Dingus Khan – My Love Lasts Forever Like A Plastic Flower

Dead Belgian – Au Suivant

Nicholas Abersold – Pollux

Robyn Zahra Lowzley – Post Mortem of a Monster

Thanks to Ron Hale

Ukulele Russ – Return of the Sun

Katie Dill – Pony Ony O

TODDZERO – Made

Thanks to Ron Hale

Leftover Cuties — One Heart (MP3)

You can pre-order the Spark & the Fire on their website.

New Releases

- Sophie Madeleine has released a ukulele tab book. The bad news: it’s already sold out. The good news: you can still buy the ebook version. I did some proofreading on it so I got a sneak peek and can highly recommend picking it up.
- Live album from Molly Lewis.
- Free single from Jacob Borshard.

Videos

- Jim D’Ville has 3 Questions for Del Rey
- The Martin Ukulele book trailer.
- If you’ve been watching YouTube tutorials Learn Guitar with David Brent will look familiar.

Pictures

- Ukulele: instrument of torture for the busty girl.
- Bear’s rad ukulele solos.

Litmus Films – makers of The Ukes Down Under are Kickstarting a new film abou the UOGB: The Ukes in America.

Howlin’ Hobbit chats with and ukes for the Billow Waggle Dangle podcast.

This isn’t the first 3D printed ukulele but it seems like the first playable one.

Two new luthiers on the scene: Nick “Ron Swanson” Offerman and Matt “Kate’s Brother” Micucci. Their kazoos cost $50 each so get saving now.

Fatso – Keyboard Cat (Tab)

I was inspired by Ukulele Cat to knock up my own version of the Keyboard Cat tune. It’s dead simple, just the D and Dm chord shapes on the C, E and A strings. Make sure you’ve got the chord shape in place at the start of the bar and you’re good to go.

For the picking I’m using:

Thumb – C-string.
Index – E-string.
Middle – A-string.

My version is in a different key. Here’s a version in the original key.

Links

Buy the MP3
More theme tune tabs.

It’s very new and the bugs are still being worked out. But it does have all the important features and it certainly could be a contender. It’s gaining features quickly. I’ve had to delete a few things I was bitching about in this review because they were fixed.

This review is based on version 1.1.0.

What You Get

A tabbing app for Mac. It can create tabs for ukulele, guitar, pretty much any other fretted instrument and drums.

It does all the things you’d expect a tab programme to do: creates tab and standard notation and rhythm slashes (or just tab), has most of the expressions you’ll need (bends, slides, vibrato, harmonics), creates chord diagrams, allows for multiple tracks in each tab.

You can import from Guitar Pro 3/4/5 or MIDI file formats and export to PDF, MIDI or plain text.

It also has a practice mode that allows you to adjust the tempo and loop selected sections of a tab.

The Good Stuff

Copy/paste plain text tab: I love this feature so much! You can copy the tab from the app, paste it anywhere you can put text and it will give you plain text tab that looks like this:

That’s already made Tabular the app I go for to I want to make a quick bit of tab to go in an email or comment.

Document Library

The app keeps an iTunes-like library of all your Tabular files which I found handy. You can arrange them into groups (a bit like playlists in iTunes). Which I prefer to folders as it means you can have one tab in any number of different groups.

It just needs iCloud support and I would love it to pieces.

Looks Great

My biggest problem with Guitar Pro is how butt-ugly it is. Tabular is much more pleasant to use.

Price

It’s currently £13.99 ($19.99). Making it much cheaper than Guitar Pro at €60 (£51/$79). Although if it’s cheap you want Power Tab (Windows only) is free.

Uke Suitable

There’s an option for standard ukulele tuning. None for low-G or baritone but it’s easy to create those and store them. I didn’t run into any problems trying to do uke stuff. And its automatic chord names work much better than Guitar Pro which is forever adding in slash chords on ukulele.

Also on the fretboard display the strings get thicker as the tuning lowers. So reentrant tuning actually looks like reentrant tuning. Which has no practical value but I like a lot.

Importing

It imports a good range of files: MIDI, Guitar Pro 3/4/5 (currently no .gpx – the format of the latest Guitar Pro). It did a good job of importing everything I tried.

The Not So Good Stuff

Exporting

Currently you can export to pdf, MIDI and plain text. They work well but I missed the ability to export images.

Limited Display Options

You’re currently limited to the app defaults when it comes to fonts, sizing and titling.

In the app itself, if you’ve got multiple tracks you can’t view them together.

Chord Charts

The chord charts it produces are a bit lacking. As well as the lack of display options you can’t add fingering, indicate barres and the nut isn’t bolded (making it more difficult to check which fret you’re at). They’re also not particularly pretty.

Tabular:

Guitar Pro:

Sibelius:

Limited Features

It’s lacking a few other features you may or may not use. There’s no ability to add lyrics, codas, segnos. There’s also no way to add fingering to tab. There are most likely other features that I didn’t look for. So best to check the features it does have if you want anything beyond standard tabbing.

Mac Only

This, I’m fairly sure, isn’t going to change soon. Which is obviously bad news for non-Mac folks. But even for Mac folks it means that Tabular isn’t going to replace Guitar Pro as the internet’s favourite format for exchanging tabs.

Overall

My official position when I started this review was, “Looks promising but you should wait and see.” But the update to version 1.1 really cut down on my reasons not to recommend it. And there is a lot it does very well.

If you planning on doing a lot of tabbing I’d still highly recommend Guitar Pro. I can’t imagine Tabular becoming my main tab maker.

But if you’re looking for something inexpensive and easy to use for occasional tabbing then Tabular is already looking like the best option.

Links

Tabular on Chromatic Labs
Tabular on Mac App Store
Guitar Pro
Power Tab

Daft Punk – Get Lucky

I was humming and hawing over whether to write Get Lucky up until I heard Will Grove-White’s awesome ukulele version. Both versions are in the same key so you can use these chords to play along with either.

Suggested Strumming

Nile Rodgers’s funky rhythm part really makes the song. There’s a lot of variation in the strumming but I like to keep a constant semiquaver strum and mute most of the strums.

Here’s the basis of the strum I use with the muted strums as Xs:

Here it is played at half speed:

Strum Slow

And up to speed:

Strum Fast

Once you’ve got it under your fingers try out a few variations.

Twiddly Bits

The little solo at the end is very tricky to play up to speed. Here’s my best crack at it.

Outro Solo

Links

Buy the MP3
WillGroveWhite.com
Harder, Better, Faster, Strong chords
Le Freak riff

NIAGARA – SEAL

Will Grove-White – Get Lucky (Get Clucky)

Ian Emmerson and Phil Doleman – 1 up Blues

GeorgeUke – Asteroid Rag

Sanford and Adrien Sala – Too Much Alone

Answer Sheet – Stay, Leave

Honoka & Azita – Misirlou

Wilfried Welti – Tourdion

Tom Milsom – Take Me Out

Nico’o – Muskrat Rumble

Videos
- Helen Arney sings a googol.
- Vaudeville Entertainer Bobbie “Uke” Henshaw Plays His Ukulele (thanks to Ron Hale). Read his bio here.
- Don’t take a ukulele to a guitar fight.

Pictures
- Lots of lust-worthy restored vintage ukes on Antebellum Instruments.
- Film-inspired ukulele designs.
- Charles Dance takes a uke break.

After an extended hiatus Makapili Ukuleles – a favourite of Wilfried Welti – are back in business.

Takashi Tateishi – Mega Man 2: Flash Man Theme

I’ve always had a bias towards 80s game themes. Which I’ve taken to be partly because I did most of my gaming in the 80s and partly because 80s game music was much better.

But the ever-interesting – even for non-gamers – Extra Credits had an episode about video game music a while back made me look at it in a more nuanced way.

They make the convincing argument that game music hasn’t got worse, just less memorable. I’d completely forgotten that game music was there primarily to increase immersion in the game. And as far as that goes game music certainly is better now that it was in the 80s.

But the fact that 80s game composers were restricted to three notes and had to come up with memorable tunes certainly does make for good conversions to ukulele. And I think the Flash Man theme from Mega Man 2 works particularly well.

Trickiest Bits

Bars 3 and 4: I use fingerpicking through most of the song. But for the rapidfire notes in bar 3 and the first half of bar 4 I’m strumming.

I switch back to picking for the last half of the bar. Fret the third and second frets here with your ring and middle finger and have your index finger on the E-string second fret ready for the pull-off.

Bar 17: For the last note barre across the second fret.

Bar 21: If you’re using a soprano ukulele you can play this bar like this:

Links

Buy the MP3
Interview with Takashi Tateishi and other early Mega Man composers
More Game Theme Tabs

The first is ukulele-related stuff (uke parts, accessories, sizes etc.). And the second one you have to work out the surname (or last bit of their pseudonym in some cases) of various famous ukers.

You can either do them online or download and print out the PDFs. Either way, you’ll need to download the answer PDFs to get the solutions.

Leave me a comment telling me how you did and whether you’d like more of them.

Ukulele Crossword

Ukulele: Online Version

Answers PDF

Ukulele Players Crossword

Ukulele Players: Online Version

Answers PDF

Warning: Spoilers in the comments.

She & Him – I Could’ve Been Your Girl (Chords)

I’ve been enjoying the new She & Him album a whole lot since its release. I was originally going to write up the album’s ukulele song but went with this one instead because it’s great.

Suggested Strumming

Good with the old standby:

d – d u – u d -

You can jazz it up with a touch strum on the first down-strum (so you’re just lightly strumming the g and C strings) and a four-finger strum on the second. So it sounds like this:

Strum

Do that once for every chord. Except the last A chord in verses 2 and 3 and the instrumental section where you do it twice.

Twiddly Bits

Here’s M Ward’s little twiddle at the end of the choruses:

Links

Buy the MP3
SheAndHim.com
She & Him – Gonna Get Along Without You Now (Chords)
She & Him – Sentimental Heart (Chords)