The Ukulele Festival of Great Britain is going to take place in Cheltenham on 19th and 20th June next year. The bill is rumored to include GUGUG, Uke Box and Ukulelezaza.

And staying in Great Britain, Jake Shimabukuro will be performing with Bette Midler at this year’s Royal Variety Performance.

John Kavanagh’s posthumous album Small Rooms has been released. You can find out more, listen to samples and buy it at JohnKavanagh.net

James Hill’s album True Love, Don’t Weep has won Traditional Album of the Year at the CFMAs.

New blogs from Aaron Keim and Ralph Shaw. Ralph has some excellent advice for getting kids interested in music, “Tip #8 If they do take up a musical instrument be sure to maintain a constant stream of negativity any time the subject comes up.”

Bosko and Honey launch their Ukulele Safari merch.

On Uker Tabs: Thom Yorke’s Cymbal Rush and Roy Smeck’s Tiger Rag

The old story of boy meets girl, boy blasts off into space, girl writes ukulele song slagging off boy.

Pictures: a bunch of exceptionally strange ukuleles (including Keith Ogata and Road Toad I think), Uni & her Ukelele & her Unicorn, The Shadow Shoots, Viva Cuba.

Make money writing about vintage ukuleles. Wait, why don’t I have a site about vintage ukuleles?

I regard myself as being pretty near unshockable when it comes to lyrics but I did have a ‘Can he say that?’ moment in this song (I won’t spoil it if you haven’t heard it yet).

I wasn’t expecting ukulele riffery from Jamie T but this is a damn fine bit of work. And quite tricky to work out – not sure how much use the G string is getting.

Verse

The tab is in D-tuning (aDF#B) or you could put a capo on the second fret.

Chorus

Not Twiddly Bits

In the, “Hustle and the bustle…” section the chords are:

Em G D

If you’re a regular on the blog, you’ll have noticed I’ve linked to quite a few of Jim D’Ville’s posts on Play Ukulele By Ear. His posts are always interesting and informative and I think ear training is essential for any musician. So when Jim was kind enough to send me a copy of his DVD on playing ukulele by ear I chucked in straight in the DVD player and got down to business.

The Lowdown

Play Ukulele by Ear is a 52 minute DVD introduction to musical intervals and using your ears to tune your ukulele and pick out chord progressions.

Chapters:
The C Tone
Tuning By Ear
C The Home Key
F The IV Chord
Chord Progressions
Intervals
Diatonic Chords

Price: $22 + $4 international shipping from Jim’s site or eBay.

The Good Stuff

Simply and Effectively Explained: Jim puts the information across in a very straight forward and effective manner. He’s obviously taught a lot of people this stuff before and knows what works.

No Prior Knowledge Needed: If you don’t have any knowledge of musical theory at all, you’ll still be able to follow along with the DVD and learn from it.

Interval Recognition: I think this is the strongest part of the DVD. Jim demonstates the sounds of different intervals and relates them to specific songs to help you recognise them more easily. And he has a great way of explaining the moods of the different chords in a I – IV – V progression to help you spot them in songs (and it’s very useful to be able to do that).

Interesting Titbits: Jim throws in plenty of interesting factoids such as harmonic resonance and ambulance sirens using 7th intervals.

The Beret: Every pro uker needs their trademark headgear and Jim now owns the beret.

The Not So Good Stuff

Filmed Lesson: The DVD is a filmed group lesson (although you don’t see the group apart from the occasional Fluke headstock invading the screen). It’s a bit disconcerting to watch because he’s looking everywhere but at the camera.

It’s a DVD: It’s just my personal preference and I know there are plenty who disagree – I’m probably in the minority – but I find it hard to learn effectively from DVDs. I can’t dash through the parts I understand already and it’s difficult to go over the bits I don’t grasp again. I find that DVDs/online videos are good at conveying an interest in the subject but I usually find I’ve forgotten everything by the next day. Probably a bad habit picked up from watching to much television.

It’s mostly down to my learning style. If yours is different, you might prefer a DVD.

Bringing it back to an actual review of this DVD in particular, I think it could do with being chopped into smaller sections to make it easier to find certain parts. There’s a lot of information on the DVD – too much to take in one go if it’s all new to you – so it would be useful to have smaller sections.

Overall

Play Ukulele by Ear is great for anyone who wants to know the basics of harmony and how to recognise intervals. By the end of it you’ll be able to spot a I – IV – V progression a mile off – which is worth the price of admission alone. But don’t expect it to turn you into an expert able to reel off tabs after one listen. If you’re already sound on the basics and looking to develop your ear to a more advanced level check out Ear Master.

Buy Play Ukulele by Ear on Jim’s site or eBay.

Here’s another top-notch song from Sophie Madeleine and another one for ukulele-tabs.com to steal (unless they made exactly the same screw ups with the passing chords I did). And they butcher the stuff they nick: they even keep the G’ notation in this which makes no sense since all their chord shapes are auto-generated.

Anyway, enough bitter ranting, on to the song.

Suggested Strumming

For the verses:

d – d u – u d u

For each chord except the last C in the verse.

For the middle do all down strums for the first two chords then d u D u d u D u for the next two.

(Not So) Twiddly Bits

For the intro you play the chords just the same as the verse but take your finger off the A string and play it open for the last strum on the C’, C5- and Csus4 chords.

Buy it on BandCamp and Rocky and Balls have released a charity song in aid of people with moustaches (I think).

Requested by Marcelo and Emily.

More Sophie Madeleine

Sophie Madeleine interview
Beard Song (Chords)
Rocky and Balls – I Heart You Online (Chords)
Take Your Love With Me (The Ukulele Song)(Chords)

Craig Robertson – The Ballard of Blanche Barrow (MP3)
Craig Robertson – The Scorpion Queen (MP3) via Craig Robertson’s Music Blog

There aren’t many people in the ukulele community I have more respect for than Craig Robertson. He’s been a massive supporter of new ukulele talent through his Ukulele Noir and Ukulele Caravan shows, he’s the original ukulele blogger and, of course, he’s a killer songwriter.

Craig has just released a new album, Under the Mystic, so I took the opportunity to fire some questions at him.

How would you describe the new album?

I’ve always struggled with how to describe my music. This CD is definitely more personal and punchier. I dunno; this CD is full of music that looks at what and who you probably hadn’t thought of looking at. Or, maybe you didn’t want to look at. I’ve tried to take more song subjects by the throat and shake them. Standard pop fare kinda makes me cringe.

Many of your songs are character based, what draws you to certain people?

Something that transcends the normal. Something that makes them blossom into their own reality.

What was it like playing the ukulele before it was fashionable?

The audiences were more patronizing. Of course, they’re still that way occasionally. Is it fashionable now? It always went well with my fedoras, so, to me, it was always “fashionable”.

Who would be on your dream Ukulele Noir bill?

James Hill, Folk Uke, Bliss Blood and moi. I guess. Oh…yeah, and to get paid.

– Which song do you wish you’d written?

Zoe Janzen’s “Scorpion Queen…”

How important is your image to what you do?

Blah blah blah branding, blah blah stage persona…Yeah, it’s a consideration, but I’ve pretty much always dressed this way. There IS a stage persona I put on, but it’s probably just the other side of the mirror. That alternate reality where I get to be a private detective who plays ukulele.

What can you tell us about your up-coming European tour?

Still in the negotiations stage. Sigh. This being the “holiday season”, everything and everyone grinds to an agonizing, screeching, emotional halt until after the new year. There are a lot of people in Europe I’d like to meet again for the first time, so I’m working on it.

You can buy Under the Mystic from Psychic Hamster Records and visit Craig’s website here.

With this video heading for a million views, this one’s getting so huge I just have to put it up.

The song reminds me of MJ Hibbett: lo-fi uke, unpredictable scantion, addressing himself in the second person. Perhaps if MJ got Stephen Fry to do an outro for him he’d have as many fans as he deserves.

Suggested Strumming

Most of the way this will suit you fine:

d – d u – u d –

Although you can add an extra strum in occasionally:

d u d u – u d –

Links
Buy the MP3
charlieissocoollike on YouTube
This Is Me Medley Chords
Exerminate, Regenerate Chords

One surefire way to get your video featured is to do one of my requests and do it as fantastically as uketreehugger did.

Also this week: a Christmas song from cuddly Japanese super-cuties U900, cuddly backwoods super-cutie Jake Wildwood, cuddly Canadian super-cutie Ukulelezo and plenty of other cuddly super-cuties.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a bit confused about what Washburn are playing at. They used to make ukes under the name ‘Lyon and Healy’, then they syphoned off the ukuleles to their ‘folk instrument’ section Oscar Schmidt. And now they’re selling ukuleles as Washburn Lyon. And they seem to be exactly the same as the Oscar Schmidt ukuleles. If there’s a difference between that uke and the Oscar Schmidt koa, I can’t spot it.

You don’t see many leopard skin Flukes around. I suspect those bleeding-heart liberals don’t think it’s worth killing leopards to make ukuleles. Damn hippies.

I’ve been eying up this National resonator.

Photos: sad man with busted up ukulele, Shirley Temple.

You can pre-order your copy of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s already legendary Proms performance on their website and watch a clip of it here.

New Zealand builds a human ukulele out of 961 kids and set a new world record.

Der Spiegal talks about the London ukulele scene (the entertainingly translated version) with Tricity Vogue, Eleanor from the “BonnyMcGees” and Mighty Ukulele who list the ukulele events in London.

Rolf Harris’s ukulele Christmas song. (Thanks – sort of – to Andy).

Build a Pez dispenser humidifier.

Cherryade’s Christmas album includes Uke Hunt favourites The Bobby McGee (who are ripping me off good and proper) and ‘Allo Darlin’.

On Uker Tabs: Corinne Bailey Rae’s cover of Editors’ Munich, Lust for Life by Girls and The XX – Islands.

Obviously all the models are playing ukulele – another to add to the list is Maxim cover (NSFW) girl Jessica Warner – but you know something’s really fashionable when the luge champions start doing it – Bartt has pictures of Kate Hansen ukeing and lugeing if you need the proof.

MP3s: My Crazy Music Blog and newdust have a couple from Galapaghost. And I recorded a couple myself: Eye of the Tiger (for a trailer for a film about chess-boxing) and The Bar-Kays’ Soul Finger (just for giggles).

In the comments: Ron Hale’s been kicking things off again with his appraisal of Dent May and campness.

Photos: Ukulele player practicing on the seawall, time has told me, Ukulele Girl

Is it a good idea to microwave a ukulele? (Thanks to April in Autumn).

You have to be comfortable with a very high level of camp to play a cowboy Fluke. I think Dent May is the man for that job.

Requested by Fiona.

More Dent May

Meet Me in the Garden (Chords)
Oh, Paris! (Chords)
You Can’t Force a Dance Party (Chords)