Japanese singer, Ayano Tsuji (or Tsuji-Ayano as she seems to put it herself) has set herself up as the anti J-pop (the slick, fashionable pop music often sung in English) and playing the uke certainly sets her apart from the J-pop scene. Going against the grain didn’t do much for her career, but she did breakthrough when her song Kaze Ni Naru was used as the theme to the manga film The Cat Returns.

The version used in the film (and the one I’ve written up) is a more stripped down version. At least it is in comparison to the full version. The chords used in that version are, for the most part, the same. Just a few orchestral embellishments.

My Japanese isn’t quite good enough to provide a full chord sheet, so I’ve written up the chords (separated into bars).

The chords are straightforward. They’re simple enough for a five year old to play. The strumming is fairly constant through the song. In the intro, it’s just one strum per chord. For the rest of the song, she’s strums down, down, up, up, down, up. When you’re strumming a pattern like this, try to keep your hand moving in a steady down, up motion and miss the strings where there is no strum. This makes sure that the tempo is nice and even.

The only place this pattern won’t work is in the bars that contain both F and G chords. Here, strumming each chord down twice will see you through.

Buy The Cat Returns

Rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit. Watch my favourite ukulele videos from the Hef, Ukulele Aya, Tripping Lily after the more Read the rest of this entry »

Des Cordes et du Bois is a French ukulele tab blog with some really good arrangements. Plenty of classical music and theme tunes.

This week’s Uker Tabs: Tom Dooley and Smokey & the Bandit.

John King is really pumping out the blog posts now. His latest covers the Hawaiian royal family and their ukes and is as fascinating as ever.

Thanks to the leap year, you have one last chance to win yourself a Kala KA-S by entering Ukulele Underground‘s contest. All you have to do is post a reply to this thread. Oh, and say, “I was referred by Uke Hunt,” or words to that effect.

Ukulazy is a new Tumblr blog linking to uke related webbery such as Last.fm’s ukulele tag radio and the ukulele vs. guitar debate on Hey, Monkeybrain!.

If you haven’t visited the German ukulele tab site for a while, get over there and see what’s new. My favourite is the tab of Roy Smeck’s Magic Ukulele Waltz.

If you missed it in the last post, you really must check out the latest latest Da Silva made Santo and Dias ukes.

The latest Magnetic Fields album is completely lacking in ukuleles, but Stephin Merritt performed a ukulele version of The Nun’s Litany on Fair Game (along with This Little Ukulele). You can pick up the mp3s here. Other uke songs around the mp3 blogs: Arms on i guess i’m floating (thanks to Humphrey for that), The King Blues on Mainstream Isn’t So Bad.

Can kittens and ukuleles make you happy? BankWest tests it out.

Amy Winehouse plays a ukulele at the Brit Awards (sort of).

Sally Phillips (Smack the Pony, Bridget Jones’s Diary) unveils her ukulele machine.

Eskimo ukulele snow statue.

Ukulele Hero III: a disappointment to chickens.

What do you think of ukuleles that look like guitars? apeing

Obviously, most ukuleles look somewhat like guitars. But some ukuleles consciously ape the look of certain guitars. The most obvious example is Kiwaya‘s K-Wave series. The series includes the Kiwaya K-Wave Telecaster and the Kiwaya K-Wave Gibson Les Paul. I’m not sure why they didn’t go with the more sexy and more famous Fender Stratocaster rather than the more workaday Telecaster. If you want a strat style ukulele, you’ll have to get to work on a 1/2 size guitar to produce one of these as friend of Uke Hunt Todd did.

Gibson guitars are some of the sexiest around, so it’s no surprise they’re the most imitated.

The latest addition to the Kiwaya’s K-Wave series (and the one that me thinking about the subject) is the Kiwaya K-Wave Gibson Gold. RISA seem to be getting in on the action with their new electric ukes with the Gibson Les Paul shape. They’re not available yet but one did make an appearance at NAMM. Also imitating the Gibson is the Mahalo Flying V ukulele. It’s strange that no one has taken on the Gibson SG devil-horns style (most famously used by Angus Young).

I find the Kala Archtop’s take on the much less famous Gibson ES the most visually appealing. They feel more true to the original – made a great deal easier by the fact that it is reproducing a semi-acoustic guitar so the pickups are not missed.

Ovation’s Applause ukes are slightly different in that they imitate their own guitars. The small, oddly placed soundholes and the soundboard design make it instantly recognisable.

They’re also very popular with many ukers, but I can’t stand the way they look. No amount of Kaki King can undo the damage of 80s attrocities like Yngwie Malmsteen (possibly the worst guitar solo I’ve ever heard), Toto and Judas Priest. The Ovation artist page even boasts of the support of UB40 and Motley Crue. As far as I’m concerned, playing an Applause ukulele is like walking around with a Nikki Sixx haircut.

I have mixed feelings about guitar-a-like ukes. I must admit, the Gibson mini-mes make me grin and they’re obviously a bit of fun. But I wouldn’t actually buy one. They never really capture the impact of the real thing. Guitars are designed to work as guitars. They’ll never match a uke designed to work as a uke.

It makes me wonder whether any company will mass produce reproductions of some of the classic early uke designs. Mike Da Silva’s Santo and Dias reproduction ukes are gorgeous. I just love that body shape. If some enterprising company started making cheap reproductions in the Dias style (maybe they already are and I’ve missed it – let me know) it wouldn’t surprise me if they sold very well. Of course, they wouldn’t be as nice as the Da Silvas, but they’d pique my interest.

Fiddly-day-dee-dar, it’s nearly St Patrick’s day. So it is. Me fah-vorite goup is T’in Lizzy. So it is.

That’s enough of that. The song Kilgary Mountain is a traditional Irish song that has been picked up by acts from the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary and Roger Whittaker to Thin Lizzy and Metallica (usually under its more modern name Whiskey in the Jar)

I’ve tabbed out the tune in a couple of different ways. The first run through of the tune is a sober, steady fingerpicking version. For the most part, the first beat of the bar includes the chord with the melody being picked out for the rest of the bar. The chords are played as a ‘fake strum’ (one finger for each string, played on after the other to sound like a strum). For the melody, I’m using my thumb for the notes on the G string and my ring and index fingers for the other notes.

The second version is a wild, drunken strum through the tune. Be sure to emphasise the melody notes and play the non-melody supporting strums more quietly. There are also fingerpicked notes in this section. It can be quite tricky to switch from strumming to fingerpicking. I had to practice bar 23 in particular to get it right. One more note: don’t do what I did in the last bar. I’ve tabbed out what I’ve played but in the first two notes of the bar (0403) but you’re much better off just playing a C chord (0003). I intended to emphasise the melody note (E) but actually just fluffed it unnecessarily. So, do as I say, not as I do.

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

Advanced Repeats

There are a vast array of Italian scribblings and scrawlings, and Heroes style symbols that can be used to indicate repeats. Here are the most common.

Whereas the other form of repeats is fairly intuitive, this type is pretty indecipherable (unless you happen to be fluent in Italian).

The first time round, you can breeze past the symbols until you reach D.S. al Coda (short for da signo al coda). It means you have to go back to the strange looking squiggle (at the beginning of bar two) then you play through until you reach Da Coda. At this point you go to the little target symbol.

In this example you’ll play bars:

1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 6.

It is possible to get all sorts of double signos and double codas, but you’ll probably never see these in ukulele tab. The only variation you might find is D.C. al Coda rather than D.S. al Coda. This means you go back to the start rather than going back to the sign.

Don’t worry if you didn’t get all of that. I still have to double check when I come up against this sort of repeat.

Accents

You accent notes by giving them an extra little oomph. This might be strumming harder to accentuate a beat or picking a note harder to emphasise the melody.

Accents are shown in tab with an arrow above the note or chord.

This snippet shows an exaggerated example:

Dead Notes

Dead notes are clicks produced by strumming the uke while damping all the strings with your fretting hand. Lay your fingers gently across the strings. You should touch the strings just enough to stop them ringing but not enough to fret the note.

Trills

Trills are produced by repeatedly hammering-on and pulling-off the same two notes. They are shown by the letters tr followed by a wavy line.

In this example, the A string is played at the fourth fret then you hammer-on and pull off at the fifth fret repeatedly.

This series was derived from my ebook Ukulele 101: 101 Things Every Ukulele Player Needs to Know.

Nantes (Chords)

Other than faffing about with a capo, it’s dead easy. Dm – C – F all the way through.

A Sunday Smile (Chords)

There’s a really great uke-heavy version of Sunday Smile on flyclubcup.com. It has the same basic chords as the album version, but uses different inversions.

Guyamas Sonora

Another capo-at-the-first-fret tune. I think this happens a lot in Beirut tunes as trumpets and other brass instruments are easier to play in flat keys (Bb and Eb in particular).

La Banlieue

Em – A – F# – B

Cliquot (Chords)

My favourite non-uke song on the album. Like a lot of Beirut songs, there’s a shift in chords and lyrical perspective in the middle of the song and it works particularly well here.

The song is, apparently, written from the perspective of Nicole Clicquot. She married into a wine making family but became widowed in her twenties. She went on to pioneer a method of producing clear champagne and established the famous Veuve Clicquot.

In the first verse of the song, she’s pleading for her husband to recover. In the second, he has died and she’s given up all hope – wants to burn the winery down. Then the music shifts from B minor to D major as discovers her purpose and vows to make her husband’s name famous.

The Penalty (Chords)

Forks And Knives (La Fête)

In The Mausoleum

I um-ed and ah-ed over this one. The chords I’ve written up are the ones that sound best to me, but there a few options. You could play the A6 chord like this. And you could play the C#m chord with the Bm shape moved up two frets.

Un Dernier Verre (Pour la Route)

Time to reach for the capo again.

Cherbourg

Another song in two halves.

St Apollonia (Chords)

The Flying Club Cup

Two ticks in the I-Spy book of Beirut chord progressions: capo first fret, new chord progression for the second half.

Next week, I should have Lon Gisland and a few other miscellaneous bits and bobs figured out. They’ll be up on the Beirut Chords and Tabs page at some point.

Share – Bluebird (mp3)
Share – Shangri-La (mp3)
Download the whole album free from Forward Music

When I tell you Share are from Halifax, Nova Scotia, you’d be forgiven for assuming they’re J. Chalmers Doane alumni making virtuoso instrumental uke tracks. You’d be completely wrong.

Share started out as the solo project of Andrew Sisk. After traveling around, he settled in Halifax and hooked up with soundsmith A.A. Wallace and started work on Ukulele Tragic; an album of, mostly uke-led, lo-fi indie-folk. He’s recently made the whole album available for download free of charge on the Forward Music website. If you’re a fan of that sort of thing, it’s definitely worth a download.

Since Ukulele Tragic, Share have moved away from the ukulele/acoustic sound. They added a couple of members and moved in a more electric and electronic album, Can Can Missile. With their latest album Pedestrian they’re attempting to meld the sound of the two previous albums. Still no uke, but some fine songs.

Share have got me thinking. I wonder what Cher would sound like on the ukulele.

Share’s MySpace

Yael Naim‘s New Soul is best known as the music accompanying the MacBook Air ad, but the first time I came across it was on Le Soir’s ukulele sessions. That part of the session has since been replaced by the second half, but you can still enjoy the ukulele version of New Soul thanks to Dailymotion.

In the ukulele version, she seems to be playing tuned down half a step (one fret) with the chords half a step higher than the original. To keep things simple, I’ve written up the original version.

I do get paranoid sometimes when I’m writing up chords. What I’ll usually do is find the lyrics, work out the chords, then have a look online to see what other people reckon the chords are. I almost always disagree with them. In the other versions online, no one else makes any mention of an Ebmaj7 but just play a C chord in its place. Try it both ways and see which you think is correct.

One difference I’m sure I’m right on is the chords at the end of the middle section. Even though the lyrics and melody of the, “I’m a new soul…” are the same as before, the chords are different. It creates an interesting effect and it’d be a shame to miss it out.

For the strumming, I like to use down, down, up, down, up, down, up for most of the chords. But for the shorter chords (Am and G), I go with just down, down, up for each. It sounds like this slow:

And this up to speed:

This weeks best vids include Elvis Costello, Ernie the Cockroach and two from my latest ukulele crush Kate Micucci Read the rest of this entry »