May/13/15

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Uke Hunt is Eight: Roundup of the Year

Uke Hunt is eight years old. Apparently eight year olds should be able to form, “complex sentences with few grammatical errors”. I wouldn’t hold your breath for that. Here’s a selection of the stuff I managed to cobble together from half-formed sentences full of grammatical errors in the last year:

May 2014

– I released new editions of Ukulele Strums, Slide Ukulele and National Anthems.

In tabs: The Blues Run the Game
In chords: Britpop with Damon Albarn and Pulp

June 2014

– Blues Ukulele and Ukulele 2014 Spotify playlists.

In tabs: Acoustic intros including Nick Drake, Elvis and Bon Iver
In chords: WIUO’s I Love You Raylene

January 2015

Holidays!

February 2015

– 2015 ukulele festivals

In tabs: Uptown Funk and Hanging Tree from The Hunger Games
In chords: It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie

March 2015

– Songs with chords you know.
– International Women’s Day UkeToob Special

In tabs: Strokes medley and Better Call Saul theme
In chords: James Bay’s Hold Back the River and Meghan Trainor’s Baby Doll

April 2015

– Top five old school chord intros.
– Jonathan Lewis launched his excellent ebook of campanella arrangements of Irish tunes and wrote his introduction to campanella for Uke Hunt.

In tabs: Massive Attack’s Teardrop and Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel
In chords: Jonathan Coulton’s First of May and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt theme

May/12/15

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ABBA – Waterloo (Chords)

It’s Eurovision next week, so I’m doing my two favourite Eurovision songs this week. I’ll level with you, there are only two Eurovision winners I’d say were great. And the first one is blindingly obvious: Sweden’s 1974 winner by ABBA.

Suggested Strumming

The main thing: swing your strumming (so the down strum lasts longer than the up strum) – the easiest way is just to get the groove of the song.

Main strum: d – d u d u d u

Intro: d u d u d u d u

Verse: I love the big emphasis on that first D chord. For that play this with the capitals being empahsised:

d – D U – u d u

On the short chords in the first two lines do d – d u for each. Using the main strum for everything else the first three lines sound like this:

Verse Strum

On the last line just do one down strum for all the short chords.

Chorus: The main strum on everything except the A at the end of line 2. This is a classic glam rock move. Play the D on the first down strum, then for the rest of the bar play A with udududu.

Bridge and Outro: use the main strum.

Twiddly Bits

I like to play the guitar riff in the chorus like this:

And here’s a version of the lick at the end:

Here’s how those two sound along with the strumming:

Chorus

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More ABBA tabs

May/2/15

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Kimo Hussey, Leftover Cuties: UkeTube

Full Playlist

Read the rest of this entry »

May/1/15

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Friday Links

Learning

– I’m loving Jonathan Lewis’s Irish Tunes for Campanella Ukulele. Here’s the campanella primer he wrote in case you missed it.
– Garfunkel & Oates have released two books of sheet music for their songs.
– Uke Nut’s tab for Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto Adagio.

Videos

– SydneyUke is going great guns in the current series of Asia’s Got Talent with a very popular performance in the semi final.
– Warren Buffett would like to buy the world a Coke. The world would like to buy Warren a tuner.
– The incredible Soeurs Gogochurebi panduri players from Tbilisi.

Ukes

– Custom painted ukuleles including some very fetching Van Gogh ukuleles.
– Retailers asked just how popular are ukuleles?
– Dad keeps telling me it’s a toy.

Pictures

– Stepping Out: Washington 1922. (Thanks to Jim.)
– World’s tiniest man takes up ukulele.
– Helen Rook.

Election Section

– I Predict A (Political) Riot

Apr/30/15

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David Beckingham – West Coast Blues (Tab)

David Beckingham – Blind Blake (Tab)

Here’s another great tab by David Beckingham. This time of a tune by, ragtime blues innovator, Blind Blake.

Here are a few notes on the tune from David:

The arrangement has Blake’s intro, but I didn’t play it in the clip – mainly ‘cos it’s hard to fit it in with the backing track.

I’m using thumb and two fingers more than usual in this one. Blind Blake’s “sportin’ thumb” is a notoriously difficult thing to replicate and I’ve really just given up on authenticity and gone for fun (and added my own little variation up the neck)

Here’s a link to his original recording.

Links

Buy the Blind Blake version
David Beckingham on YouTube
More David Beckingham tab

Apr/29/15

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Campanella – Putting the Melody First

I’m a big fan of campanella style picking on the ukulele and of Jonathan Lewis’s playing. So it’s no surprise I love Jonathan’s new ebook Irish Tunes for Campanella Ukulele. It’s a great selection of arrangements.

I asked Jonathan if he’d like to do a guest post and he was kind enough to agree. So here’s a primer on campanella playing and tab for his arrangement of The Blarney Pilgrim.

Many of us who play ukulele first started on the guitar, and we fell in love with this instrument because of its cheerful image, its versatility and its portability – it weighs virtually nothing and takes up no space. But what really makes the ukulele so special? For me it has to be re-entrant tuning, which makes campanella picking possible.

So what exactly is campanella? It actually means “little bell” and that’s the effect we’re trying to get – when you hear church bells, one doesn’t stop ringing before the next one starts – they all ring at the same time. The same for a harp. A harp doesn’t have a neck where you can put your fingers to change the pitch of a string, so one string, one note. On the ukulele (charango and baroque guitar too), campanella picking means avoiding playing two notes on the same string whenever possible, taking advantage of the re-entrant tuning, where two strings are only one tone apart. Using open strings as much as you can and alternating between strings rather than playing successive notes on the same string really does make the uke sound like a little harp.

Listen to a few scales played in the campanella style.

Tab for the scales here.

Why campanella is best for traditional tunes

Fiddlers, whistlers and bagpipers have a whole bunch of tricks to make simple tunes sound more interesting. Ornamentation is always a bit hit and miss on fretted instruments but the harp-like sounds you get from campanella can make up for this. And you can always insert into your campanella picking the odd hammer-on, pull-off or slide to ornament your tunes.

Practice: The Blarney Pilgrim

Let’s look at the popular jig, the Blarney Pilgrim. Play the first four bars like this (non-campanella):

Then play the same melody like this (campanella):

Notice how you can always hear more than one string ringing at the same time? That’s the beauty of campanella. And it’s all thanks to re-entrant tuning. I completely get it that some people prefer to have a low G on their uke (lots of people own more than one uke so they can have both) – you can do a lot more in terms of accompanying your own melodies or if you’re singing.

Campanella gives the melody first place

And rightly so. That’s what music is all about. Even in classical music, the most popular pieces are the ones that people can whistle or hum. So what’s wrong with playing a single-line melody on your uke? Maybe you think that it sounds thin or weak, in that case get a friend to play along with you. I’m not talented enough to be a one-person-band but the upside to that is social: I can always get friends to play chords for me or I’ll play chords for them.

Learn the Blarney Pilgrim in Campanella style

Earlier I showed you one line from this traditional Irish tune, so now here is the full tune. You can download the tab here:

The Blarney Pilgrim (Tab)

A few tips on playing campanella

1. Use keys where you’ll use open strings. As the open strings on a uke make a C6 chord (or Am7 if you prefer) it’s probably best to arrange in keys that use a minimal number of sharps or flats.
2. Look for shapes and use barres so you can keep those strings ringing.
3. You won’t always be able to find a suitable campanella fingering. Don’t get obsessed with campanella – sometimes it’s better to play two notes on the same string rather than a difficult or clumsy campanella fingering.
4. Think about where you can play the same notes in different places. For example, a triplet of As could be played like this:

Author Bio:
Jon has been a fanatical ukulele player since discovering campanella fingerpicking. As a guitarist he is fascinated by open tunings, mainly because he wished he could have been a harpist! Since learning campanella tunes and arpeggios from ukulelesecrets.org (Tim Keough) Jon spends too much of his free time arranging traditional tunes for campanella ukulele. You can get his collection of Irish tunes here.

Apr/28/15

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Jonathan Coulton – First of May (Chords)

Warning for those who don’t get the name of the blog and complain about the swearing: this song contains multiple uses of the fuck word.

Warning for everyone else: the album version of the song is tuned slightly flat. But you can play along with the live version in the video without retuning. I’ve simplified the chords a little to make them more ukeable so it should be easy to get them down by May 1st.