Gus Raucous leads a version of New Order’s Blue Monday played on 1930s instruments for the BBC.
The Boston Globe explores the roots of Aaron Copland’s Ukulele Serenade.
Musicians sing praises of Kamakas, Hawaii’s royal ukulele family – San Francisco Chronicle
Pictures
– Pixar artist’s ukulele lesson.
– Roy Smeck by Paul Andrews.
– Myles Kennedy has great taste in books.
Happy St Patrick’s Day! To celebrate I arranged my favourite song by my second favourite Irish songwriter (can’t can The Van).
One of the things I love about arranging tunes is noticing little things that completely passed me by listening casually. I didn’t realise that the melody in the chorus shifts against the chords. The basic chords though the whole song are Am-F-C-G. The first, “Is that alright?” is on the Am and later it’s on the F chord. Of course, I completely ruin it by arranging them both exactly the same way.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow (Thursday) still plenty of time to work up a Irish tune or two.
Chords
The Dubliners and The Pogues – The Irish Rover
Imelda May/Blondie – Dreaming
The Pogues – Fairytale of New York
The Pogues – Fiesta
The Pogues – Irish Rover
The Pogues – Sally MacLennane
The Pogues – Streams of Whiskey
The Undertones – Teenage Kicks
Van Morrison – Keep It Simple
Father Ted Theme
Lisa Hannigan – Knots
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova – Falling Slowly
The Irish Washerwoman
John King – Larry O’Gaff
John King – Swallowtail (Tab)
Thin Lizzy – Boys are Back in Town (Riff)
Turlough O’Carolan/Jonathan Lewis – Loftus Jones
U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday (Riff) (Tab)
Whiskey in the Jar/Kilgary Mountain
If that’s not enough for you, there’s also Jonathan Lewis’s ebook Irish Tunes for Campanella Ukulele.
It’s St Patrick’s Day this week and time for the inevitable Pogues post.
If I Should Fall… rollicks along at a rapid pace which makes changing to the E chord tricky. It makes it easier if you play the A to D change the no hassle way or you could use a different version of E.
If you want to avoid the E chord altogether – I wouldn’t blame you – here are the chords with a copo on the second fret (or D-tuning):
You can use this for almost all the song:
d – d – d u d u
Which sounds like this (slow then up to tempo):
The only place you need something different is in the break. Do the main strum on the A, then this once each on the D (or E later in the break) and A:
d u d u
Then back to the main strum for A again.
Here’s tab for a ukulele version of the tune in the intro that crops up a few times in the song:
And here’s how that sounds:
Ukulele Go! has a tool to help you find chords that go well together.
I’ve kicked off the Ukulele 2016 Spotify playlist. Not much there at the moment but it’ll fill up over the year. You can also find a full list of my ukulele playlists here.
Ukulele favourites, Bosko and Honey entered Australia’s Got Talent and confused everyone. They’ve made it to the last round.
New release from Gwyn Edwards: Archetypes.
Pictures
– 16th century violin maker, Gasparo Duiffopruggar with a magnificent beard and a collection of his instruments including a forerunner of the ukulele (via @hermanvdc)
– Meredith Coloma Canucks tenor.
– The Motorcycle Band
– Percy and Ferdie.
– Lakeside Park.
– Corgi balancing.
Cartoon Network’s Over the Garden Wall has featured a bunch of old-timey musicians including Frank Fairfield, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton and ukulele chanteuse Janet Klein. I got had a request I couldn’t ignore for a song from the show so it was inevitable I went for Klein’s Langtree’s Lament.
Nothing too tricky in this arrangement. It’s almost all played with strums. There are some places when you’re not strumming all the strings e.g. bar 10. There the melody switches to the g-string so you need to emphasise that string. It’s not a big deal if you don’t hit exactly the strings tabbed so long as you’re holding the chord down (in that bar Bb7).
The notes I pick are the slides up to the fifth fret in bars 2 and 6, the one note in bar 7 and the campanella picking in bars 14 and 15. If you’re dead set against campanella you can also play it like this:
I like to keep a list of songs that use just the most common ukulele chords. Arranged by the order people usually learn them in. That way you can find some songs to play no matter how few chords you know.
Songs added to the list:
Happy Birthday to You
The Libertines – Don’t Look Back into the Sun
James Bay – Hold Back the River
Eagles of Death Metal – I Want You So Hard
The Pretenders – 2000 Miles
If you prefer, you can use G7 in the place of G or vice versa for any of these songs.
Happy Birthday to You
NeverShoutNever! – Your Biggest Fan/Did It Hurt?
Noah and the Whale – Five Years Time
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
Paolo Nutini – High Hopes
SoKo – I Will Never Love You More
The Bobby McGee’s – A Dog At All Things
The Lancashire Hotpots – He’s Turned Emo
Mungo Jerry – In the Summertime
The Tiger Lillies – Start A Fire
Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra/Kings of Leon – The Bucket
Addams Family Theme Tune
Alton Ellis – Rock Steady
Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend to Dance With You
Blondie/Imelda May – Dreaming
Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Darren Hanlon – All These Things
Electrelane – Cut and Run
Garfunkel and Oates – Me, You and Steve
Florence and the Machine – Dog Days Are Over
GUGUG – California Sun
Israel Kamakawiwoíole/Jason Castro – Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Julien Dore – Cet Air-La
Kate Nash – Foundations
Kate Micucci/The Gooch – Mr Moon
Kelli Rae Powell
Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next to Me
LP – Into the Wild
The Lumineers – Ho Hey
Phosphorescent – Wolves
She & Him – Sentimental Heart
Allo Darlin’ – Tallulah
Allo Darlin’ – Space Christmas
Amanda Palmer – In My Mind
Antsy Pants/Bear Creek – Vampire
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy with the Arab Strap
Daniel Johnston – Living Life
Damon Albarn – Mr Tembo
Garfunkel and Oates – The Fade Away (you can use D instead of D7)
Gothic Archies – Shipwrecked
GUGUG/The Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop
Keston Cobblers’ Club – You-Go
The Libertines – Don’t Look Back into the Sun
The Little Ones – Tangerine Visions
Phredd – Elmer’s Electric Tricycle
Skinny Lister – Colours
The Dubliners and The Pogues – The Irish Rover
The Pogues – Fiesta
The Pretenders – 2000 Miles
Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma
Velvet Underground and Nico – I’ll be Your Mirror
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London
Camera Obscura – Cock Up Your Beaver
Eagles of Death Metal – I Want You So Hard
Florence & the Machine – Kiss With A Fist (don’t panic, you can use E7 instead of E in this song)
The Pogues – Sally McLennane
Joan Jett – Bad Reputation
Junior Brown – Better Call Saul
Kate Micucci & Ted (Scrubs) – Screw You
Paolo Nutini – Pencil Full of Lead
The Pogues – Streams of Whiskey
The Weavers – Pay Me My Money Down
James Bay – Hold Back the River
Beirut – A Candle’s Fire
Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (You can use C instead of C5)
Ingrid Michaelson – Be OK
Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
Lorde/Walk off the Earth – Royals
Lorde/WIOU – Team
Mumford and Sons – The Cave
Nevershoutnever – First Dance
Neutral Milk Hotel – King of Carrot Flowers
Noah and the Whale – Jealous Kind of Love
Sufjan Stevens – Lumberjack Christmas
The Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Mastered all those? Tackle more:
Too-cool-for-school New York uke duo*, The Prettiots are current on their first world tour. Their UK dates covered the three main hubs: London, Edinburgh and Hebden Bridge.
18 Wheeler is played on a low-G uke. The chords will work perfectly well on a high-G. The picking does still work but doesn’t sound quite the same. You might try a few different picking patterns with the same chord shapes to see which you like most.
* Rachel Trachtenburg seems to have left the band.
You can keep the strumming very simple like she does in the live version and just do downstrums per chord. In the version on the record she switches it up to a more complex strum. If you want to do the same you could go with this for each chord:
d – d – d u d u
Chorus: Eight down strums per chord (twice as fast as the downstrums in the verse).
Here’s the picked intro that continues in the first verse. It uses the same chord shapes as the rest of the song but you’re picking the G-string with your thumb then simultaneously picking the E- and A-strings with your index and middle fingers respectively.
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