Ellen.
– “Gutted I missed the #LibDem conference.”
A song from one of my favourite albums of all time: Swordfishtrombones. And I’ve gone for the grand weeper side of the grim reapers/the grand weepers split in his songs with Johnsburg, Illinois.
My favourite aspect of this song is the dichotomy between the beautiful piano playing and Waits’s raspy voice. He continues that split in the outro where pretty chords knock-up against dissonant notes. I’ve reworked the outro but kept that same idea. I’d definitely recommend coming up with your own outro. When you’re using dissonance, there are no wrong notes.
If ukulele versions of Tom Waits are your thing, you have to check out Pascal Fricke’s Waits covers particularly his outstanding version of Hoist that Rag.
Today’s post is a guest post from Choan Galvez taken from his 50 Miniature Studies for Ukulele.
Most of the piece is played on a banjo roll style arpeggio involving three fingers. Accentuate the first two notes in every bar to create a sense of ethereal melody. You can even add some dramatism by slowing the beat just a little on the start of the measure.
Grips are fixed for the full measure in almost every bar, and position shifts are minimal. Maybe you’ll need some practice to achieve a smooth transition into bar 6, otherwise, I’d call this one a quite feasible piece.”
About the project:
I’m publishing a collection of 50 short pieces for ukulele solo I’ve title 50 Miniature Studies for Ukulele, at a rate of two videos per week. Videos are released every Wednesday and Friday each week and can be found on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. The tabs, performance notes and other goodies are accessible for patrons through Choan’s Patreon page.
Thanks to Choan for the tab. And here’s my take on the tune.
There were two sad loses for the music world last week: Peter Tork of The Monkees and, overlooked soul singer and transgender pioneer, Jackie Shane. Particularly sad for Jackie Shane who had only just come to wider public attention (and my attention) through Numero Group’s recent rerelease of her music (a must-listen if you’re at all interested in classic soul music) and
a profile in the New York Times.
Verse, Solo, Bridge: I like to use a two bar strumming pattern here. The first bar goes like this:
d – d u d u d u
And the second:
d u d u – u d –
In the first two lines you play the first bar on G then the second bar on D then both on G. After that it’s one bar per chord with an added down-strum on the D7 at the end of the verse.
The solo is just the first two lines of the verse and the bridge is just the second half of the verse. So you can use the same strumming there.
Chorus and Outro: For the rapid G-C changes I just do two down-strums per chord. The one long down-strum each chord on the last two lines.
The intro combines the organ stabs and the guitar riff (which pops up again at the end of the chorus). If you want to make it easier to play you can switch the opening chords with 021x and 0003.
Tracklist
Jono And The Uke Dealers – Zero Hours (Via @ukeist)
BananaCactus – Bon Iver Medley
Kaniela Nakashima – Pua Hone
Diana Chittester – Paradox
Brit Rodriguez – Maybe I’m Insane
Paul Hemmings – I’m Beginning To See The Light
Byrd & The Boys – Don’t Leave Me (With My Ding Dong In My Hand)
Youkeandme – Bella Notte
Jonathan Lewis – The Banks of the Dee (Fieldtown Morris)
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