I’m going to backtrack from the title right away. Whether these scales sound weird to you depends entirely on your cultural perspective. But they are rarely heard on the ukulele.

There are plenty of good reasons to learn unfamiliar sounding scales:

– Rut busting: Ever find yourself playing the same set of notes over and over again?
– Lame Pastiches: This is how they’re most often used. And that’s what I’ve done for the demo examples in this post. But that’s certainly not the best way of using the scales.
– Integrating into your own style: Much more satisfying is take ideas and sounds and integrate them into your own playing.

So, for starters, here are three lesser-uked scales for you to try out.

Double Harmonic – “Arabic Scale”

How it Sounds

Arabic Scale

You Might Recognise it From: Miserlou

In C

C – Db – E – F – G – Ab – B – C

In General

1 – b2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – b6 – 7

How to Play It

An Example

Arabic Scale Example

Deeper Listening: Khyam Allami

Phrygian Dominant – “Flamenco Scale”

How it Sounds

Flamenco Scale

You Might Recognise it From: Metallica’s Wherever I May Roam

In C

C – Db – E – F – G – Ab – Bb – C

In General

1 – b2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – b6 – b7

How to Play It

An Example

FlamencoScaleExample

Deeper Listening: Paco De Lucia

Lydian Dominant – The Simpsons Scale

How it Sounds

LydianDominant

You Might Recognise it From: The Simpsons Theme Tune

In C

C – D – E – F# – G – A – Bb – C

In General

1 – 2 – 3 – #4 – 5 – 6 – b7

How to Play It

An Example

Simpsons Scale Example

Deeper Listening: Danny Elfman and Tim Burton Music Box

This work by Ukulele Hunt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Brendan Maclean is going zeitgeist with this one combining ukulele with the vogue for dancing like nobody’s watching whilst hoping that everyone is watching.

And it seems to have work because I’ve had a few requests for this one. It’s a lot of fun to play and very beginner friendly.

Suggested Strumming

The main strumming pattern:

d – d u – u d u

Do that twice for every chord in the verse, chorus and middle. (In the first chorus he just does one strum for each chord so you can do that as well if you prefer.) Slowed down it sounds like this:

Main Strum

The strumming for the intro and outro is a bit trickier. For the G chord do:

d u d

Then switch to the G6 for:

u – u d u

Which sounds like this:

Intro Strum

If you can’t get the hang of that you can just do the main strum on a G chord twice.

Links

Buy it on his Bandcamp.

Full Playlist

Read the rest of this entry »

The Institute of Hawaiian Music is looking for aspiring musicians to take part in its mentorship programme with some of the top Hawaiian players.

The original ukulele-sized bass, the Ashbory Bass disappeared for a while. But it’s now back in business and with a much-reduced price tag.

The story of the women who made Gibson’s best guitars during WWII.

Latest attempt to solve the ukulele strap problem: the Mobius strap.

Pictures
– The original cast of No, No, Nanette bust out the ukuleles (via @ShelleyRickey).
– Cool hand uke.
– Tall, Short, Uke, Bass.
– Cthulu Ukulele Hero.

New Releases
– A bear-pun based album from Tyrone and Lesley.
– Buy Kyle Frazer’s debut album on his website or just the originals on CDBaby
– Outside Myself by Maria Brosgol

Video
– Oh Little Town of Pokemon, they call the Rising Sun – lots of songs to the tune of lots of other songs.

Some hilarious trolling from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner: “No matter what twee folk musicians and advertisers of online greeting cards will tell you, it sounds like a child’s instrument. It has all the resonance of an asthmatic flea blowing into a pillow and the clarity of a secret service document with all the verbs redacted. The ukulele is very much the poor relation of the guitar, banjo and mandolin.”

Pi for Ukulele (Tab)

Happy Pi Day!

The idea behind this tune is that you assign each number to a note in the C major scale (1=C, 2=D, 3=E etc.). Then convert the digits of pie into music. There was a legal bust up over the idea but I first heard it in this uke featuring version by Michael Blake.

I’ve been a bit more loose with my interpretation of it. The melody is pi but I’ve added in any notes I felt like around it.

I should point out that the numbers under the tab are the digits of pi. Lest you were wondering how to grow nine fingers on your fretting hand.

And if you can’t get it together start working on tau and you’ve got until June.

For the Purists

If you prefer the pure version, here’s just notes of pi by themselves.

Pi Melody (MP3)

This work by Ukulele Hunt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

A whole lot has changed since the last time I reviewed ukulele apps in 2009. For one thing, the first iPad hadn’t even been released.

Since Uke Hunt has recently been given a mobile-friendly layout and it’s been I thought it was about time I did an update on how I use mobile devices in my playing.

If you’ve got any tips or great apps you use leave them in the comments.

Apps I Actually Use

Of all the apps I reviewed last time exactly none proved useful enough to survive on my phone. Of the apps I do use, none of them are ukulele-specific. It’s mostly iOS but I do have a Nexus 7 so there’s a bit of Android too.

Dropbox

Dropbox is handy doodad that means you can save a file to your computer and then it’ll be available on all your computers and mobile devices. It works across pretty much any computer/phone/tablet and it’s free.

I have every tab and chord PDF saved to Dropbox. Then if I ever want one I can just download it to my phone/iPad. And if you’re browsing a particularly great ukulele site on your phone and see a tab you want to keep you can send it directly to Dropbox from the browser. It’s incredibly useful.

Plus it allows shenanigans I wish were available when I was at school.

Sign up for a Dropbox account here.
Info on the various apps here.

Visual Metronome

There’s no shortage of free metronomes but Visual Metronome is well worth buying for. It’s flexible, easy to use and it looks great.

Visual Metronome on iTunes

On Android: My favourite Android metronome is Mobile Metronome which comes in free and paid flavours.

Jam Player

Let’s you slow down mp3s so you can hear what they’re doing more clearly or practice at a slower tempo. Very useful for practice.

It also lets you adjust the pitch. So you can play along with a song in D-tuning or tuned down a fret without having to retune your ukulele.

It’s good enough that I got over my hate of twisty-knobs on screens.

On Android: I haven’t tried this one out, but the same guy who makes Mobile Metronome also made Audio Speed Changer.

forScore

For the most part, Dropbox’s built in PDF viewer works perfectly well for tab and chord viewing. But forScore (iPad only) has a few extra features specifically for musicians. It makes page turning really easy (just one tap or you can even buy a foot-pedal to turn the page), you can scribble on pages, you can duplicate and rearrange pages to help with repeats and such.

It hooks up with Dropbox so you can pull tabs and chords directly into it.

Visit their website
forScore for iOS

On Android: The only thing I could find was MobileSheets but I haven’t tried it.

What do you do?

Let me know in the comments how you use your phone/tablet in your playing. And tell me about any apps I should check out.

This is one of my all-time favourite ukulele songs (and something of a personal manifesto). And now there’s an officially released ukulele version on her new album Live at Jalopy.

It’s dead simple too. Just four beginner-level chords all the way through.

Suggested Strumming

The strum is simple too. You only need one strumming pattern to get you trough the whole song:

d – d u d u

Use that once for every chord in the intro, verse and chorus. Except the last chord in each section. For the last chord in the intro and chorus play it twice. And play it four times for the last chord in the verses.

In the middle, play it twice for each chord. In the last line you can slow down for some vocal trilling like she does.

Links

KelliRaePowell.com
Buy it on iTunes

Full Playlist

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve started the Ukulele 2013 Spotify playlist. Kicking off with Kelli Rae Powell, Brendan Maclean, We Were Evergreen and a song about waffles. You can find more ukulele Spotify playlists here.

New Red Series Aquila strings. The same idea as the low-G red strings they brought out but a full set of re-entrant strings. The news being that all the strings are the same size and the pitch is changed by the density of the strings. According to Aquila that makes them, “brighter, more powerful and more responsive.” The low-G Red Series has had a few snapping problems but also sounds good. So we’ll see how these stack up.

Ukulele players’s oath.

Sheet Music Plus has got a uke book sale on.

New live EP from The Love Leighs Lootbeg.

Pictures: Here’s Johnny, Not a great start for the chord determining software, moon banjolele (via @ShelleyRickey), Pimp my M.U.F. ukulele decorating contest.

Video: Ukulele Cat (via thingsisawthatilove).

Like the Dad’s Army Theme, the Muppet Show Theme was co-written by one of the show’s creators. But unlike the Dad’s Army Theme it wasn’t so well served by a modern cover.

This arrangement includes one of my favourite tricks: playing the bassline. The notes on the C-string in bars 9-16 are the bass notes. Then the melody notes are played on the E and A strings. It takes a bit of work to get the two going together but it’s really effective.

Links

Buy The Muppets (and Joanna Newsom) version
Buy the OK Go version
Manha Manha tab