Some great instrumental ukulele videos this week – including versions of Apache, Maunaloa Slack Key and Allemande – as well as plenty of singing (but no Christmas songs).

For those of you who do want Christmas songs and have been eagerly anticipating Ballard C Boyd Christmas record this year, you can download it free here. Read the rest of this entry »

Someone’s going to be lucky this Christmas. There’s a whole bunch of lovely looking vintage Martin ukuleles on eBay this week. At the top of the range, there’s and this Martin Taropatch, this Martin Style 3 and this 1K on eBay UK. If vintage isn’t the way you want to go, there’s also a brand new Martin 5K.

If you want a bit of vintage ukulele action but can’t afford a Martin, cross your fingers and add this Leonardo Nunes to your watch list. It’s listed in the ‘Hula’ section which might explain why, at the time of writing, bidding stands at $11.

Kala have taken ukulele portability one step further with their new, wafer thin travel ukulele.

Ukulele photo of the week.

Thanks to everyone who has bought How to Play Ukuleles for Peace already (six days left to get the ebook at the cheaper price). And an ever bigger thanks to everyone who promoted it including Valerie who made a video for Project 4 Awesome promoting UfP. I’m going to keep going on about this until everyone’s bought it – it’s my last chance for avoiding eternal damnation. I think the only way to counteract my lifetime of coveteousness, apostacy and making girls cry would be to bring peace to the Middle East.

If you were quick off the mark and downloaded an early version of So You’re Just Got Your First Ukulele, you might have found some of the links didn’t work (specifically, the ones with numbers in). It’s been fixed and you can download the new version here.

If you’ve been following UkeTube, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Jake Wildwood. As well as the old-timey songs, his videos always have him playing the gorgeous vintage instruments that he repairs and restores. And he’s now started a blog Antebellum Instruments. There’s already a healthy amount of ukulele pr0n including a Regal Soprano Ukulele.

Two excellent new ukulele CDs out: Craig Robertson’s DeChirico Street (buy it and get a free MP3 here) and Allo, Darlin’s Christmas EP (available on MySpace).

Friend of the blog, Tzu Ann discovered this Sapelele for sale whilst out Christmas shopping. It’s a cross between a uke and a sapeh.

Lee Evans’s ukulele song.

New fish-tacos/ukulele song from Flight of the Conchords. (Thanks to Zak).

Legolele.

Wii Music creator Shigeru Miyamoto plays the ukulele in real life.

Bucky Greenhorn: Hollywood’s next leading man.

ya see there is this guy i like. whenever he has a ukulele with him and i am near him or i passed my him him he plays im yours. does that mean he like me?

Jason ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow on American Idol‘ Castro has just released a ukulele version of White Christmas and you can get it free on Amazon (or on ReverbNation if you’re outside the US). I don’t want to be mean at Christmas time, but I’m guessing that isn’t him ukeing on the track because it being played well.

But he is playing it on this very simple version. I thought that, since I’ve already done a tricky tab for White Christmas, I’d write up these very simple chords

I’ve written a mini-ebook as a bit of an introduction to the ukulele aimed at people who got a new ukulele for Christmas. It’s free and released under a Creative Commons License. So you can email it people, let people download it on your site, print it out and hand it round to people – so long as you keep the content as it is.

Contents:

1 Five Things to Know
2 Five Chords to Learn
3 Five Songs to Play
4 Five Websites to Visit
5 Five Things to Get Free
6 Five Things to Buy
7 Five Videos to Watch
8 Five YouTube Channels to Subscribe to

You can download it free here:

So You Just Got Your First Ukulele

I pinky swear I won’t pass your email on to anyone else and you won’t get any spam. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a beagle in my eye.

Don’t Know Much ‘Bout Hanukkah (MP3)
Christmas For Cowboys (MP3)
Hippopotamus For Christmas via ballardcboyd.com

As well as his work as a director (including the video for Mal Blum’s Ode to Kulele, Ballard C Boyd put together a Christmas ukulele album each year and releases it online. You can download the previous years’ songs here.

I caught up with him to find out what he’s cooking up this Christmas.

Why only Christmas albums?

Well, the first one just happened to be the only record I had recorded. I had only been playing for about a year at the time and it was as a christmas present for all of my friends and family. But at the same time, I heard another friend of mine rocker Stuart Davis (who’s recorded over 13 albums) when asked once “when are you going to make a christmas record?”, he yelled back “What are you talking about?! I’ve done nothing BUT Christmas records!” So in my time writing songs, I’ve decided that for the past three years – going on four – that IS genuinely hilarious. So that’s all I’ve recorded officially. Though I have written and recorded some demos for some other (hate to admit it) NON-holiday songs.

What can we expect on this year’s EP? Any more originals?

I’ve been really trying to work out this arrangement of The Christmas Song, that I’ve always wanted to do, but with a 3/4 swing beat I heard in a recording, but it’s taking a little bit of effort in the translating. So we’ll keep our fingers crossed. But I hope also to record two more originals. And this might be my first foray into traditional christmas carols with Good King Wenceslas perhaps. Maybe not, we’ll see. I’ve kept so far with more secular Christmas carols, which, yes, I know is an oxymoron, but it’s my style.

What makes for a good Christmas song?

My instinct is to say novelty, but really a catchy tune plus a good story I think really make it. There’s so much great imagery with Christmas to work with, that just like any good song, if you can combine those with a tune you enjoy, whether it’s peppy or melancholy. But I really am a big fan of so many obscure Christmas songs that I might have only found because of their novelty. Like Lord Nelson’s “A Party For Santa Claus” that is almost impossible to find, but is a straight calypso tune and is a FANTASTIC Christmas song. So story, plus tune first. And then novelty just sets some out from the pack for me.

What’s in your uke collection?

I really only have one uke. It’s a dark mahogany-shaded Hilo concert uke, from Cotton Music in Nashville, that I bought for $50, and that’s been like my best friend. I remember buying it, even without a case and before I could even play it, and seeing myself reflected in a glass window down the street as I walked to my car, and thinking “I’m a real Nashvillian now. I own a stringed instrument.” Because just about everyone plays something, mostly guitar. And I picked the uke because it’s obviuously not a guitar, but it’s cute and different and easy, and it’s hard to be taken too seriously on it which I see as a plus. I also once owned a Hilo baritone that was on the first record, but it’s since wandered into someone else’s possession in Colorado.

What tips would you give someone looking to spice up their YouTube videos?

Add the tag “erotic” to everything you have. I’m not saying it’s ethical, but it works. It’s a sad erotic state of the internet.

What’s on your Christmas list this year?

This year? Probably financial support. But seriously, like socks and dress shirts. I’m such an adult now. There may be a song on this new record that goes into detail on some other “christmas requests”. I’ll let you know.

Download Ballard’s Christmas records here and watch his films here.

MP3

In the ukulele harmonics post I promised tab for a harmonics only version of Silent Night. I hope you’ve been practicing the stuff in that post, because here it is. And it’s tricky.

This version starts off fairly easy. The natural harmonics at the twelfth fret shouldn’t cause too many difficulties. It’s much more difficult to get clean harmonics at the fifth and seventh frets.

In bar 14 the artificial harmonics start. here you have to keep track of where both your left and right hands are. I find it easier to start the artificial harmonic technique at the beginning of bar 13 to avoid switching hands quickly.

The hardest note in the entire piece is the first note in bar 18. You have to fret the A string with your left hand and play a harmonic at the eighth fret (seven frets above the note you’re playing). It’s very difficult to get that one to sound cleanly.

Even though it’s tricky, I think it’s worth playing. The harmonics give it a Christmas bell feel to it.

If you want a non-harmonic, easy to play tab of Silent Night there’s one in my Christmas ukulele ebook.

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

Another Harmonic Tune

After my harmonic post Jimmy of the Bobby McGee’s suggested Popcorn as another tune that sounds great with harmonics. And he’s absolutely right.

How often do you get the chance to get some kickass ukulele tabs and do your bit for world peace at the same time?

You may well have heard of Ukuleles for Peace already. The charity is based in Israel and run by Paul Moore who teaches ukulele to Jewish and Arab kids and brings them together in a ukulele orchestra. The goal is to create friendships and links between otherwise entirely separate communities.

Ukuleles for Peace works in two towns – Tira and Hod Hasharon – where it has been hugely successful. There are even discussions about the group performing at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

But they do need money to keep up the good work and, hopefully, expand into other towns in the region. To that end, I’ve got together with the the glittering elite of online ukulele tabbers and put together and ebook of tunes from around the world arranged for ukulele. It features tabs/arrangements from Brian Hefferan, Dominator, James Hill, Ken Middleton, Mark Kailana Nelson, Wilfried Welti and me. You can find out more about it, read the contents, listen to tracks and buy it here. And the money goes directly to Ukuleles for Peace.

And you really should buy it. Look at their little faces (and in this video). Not giving these kids ukuleles is exactly the same as going round strangling puppies.

If you can’t afford it, you can help even more by spreading the word about Ukuleles for Peace and the ebook by talking about it on blogs, forums, MySpace, Facebook, Live Journal and anywhere you can find people who might listen.

Go buy How to Play Ukuleles for Peace.

This week’s vidoes include some hip hop ukulele, Jake playing Jackson, Jodi and Amber playing Jackson, another hit from Toy Horses, and Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome putting their acting chops to good use. But the song I’ve listened to most this week has been Sarah Kinlaw’s Guilty Love. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Santa,

I’ve been ever such a good boy this year and if your list says an different it must be an administrative error because the police station was on fire when I got there.

So here’s the stuff I want:

A tenor KoAloha Sceptre (or at least a concert koa ukulele).

Ukulele Hero T-Shirt – now gone forever. As an alternative, I’ll go for this one.

A Charango aka the Bolivian super-ukulele.

Whatever this is.

A re-up Anne’s video of her Lanikai ukulele review.

A chicken finger shaped like a rabbit.

A ukulele necklace.

An unplayable Ukelin.

The immediate arrest of everyone who inaccurately labels African MP3s ‘Reggae’.

A tacky ukulele Christmas ornament.

eBay to ban people using the words ‘Martin’ and ‘ukulele’ in the title of items that aren’t Martin ukuleles. I don’t care if it’s ‘like Martin’, ‘has Martin strings’ or is a Martin Rival.

Thanks, Dude.

Al