Video

– Pete Howlett talks to the BBC about uke making and his diagnosis with Parkinson’s.
– Another outstanding episode of Matt Kresling’s The Madagascar Journals. This time he’s made it to Madagascar and runs across a few players of the kabosy aka “the Malagasy ukulele”.
– Nat King Cole does a terrible job pretending to play ukulele.

New Releases

– Uke Hunt favourite, Phredd has released a Very Best of… collection.
– PUSHIN’ THROUGH by Craig Robertson.
– Lou Barlow’s new bari-heavy record Brace The Wave is out today. You can stream it on NPR.
– Garfunkel and Oates have a new album coming out next week: Secretions.
– Emilyn Brodsky’s Folkadelphia Session.

Learning

– Test out your note and chord recognition skills with Toned Ear.
– Manitoba Hal has begun a tutorial series starting with Jambalaya.
– I play the ukulele and it’s bloody brilliant.

Pictures

– Pinup pioneers: the first underwater photoshoot (via @sremmala).
– Ukul’ale’le.

Lil’ Rev’s wife Carol has been diagnosed with lung cancer. They’ve started a GoFundMe campaign to help with the costs of treatment. You can donate to them here.

Jake Shimabukuro is touring the UK for the first time this month.

Another tab by the always excellent David Beckingham. This time he’s rescuing Al Dubin and Joe Burke’s Tiptoe Through the Tulips from Tiny Timothy and restoring it to its former glory.

Links

Buy the Tiny Tim version on iTunes
Buy the Annette Hanshaw version
David Beckingham on YouTube
More David Beckingham tabs

Time for the traditional back-to-school “What I did on my holidays” assignment.

7 Second Ukulele Lessons

7 second ukulele lesson: Wiz Khalifa – Black and Yellow

A video posted by @ukulelehunt on Aug 25, 2015 at 4:40am PDT

I’ve been putting up short videos with tab on Instagram (okay, they’re not all exactly 7 seconds long). Mostly of riffs and intros. So far there’s Drake, Ghost, Meek Mill, Simon and Garfunkel, The Libertines, Walk the Moon and Wiz Khalifa.

If you’re not an Instagrandma you can keep track of them via Twitter and via Tumblr. If you’re a Facebooker you can sod off back to your minions. Or I’ll probably be posting roundups on the blog at some point.

Ukulele Ratings

Over on the Ukulele Review section I’ve added a new star rating system (the old one exploded a while ago and temporarily took the whole site with it – that was fun!).

You can see a list of the top rated ukuleles here (by Bayesian average of course).

It’s a new system so ratings are a little thin on the ground at the moment. So if you’ve got a minute to spare I’d really appreciate if you could rate your own uke. There are links to ukulele makers here and luthiers here.

Tab Requests

I’ve set up a new page for collecting tab requests (using Google Forms). The info from that goes into a spreadsheet which is – I’m hoping – going to be easier to scan and pick out favourites than trying to keep track via emails.

I did not have high expectations when I heard The Libertines were getting back together. But after a storming set at Glastonbury and Gunga Din (quick tab of the riff here) I’m officially very excited.

Suggested Strumming

You can use this as the main strum for the intro, solos and verses:

d – d u – u d –

Play that once for each except on the last D in each section play this:

– u d – d – d –

Here’s how those two sound together:

Strum (MP3)

In the chorus: Do this twice for each chord (except just one down strum on the last D):

d – d u d u d u

Twiddly Bits

Here’s a uke version of the little guitar solo that crops up a few times in the song:

Links

Buy it on iTunes

Time for a blog break. I’m off to aestivate for a few weeks.

If you want to keep up with me I’ll still be posting on UkeToob, Tumblr and Twitter.

Have a good one!

Full Playlist

Jillian Johnson, ukulele player with The Figs, was one of one of those killed in the Lafayette shooting this week.

Read the rest of this entry »

Uke Go Girl! are running a GoFundMe campaign for their Summer 2015 Workshop.

New Releases

– Another lovely, tuneful album from Ukulollo: AWARE. Take a listen here.
– I really slept on badass, low-fi punk ukulelist S.L.F.M. when she was putting records out in 2010-12. I thought I’d missed out entirely but a new record has just shown up on Bandcamp: Perks of People.

Videos

– Daniel Hulbert’s ukulele collection.
– Ukulele feel good crap. (Thanks to Ron Hale.)
– Jerry ‘The King’Lawler smashes Tiny Tim’s ukulele.
– Chimp gets to grips with a ukulele.

Now the Tories won the election it’s only a matter of time before they ban ukuleles in retaliation for this. So before that hits I’ve posted a bunch of short/obscure theme tune tabs that have been piling up:

Brain Scoop
The Red Flag
Klovn
Quizeum
BBC Snooker

And the best theme tune tabs on the blog.

With the pub rock of Drag Racer and Winifred Atwell’s version of Black and White Rag snooker has a claim to the sport with the best theme music. Or it did until the BBC started remixing all its theme tunes to replace anything recognisable with bleeps, bloops and swooshes. So now the snooker theme sounds like this.

Doug Wood must be spinning in his grave. If he’s dead. Or he’s alive but enjoys hanging out in his grave. There’s very little information about him on the net. I assume he’s the same person as Douglas Wood who made “spacey folk electro-horror” soundtracks like this and this at the same time.

The tune doesn’t fit all that neatly onto the uke. I did have to do a fair bit of octave shifting. The most obvious one being mid-lick at the start of bar 7.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More theme tune tabs and chords

The Quizeum is BBC4’s traveling museum panel show and my new favourite quiz. How could you not love a high-brow quiz show not afraid to use the phrase, “You’ve got a face full of dicks”?

It also has a pleasant, bouncy theme tune that works well on uke.

Links

Quizeum on bbc.co.uk