Peter Luongo is retiring as head of the Langley Ukulele Orchestra after over 30 years. He’s going to be replaced by his son, and mighty fine player, Paul Luongo.
Watch
– Episode 3 of Matt Kresling and his ukulele’s Madagascar Journals. This episode: lady troubles in Mozambique. This is a fantastic series. If you’re not up to speed episode 1 is here.
– PBS’s Jake Shimabukuro documentary Life on Four Strings if you’re in the right part of the world.
– Spending Time With…Cory McAbee (Thanks to Ron Hale).
New Releases
– Book documenting The Martin Ukulele by John King and
– Peter Delaney’s Witch Bottle
– The Flamin’ Mamies debut EP
– Ukulele by Jan Laurenz
Education secretary Gove back to school for ukulele (cc: everyone who believes that playing the ukulele will make you a better person crap).
Molly Lewis – Open Letter to Stephen Fry (Chords)
Another free culture ukulelist ahead of Culture Freedom Day today. This time Molly Lewis and her blush-making song for Stephen Fry.
Twiddly Bits
The intro has a fine piece of picking. There’s also a strummed version of it which crops up later in the song.
Links
Buy it on Bandcamp
sweetafton23.com
Britney/Molly Lewis – Toxic tab
Tom Cruise Crazy Chords
Still Alive Chords
Want You Gone Chords
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Ukulele Mixtape (Zip 59MB)
Continuing this week’s celebration of free culture ukulelists ahead of Culture Freedom Day with a free ukulele mixtape.
All the tracks are distributed under a Creative Commons license so you’re free to pass them along to anyone you think might enjoy them. And if you find anyone you like I strongly recommend throwing a bit of money in their direction.
Tracklist
1. I Can’t Dance (I Got Ants In My Pants) – The Flamin’ Mamies
CC BY-NC-ND
2. Oh, the Wind Will Blow – Doug Hoyer
CC BY-NC-ND
3. The Leopard – Craig Robertson
CC BY-NC-ND
4. A Simple Rag – Howlin’ Hobbit
CC BY-NC-SA
5. Down Today – Jonathan Coulton
CC BY-NC
6. Alone and Thinking of You – Kahiwa Sebire
CC BY-NC-SA
7. Sleep. – Entertainment for the Braindead
CC BY-NC-ND
8. St Guinefort etc. – Gwyn Edwards
CC BY-NC
9. A Heart With Your Name On It – Kara Square
CC BY-NC-SA
10. MyHope – Molly Lewis
CC BY-NC-SA
11. I Found It – Wisdom Tooth
CC BY-NC-ND
12. Roll of the Heart – The Drows
CC BY-NC
13. Ukulele Anthem – Amanda Palmer
CC BY-NC-SA
Jonathan Coulton – Re: Your Brains (Chords)
It’s Culture Freedom Day on Saturday. It’s a day to celebrate artists who let others freely use, study, distribute and improve on their work. That’s particularly useful for anyone learning an instrument as it means you can pass around tabs and chord sheets, play their songs and put them up on YouTube without fear of being hassled by the man.
So this week is dedicated to ukulelists who participate in free culture. Starting with one of Jonathan Coulton’s non-uke songs.
Suggested Strumming
In the verse: You can use this as the main strumming pattern:
d – d – d u d u
Except for the two quick chords at the end of lines 1, 2, 5 and 6. Just two down strums each for those.
Which – slowed down a little – sounds like this:
In the chorus: For the main strum:
d – d – x – x –
On the F chords you can just do down strums. Or you can follow the what he does by doing:
– One down strum on F
– Take your index finger off so you’re playing an Am shape. And strum that once.
– Do that four times.
So the chorus strum sounds like this:
In the bridge: One down strum for each chord.
Links
Buy the MP3
JonathanCoulton.com
Tom Cruise Crazy Chords
Christmas in July Chords
Want You Gone Chords
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
I’m on a little break at the moment (back on the 14th May) but I had to get a post up celebrating the music of Bob Brozman – who died last week – by listing just a few of the things I learnt from him.
Brozman was a huge inspiration for me. So much so he was one of the few things that could get me to leave my Unabomber-style shack and venture into the real world. His ukulele-only set at the Wukulele Festival in 2010 reinvigorated me.
And I’m certainly not the only one. Bob became a big part of the ukulele scene appearing at festivals – he was due to play this year’s Ukulele Boudoir Festival – giving ukulele workshops around his home state of California and releasing many ukulele instruction DVDs inspiring ukers all over the world.
The Ukulele is Exciting
I first saw Bob Brozman live in 2000 and it was a complete revelation for me. In terms of making music in general and the ukulele specifically. I already owned a ukulele but only messed around with it. His uke tour d’force, Ukulele Spaghetti (from Blue Hula Stomp) convinced me it was a much more interesting instrument than I’d realised. And my commitment to playing it well increased from that point.
You can find UkuleleDav’s tabs for Ukulele Spaghetti here.
How to Avoid a Rut
Bob played music for 50 years, never got bored and was always stretching his playing. To keep his playing fresh and himself excited, he was always exploring the world, new instruments and new ways of playing.
He started off as a bluesman before falling in love with Hawaiian music – producing an incredible album with Cyril Pahinui and many collaborations with Ledward Kaapana. From there he spread out to jam with and learn from players of the uilleann pipes , accordion, chaturangui and many more.
The video above is a typically international jam with Takashi Hirayasu from Okinawa on sanshin and Djeli Moussa Diawara from Guinea on kora. But was also one of the finest proponants of homegrown American music as one of Robert Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders.
If you ever find yourself bored with playing there’s always new genres, areas of the world and instruments to inspire you.
Where the Interesting Music Is
Being an active ethnomusicologist, he came up with plenty of theories on how music developed and where the best music could be found.
A recurring theme in Bob’s collaborations was islands. Collaborating with musicians from Hawaii, Reunion, Ireland, Okinawa and Papua New Guinea amongst many others. I asked him what was so special about islands, “Musical instruments and ideas, not always 100% perfectly expressed and understood, arrive on islands from distant places and cultures, percolate in isolation on the island, then emerge as new hybrid music. That plus the strength of nature so evident on islands makes for wonderful new music. Hawaii was one of the first “laboratories” for this phenomenon.”
He also, “started to realise that all the interesting music is happening at the frontiers of colonialism. Where the guitars have arrived.” (interview with OC-TV.net). His friend and producer Daniel Thomas (quoted in the Santa Cruz Sentinal): “He was always interested in what happens when a guitar is left behind in some culture or on some island with no instructions on how to use it, and how it adapts to what that culture feels is consonant.”
Learn Your Chord Inversions
The biggest thing I learned from his DVD Ukulele Tunes and Techniques was to make better use of chord inversions. A theme he continued in his Uke Toolbox DVDs.
As ukulele players we tend to just play chords around the first few frets. But by venturing higher up the neck you can instantly make your playing much more interesting. Particularly if you’re playing with other ukers.
It made me see past the restrictions of the ukulele opened me up to chords, inversions and rhythms that I wouldn’t have otherwise come across.
There’s a World of Ukulele-like Instruments
Bob was a big proponant of the charango. Which he referred to as the “Bolivian super-ukulele.” And it’s not the only uke-similar instrument I came to through him. From Debashish Bhattacharya playing a four-string lap-steel anandi to the three-string sanshin played by Takashi Hirayasu.
How to Flip Cliches
From Jim D’Ville’s 3 questions with Bob Brozman: “Build a man a fire and you keep him warm for the night. Set him on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.”
Links
BobBrozman.com
My interview with Bob Brozman.
Bob Brozman Spotify playlist
Bob and other ukulele masters showing off.
Bob Brozman – ukulele master and all around great musician – has died at the age of 59. He was one of the greats. You can read my interview with him here.
New Releases:
– Debut album from the Mother Ukers
– There’s a new album from The Burning Hell. Just one uke-heavy track but there’s also a bari-uke version of the album’s mega-hit Amateur Rappers here.
Malta’s Eurovision 2013 entry – very Train-y.
The Ukulele 2013 Spotify Playlist is filling up nicely with recent additions including the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, Victoria Vox, Kara Square and the aforementioned track from The Burning Hell.
Ukulele Art
– Amy Crehore is embarking on the third ukulele in her series of painted Tickler ukuleles.
– Melbourne Ukulele Festival’s painted ukes contest
– Uke Hunt inspired art.
Photos
– For your camping trip: a panjolele. More Wave Sound Studios instruments.
– Transforming the ukulele.
Roger Miller – Whistle Stop (Tab)
I somehow managed to pass my entire childhood without coming across Disney’s take on Robin Hood. So when I first heard this tune my reaction was, “AZIZ WHISTLE STOP is a straight rip off from The Hampsterdance Song. What’s Roger Miller‘s email?” Roger Miller responded, “nooooooooooooooo! that song came out afterwards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Anyway, Roger Miller’s more laid-back delivery of the tune makes it much more ukeable. I’ve included the first three variations on the tune. They raise in difficulty quite nicely each time.
I tried to stick to an alternating thumb pattern (moving between g and C). With index finger on E and middle on A. But the melody does sometimes stray onto the C-string which screws things up (such as the D in bar 4). Those notes I play with my index finger.
Links
I can’t find a place to buy the song but you can buy the movie.
If you don’t know that I wrote Ukulele for Dummies I obviously haven’t been doing enough shameless self-promotion. It did well enough that the Dummies folks wanted a follow up: Ukulele Exercises for Dummies. I’m highly allergic to the word “exercise” – I had to take half a dozen Benadryls just to write this intro – so I recommended they get Brett from Ukulele Tricks to write it.
I’ve been working with him on the book right from the start and he did a fantastic job with it. I’ve already learnt a ton from it and it’s inspired me to get more serious about practicing.
It’s out now in the UK, Canada and Australia and New Zealand. And you can pre-order it in the US.
You can read all about the book on Ukulele Tricks. And to give you an idea of what’s in the book Brett’s kindly agreed to share this post on fingerpicking exercises.
Those Benadryls are really kicking in now so I’ll let Brett take over from here.
Fingerpicking comes in many styles on the ukulele. You might use a repeating fingerpicking pattern to pick out the chord progression of a song as you sing the melody; this is what I like to call rhythmic fingerpicking. Or, you might pluck out the melody of a song on the ukulele without singing, sometimes known as fingerstyle or solo fingerpicking. Whether your fingerpicking for rhythm or melody, practicing arpeggios is a great way to improve your fingerpicking in either style.
In this lesson, I select ten different arpeggios exercises plus a song by the famous 19th century composer Dionisio Aguado (1784-1849) from my new book Ukulele Exercises For Dummies that you can use to increase your ease of movement, speed and accuracy as you fingerpick the ukulele.
How to Fingerpick the Ukulele
The following arpeggio exercises are designed to work out each finger in your picking hand: thumb (represented by a p), index finger (represented by an i), middle finger (represented by an m) and ring finger (represented by an a). The letters p-i-m-a represent the Spanish word for each finger, which originates from early Spanish guitar pieces.
Most of the time, I like to assign my thumb to pluck the g-string and C-string of the ukulele (top two strings), index finger to the E-string and middle finger to the A-string (bottom string). However, sometimes it works best to assign each finger to a string. This means, the thumb plucks the g-string (top string), the index finger the C-string, the middle finger the E-string and the ring finger the A-string (bottom string).
When plucking the strings of the ukulele, for the most balanced sound, aim to pluck the string with the part of your finger where the flesh of your finger meets the fingernail. If you pluck more with the nail, you get a brighter more lively tone, and if you pluck more with the flesh of your fingers, you get a softer, warmer tone.
If you’ve never fingerpicked the ukulele before, it can be a bit awkward at first. Be patient with yourself and avoid the impulse to smash your ukulele up against a brick wall because your fingers need time to build up some strength and independence from one another. Each of the following arpeggio exercises makes use of different fingers to help you do exactly this!
‘P i m’ arpeggio exercises
To play an arpeggio, pluck individual notes of a chord in a repeating pattern with your picking hand. After plucking each note, allow it to ring out as long as possible until plucking the string again.
These first few arpeggios use your thumb, index and middle fingers in varying orders. Each arpeggio is played in groups of three notes, so play these patterns in an eighth note triplet rhythm counting: 1 – trip – let, 2 – trip – let, etc.
UPDATE: A few people have had trouble seeing these images. If that’s you, here’s a zip file with all the exercises.
The next two exercises alternate your thumb between plucking the top two strings.
‘P i m a’ arpeggio exercises
Now add in the use of your ring finger (represented by an a). These exercises are a bit more difficult because the ring finger isn’t known to be the strongest finger in your hand. Use these exercises to build up strength and to free up movement in your ring finger.
The last three exercises eliminate the use of your thumb and focus on working out your index, middle and ring fingers.
Practice tip: In these exercises, you switch between just a C and G7 chord. For more practice, write out your own chord progressions and practice these arpeggios while switching between other different chords.
Dionisio Aguado’s “25 Pieces Pour Guitare, no. 17”
The cool thing about arpeggios is that they are used quite often in classical and Spanish guitar pieces to play beautiful and intricate-sounding fingerpicking pieces. When these pieces are arranged for ukulele, they are really fun to play and sound quite impressive.
Aguado’s 25 Pieces Pour Guitare, no. 17 is played solely on the bottom three strings of the ukulele. Use either a constant p-i-m or i-m-a arpeggio to play the piece. Try your hand at playing this piece!
Aguado’s 25 Pieces Pour Guitare (Tab and Sheet Music)
Aguado’s 25 Pieces Pour Guitare (MP3)
To take it to the next level, compose your own intricate fingerpicking piece by coming up with your own chord progressions and using an arpeggio to play the chords. You might even experiment with using moveable chord shapes across the ukulele fretboard to get more interesting tones out of what would be really common chords.
Brett McQueen is the founder of Ukulele Tricks and author of Ukulele Exercises For Dummies, a brand new ukulele practice book with hundreds of fun exercises, drills and practice tunes in a wide-range of styles. Now available on Amazon.com here.
