At Christmas we should spare a thought for people less fortunate than ourselves – I write about the ukulele for a living so everyone is less fortunate than me – and there are two excellent ways to do it. Helen Arney is recording a ukulele video every day this month and all she’s asking is that you donate 79p to Shelter. And you should pick up Rocky and Balls’s charity single Grow a Mo before they take it down on Tuesday (even if they did spell my name the satanic way – yes, it’s even more satanic than spelling it this way).

Also this week: Cole Clark’s pin-up girl Abbie Cardwell showing she’s more than just a pretty face (and a shapely pair of legs), Sam ‘Mario Kart Love Song‘ Hart, Herman Vandecauter playing three songs from the Andes and plenty more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hard to find much to get excited about amongst the hundreds of Kala ukuleles that are hoping to be someone’s Christmas present. But one interesting newbie is the Riptide ukulele (made by Boulder Creek Guitars). It looks like the strangely placed soundholes that the more experimental ukulele makers have been using has filtered down to the cheaper ukes.

I thought Pono was one of the classier makes until I saw the Pono PSO-H.

You can win a KoAloha ukulele and help build schools in Cambodia on Nerd’s Eye View.

Video from the 8th Annual Ukulele Guild of Hawaii Exhibition. Some unbelievable, crazy ukulele work going on.

Todd’s doing a great series of turnarounds on the ukulele.

Bid on a ukulele lesson from Victoria Vox for charity. And here’s the best video I could find of her appearance on Jay Leno.

You can now get ukulele chord shapes sent to you via Twitter and SMS. Tweet the chord you want to @ukechord or read the instructions here.

Xmas MP3s: Garfunkel and Oates have recorded a new extra-Christmassy version of Present Face you can grab it for free on their website. And you can get Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer’s Christmas Song in exchange for your email address here.

Pictures: Fire (Turn the Hose on Me), folk.

From ReyalpEleluku: “A young man who was inebriated and who was carrying a ukulele had been arrested and charged with unlawful possession. His only offence seemed to be that he was playing his own ukulele.”

MP3

Since it’s Christmas I thought I’d let you take a break from the tricky arrangements and I’d put up a couple of single note arrangements (along with easy chords) of a couple of Christmas tunes. For kids, newbies and people too drunk and bloated to play anything more complicated.

Suggested Strumming

Like a lot of Christmas songs, it’s a waltz so I’m using:

d – d u d –

If it’s too easy for you, you can try to play the very tricky all harmonics version. Or you can split the difference and play the middling version in How to Play Christmas Ukuele.

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

Christmas is coming fast and it’s time to start practicing a few tunes to entertain the family. With John King’s Classical Ukulele and Famous Solos and Duets for ‘Ukulele being the two best ukulele tab books around and his arrangements of Carol of the Bells and What Child Is This? being great, I felt pretty safe picking up a copy of his Christmas Carols for Ukulele.

Lowdown

Melody in standard notation only and ukulele chord diagrams (NO TAB) for:

Angels We Have Heard On High
Away In A Manger
Coventry Carol
Deck The Hall
The First Noel
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Good King Wenceslas
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Here We Come A-Wassailing
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring
Jingle Bells
Joy To The World
O Christmas Tree
O Come, All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)
O Come, O Come Immanuel
O Holy Night
O Little Town Of Bethlehem
Silent Night
Toyland
Up On The Housetop
We Three Kings Of Orient Are
We Wish You A Merry Christmas
What Child Is This?

The Good Stuff

Erm…: I’m assuming this book is aimed at people who just want chords to some traditional Christmas songs. It fulfills that purpose.

It’s cheap: £5 on Amazon and $8 on Elderly.

The Not So Good Stuff

No tab: That makes it either useless or a huge chore to use to at least 90% of ukulele players.

Boring arrangements: If you could call them that at all. There are so many ways to play the same notes on a ukulele that standard notation doesn’t cut it. If you’re expecting anything like his other books, you’ll be very disappointed.

No audio: It doesn’t give you any idea of how it’s supposed to sound.

No performance notes: John King’s writing is as good as his arranging. None of it here.

Overall

The information on this book online is very scant. I was expecting something completely different given John King’s other books. I was very disappointed with it (a shame to say that about somethig that John King has put his name to). Definitely one to avoid. It seems to have been thrown together to make a few quid at Christmas. If you’re looking for chords and melody for these public domain Christmas tunes you can find them all over the net.

I’ve been patiently waiting to put this one up since seeing this video starring ‘thingamy off of Heroes‘ and ‘was he the one who was in My Name Is Earl once?’ I don’t know why they uploaded in January. Anyhoo, eleven months later it’s finally December and I can post it without it seeming a bit weird.

Twiddly Bit

For the intro you’re using the same chords as the song and hitting the E and A strings with an up strum with your index finger and the down strums on the g and C strings with your thumb.

Suggested Strumming

For most of the song she’s using that same picking pattern. But if you want to keep it simple just a down, up, down, up… strum will see you through fine.

You can download this song free on their website.

Buy Garfunkel and Oates on iTunes

More Kate Micucci

Kate Micucci Interview
Garfunkel and Oates – You, Me and Steve
Kate Micucci and William H Macy – It’s Time to Get Laid
Let Us Be Happy Together
Mr Moon
Screw You
Dear Deer

A quick round up of the past two years’ worth of Christmas tabs and chords:

12 Days of Christmas (Chords)
All I Want for Christmas Is You (Chords and Tab)
Fairytale of New York (Chords)
Give the Jew Girl Toys (Chords)
German Christmas Carols (Tab)
Jingle Bells (Tabs)
Let It Snow (Chords)
Mele Kalikimaka (Tabs)
Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight) (Chords)
Merry Xmas Everybody (Chords)
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (Chords)
Rudolph the Red Nosed Raindeer (Tabs)
Santa Baby (Chords)
Silent Night (Tab)
White Christmas (Chords)
White Christmas (Tab)
Winter Wonderland
You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch

Obviously there’ll be more stuff this year. Some of the stuff I’ve got lined up: U900, Garfunkel and Oates, Zee Avi and Half Man Half Biscuit (about bloody time).

And don’t forget my Christmas ukulele tab ebook:

How to Play Christmas Ukulele

I’ve had a couple of half-hearted attempts at working up a version of this myself but never came up with anything that I thought really worked. Lucky for me, David nailed it and he’s kindly let me share the tab for his version with y’all.

Subscribe to David’s YouTube channel.

More from David:

The Stripper
Mississippi Blues
If I Had You
The Whistling Milkman

Videos this week from the mind-bending tUnE-YaRdS (and don’t miss FIYA from the same session), Miss Jess, Siri Nilsen (same song as last time but it’s too good), Nate Lieby (I strongly advise you close your eyes for 15 seconds at the 2:25 mark) and plenty more.

A lot of stuff I wanted to post this week – I’ve gone over my self imposed limit of ten and there were more I wanted to post. If you’re still gagging for more after these check out Kate Sloan, Wilfried Welti and The Corner Laughers (thanks to Ron Hale for that last one).

Read the rest of this entry »

We should definitely have Thanksgiving in the UK. How could we turn down a day of over eating? And a day of over spending afterwards? If you’re looking for a Black Friday deal, you can get 15% off at Guitar Center today (Friday) using the code BLACKFRIDAY. I think I’d use it to pick up an Ibanez quilted maple (they seem to using the spalted mango picture there).

Pono seem to be the ukulele of choice for musicians realising they need a better ukulele. Recent upgraders to Pono include Dent May, Amanda Palmer and Sophie Madeleine.

With guitar makers like Ibanez and Fender leaping on to the ukulele bandwagon, I thought Larivee might be returning to the fold. But they’ve gone and sold their koa wood to Kala.

Boat Paddle Resophonic.

Photos: <1910s ukuleles and hats, cowboy ukulele.