Feb/15/19
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Friday Links: Grammy Win, Craft Musica

A ukulele victory at the Grammys with Lucy Kalantari and the Jazz Cats picking up the award for Best Children’s Album.

George Formby fan hid £19,000 ukuleles from wife.

New Music
– This years Ukulele Spotify playlist is up and running with Lisa Hannigan, Beirut, Brit Rodriguez and…
– Crispy Jones’s new song Pet Sematary.

Window Shopping
– New Italian ukes: Mercatino Mahimahi and Mahilele.
– Craft Musica make some striking looking ukes including the Junta cutaway, the Joe Cool and the Junta mini.
– More NAMM ukes from Baan Ukulele.
– 1930s Martin 5k and 60s Style 1.

On Video
– Bessie Love playing her taropatch ukulele.
– Kevin Bacon’s Valentine’s song.

Feb/14/19
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Billie Eilish – bury a friend (Tab)

Billie Eilish – bury a friend (Tab)

I first stumbled across Billie Eilish with her ukulele song party favor. I enjoyed it enough to stick it on my Ukulele 2017 Spotify playlist but wasn’t entirely blown away. Something must have happened since then because she’s released four outstandingly good songs in a row.

The song is split between melodic sections like the People are Strange-like intro and the “Debt I owe…” section and the more mood-based sections. To emphasise that I’m playing the melodic sections using fingerpicking and the moody sections with strums (including plenty of muting for strings that aren’t being played).

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More pop tabs and chords
More Billie Eilish tabs

Bonus: Billie Eilish – When I Was Older

Feb/13/19
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Joanna Newsom – On a Good Day (Tab)

Joanna Newsom – On a Good Day (Tab)

I’ve decided to loosen up on my schedule of what gets posted on what days. Partly because I’m sure no one cares. And partly because I’ve been promising this tab and getting requests for it for a long time and it keeps getting bumped for something more timely.

On a Good Day is a very atypical Joanna Newsom song. It’s far more emotionally, lyrically and musically direct than anything else she’s done. To match that, I’ve kept the arrangement super-simple and beginner-friendly. Although I’m using fingerpicking, you can play the whole thing with just your thumb.

Links

Buy it on iTunes

Feb/12/19
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David Glen Eisley/SpongeBob – Sweet Victory (Chords and Tab)

David Glen Eisley – Sweet Victory (Chords)

Among the many crimes of Maroon 5’s Super Bowl show was the teased but not delivered tribute to, SpongeBob SquarePants creator, Stephen Hillenburg in the form of Sweet Victory. But I refuse to suck as much as Maroon 5 do and will deliver.

Suggested Strumming

The strumming in this one gets pretty involved. I go with this as the main strum:

d – d – d u d u

Intro: One down-strum per chord.

Verses: Main strum once per chord.

Pre-Chorus: Main strum once per chord until the Bb. On that I use chnks and do this four times:

d x x x

Then on the Eb:

d – d u d –

And two quick down-strums on the Bb-Eb move.

Chorus and Solo: Main strum once per chord except:

– Two down-strums each on Dm-Am.
– Two down-strums on the Bb then a short down on the Bb and an up on the C.
– On the Gm use the chnk strum from the pre-chorus three times. Then one strum per chord for the rest of that line.
– In the first chorus the last line is one main strum per chord.
– In the second chorus the last line is two main strums per chord on G# and Eb. The rest is down-up eight times switch to C on the very last up strum.
– The last line of the last verse is just one down-strum per chord.

Twiddly Bits

80s hair metal twiddling isn’t the most uke-suitable thing out there. But I’ve picked out two suitable bits and one entirely unsuitable bit for tabbing.

Intro

The intro transfers pretty well. The only slightly tricky part is I’m using natural harmonics at the twelfth fret right at the end.

Post-Chorus Lick


Post-Chorus Lick

This little lick comes right at the end of the first chorus.

Solo

Sweet Victory (Solo)

Only a moron would attempt to play the solo on ukulele.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More TV tabs and chords

Feb/2/19
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UkeTube: Bad Bunny, Lil Tjay, Kitty, Daisy and Lewis

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Kalei Gamiao – Ukulele Fiddle
Kitty, Daisy & Lewis – I’m Coming Home (Thanks to Colin)
Katharina Heinrich – Bye Bye Dubai
Lil Tjay x Einer Bankz – Brothers
Bad Bunny – NI BIEN NI MAL
Mike Holland – Bésame Mucho
Jim Boggia – Born to Run
Taimane – Phantom of the Opera

Feb/1/19
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Friday Links: Cyril Pahinui RIP, Ukes at NAMM

Masterful Hawaiian slack key guitarist Cyril Pahinui has died. In his time at the forefront of Hawaiian music he played with ukulele greats like IZ and Peter Moon.

Hawaiian uke duo, Honoka and Azita have split. Azita is pursuing her medical career and Honoka is going solo.

Learning
– Choan Galvez has just launched a series of short tabs to help you work on your fingerpicking available via his Patreon. You can watch the first piece here.
– UkuleleGo on helping kids learn ukulele.
– Kat’s creative Ukulele Book.

Window Shopping
– It was ukulele window shopper Christmas last week with the NAMM show. The Southern Ukulele Store covered the uke goings-on including Ortega double necks, Kanile’a and Rebel and light-up banjo ukes.

Video
– "A practical sopranino case that can also be used as a sofa" (via @hermanvdc).
– Ukulelist booted out of Tom Brady press conference.
– Kermit and Jimmy Fallon play Rainbow Connection.

Jan/31/19
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Imagine Dragons – Thunder (Tab)

Imagine Dragons – Thunder (Tab)

Thunder has many elements that make it great for a uke adaption: a strong melody, Simple chords in the key of C and some fun solo parts. But it also has that damn squeaky-voice section. That section was the hardest to get right and I’m still not sure it entirely works. There’s a note at the 15th fret in that part. If your uke doesn’t go that high you can replace it with the A-string, 10th fret to get a similar effect.

The piece starts out using thumb and two finger picking for the verse and pre-chorus. Then in switches to mostly strumming to blast out the chorus and then uses a combination of strums, picking and flicks (flicking the index finger upwards to hit the A, E and sometimes C strings).

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More rock tabs and chords

Jan/30/19
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Weezer Cover Album Riffs

Last week Weezer surprise-launched the Teal Album comprised entirely of cover songs. The record itself is a bit hit-and-miss but the song choice is top-notch. So I decided to write up riffs (and one solo) from every track on the album.

The Weezer versions stick very close to the originals (so much so you could mistake the intros for the originals). I’ve made a note of where they’ve made any changes below.

Toto – Africa

The trickiest riff. There’s a very quick switch between the chords and the riff. Which itself meanders in a way that was hard for me to get a handle on. I wrote up chords The Wellies’ version of this way back.

Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World

The Weezer version is one fret up from this version. Weirdly, the Tears for Fears version is a little sharp of concert pitch.

Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

The Weezer version of this is in the uke-unfriendly key of B. What you can do is move everything down a fret and replace the open C-string with C-string, 2nd fret.

A-ha – Take on Me

The Weezer version is half a step lower than the original. So move everything down a fret to play along with that version.

The Turtles – Happy Together

The only song where the riff in the original is completely missing from the Weezer version.

Black Sabbath – Paranoid

A slight difference in the Weezer version: the B note (E-string, 7th fret) at the end of the second bar of the riff is replaced with an E (A-string, 7th fret).

ELO – Mr Blue Sky (Solo)

A perfectly crafted solo. Which is why Weezer play it identically to the original.

TLC – No Scrubs

I’ve gone with a more ukeable version of this rather than sticking rigidly to the original.

Michael Jackson – Billie Jean

This is in the key of the Weezer version. Again, they’re half a step lower than the original. So move everything up a fret to play along with the Jackson version.

Ben E King – Stand by Me

And a final song which they moved down half a step. That puts it in the awkward key of Ab. I’d recommend tuning down half a step if you really want to play along with the Weezer version.

Jan/29/19
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Rebecca Sugar – Escapism (Steven Universe)(Chords and Tab)

Rebecca Sugar – Escapism (Picking Tab)

The fifth season of Steven Universe has just wrapped up with a couple more ukulele tunes prime for a tabbing. Starting with the title song from the penultimate episode.

I’ve written up the ukulele version they performed a while back. It features all your favourite Sugarisms: a pile of maj7 chords, 3/4 time signature and a bit of tasty fingerpicking.

After that quick picking in the intro, the rest is very straightforward. Making it a good place for beginners to start. I’m using thumb and two finger picking all the way through. But after the intro the thumb doesn’t need to move away from the C-string.

Rebecca Sugar – Escapism (Chords)

If you don’t want to tackle the picking, here are the chords. They do jump up the neck a few times so take note of the starting fret at the top right of the chord boxes.

Suggested Strumming

You can keep the strumming very simple and just play down-strums all the way through.

Intro: Two on the Cmaj7, two on the C6 and three on the Fmaj7.

Verse: Three down-strums for everything until the last Fmaj7 where you play two lots of three.

Chorus: One set of three down-strums for everything except the Fmaj7 on the second and fourth lines (four sets of three for those) and the Fmaj7 on the last line (two sets of three) and ending on one downstrum on the Fdim7.

Links

Buy season 5 on Amazon
More Steven Universe tabs and chords

Dec/23/18
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Uke for Xmas? Read This!

When I got my first ukulele, I was completely clueless. This was in those dark, long forgotten days before the internet had been discovered. I didn’t even realise that the strings weren’t supposed to go thickest to thinnest and restrung it.

But you can save yourself from the social disgrace I experienced. I’ve put together a free mini-ebook covering the basics that every first time uke owner needs to know. Here’s what it contains:

Five Things to Know
Five Chords to Learn
Five Patterns to Strum
Five Songs to Play
Five Websites to Visit
Five Things to Get Free
Five Things to Buy
Five Videos to Watch
Five YouTube Channels to Subscribe to

You can download it free by clicking here:

So You Just Got Your First Ukulele (PDF)

And get playing by following the beginner ukulele lessons.

If you’re not new to ukulele but know someone who is feel free to pass it along. It has a Creative Commons license so distribute it as you wish.

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