Jake Shimabukuro and his haircut appear on Conan O’Brien. Is Conan gargantuan or is Jake the size of an Action Man?

The Paris Uke Fest will be taking place on the 30th and 31st May. The lineup includes Victoria Vox and Michael Wagner.

You already know that weePop! is my favourite record label, but now they’ve become my even favouriter. They’ve got new releases from Jacob Borshard and One Happy Island. I’m sure you’ve already downloaded and fallen in love with Jacob Borshard’s two albums. You can check out a track from One Happy Island on Logical Logic.

An excellent piece on the ukulele in The Guardian. Which is what you’d expect as it’s written by Rock That Uke director William Preston Robertson. “Yes, there are other instruments with greater range, but none that can exist so innocently, so vulnerably, so fearlessly and precisely in that duality of time and space that is both joy and sorrow as can the ukulele.”

New chords on Uker Tabs including Fields of Gold, Theme from Fall Guy and Uptown Top Ranking. Thanks to zymeck and exoticorn for their efforts. Go here if you want to upload your own.

The Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson plays the ukulele to Paul McCartney at the Brit Awards.

More from Trixie Tangway the ukulele sweetheart (a.k.a. Kristen Schaal off of Flight of the Conchords). She even picks up a ukulele this time.

Can you guess what the hell Shaun Keaveny off of BBC 6 Music’s Breakfast Show is playing on his flying V ukulele? Beats me.

Judging by recent reviews, ukulele tracks crop up on forthcoming albums by Van Morrison and, rather unexpectedly, Portishead.

iWantUkeTunes. I stumbled upon this this site today and I’m not quite sure what to make of this site yet. It lets you search for free ukulele mp3s, but it seems to spit out the same few songs whatever you search for. I’m guessing it’s in early stages of development. My advice: do a blank search and pick up any mp3s that take your fancy.

I’ve been working my way through the archives of Amoeba Music’s in-store perfomances. There are some rollockingly good videos (and there’s a live webcast with Kimya Dawson tonight). On the uke front, they have Uni and Her Ukulele.

Message from Stephin Merritt: Don’t play the ukulele, it’s too dangerous.

Uke Hunt is worth $27,662.46. That seems fantastically unlikely.

Martin ukuleles are probably the most sought after brand of ukulele around. It’s many ukers’ dream to come across a vintage Martin ukulele at a car boot sale for a tenner. You’ll often see the ukenoscenti throw around the names of different styles of ukulele, so I thought I’d knock together a quick and easy newbie’s guide to telling different styles of Martin apart so you can tell what’s what.

I’m certainly no expert on the subject. The values are just VERY vague guesses and meant as a loose guideline only. If you want full specs and a detailed history this site is a must read. I’d also recommend you take a look at the above video of ukulelezaza playing four different styles of Martin (0, 1, 2, 3).

Martin Style 0

The style 0 Martin is the simplest ukulele they made. The only bit of decoration is the simple ring around the sound hole. The 0 was made in mahogany only. A Style 0 ukulele in top condition might be worth around $800.

Martin Style 1

Style 1’s are very similar to style 0. The quickest way to tell them apart is to look at the fretboard. A Style 1 ukulele will have a double dot at the seventh fret, while a Style 0 will have only one. Also, Style 1 Martins were produced in koa known as (Style 1K) as well as in mahogany (sometimes called 1M but usually just referred to as 1). Koa wood is much lighter than mahogany.

A mahogany style 1 will be worth a little more than the style 0, but a 1k could be worth more than $1,000 in good condition. musicguymic has one for sale at the moment for $1,200.

Martin Style 2

The Style 2 is a little more fancy. You can recognise it immediately by the thick white binding around the body of the uke.

The Style 2 was available in mahogany and also in koa. A mahogany version will take you into four figures, and a 2K should see you well over $2,000 and closer to three if it’s in top notch condition.

Martin Style 3

Style 3 Martins were originally made for professional ukulele players and are, therefore, really fancy-schmancy. There are plenty of distinguishing features: a thick white binding around the soundhole, the distinctive design behind the bridge, the fretboard reaching up to the soundhole with a line down the middle. Value roughly $2,000 for the mahogany and $3,000 or over for an early 3K in top condition.

Martin Style 4

There is, apparently, no such thing. I have no idea why.

Martin Style 5k

If you find one of these in a junk shop, count yourself very lucky. They are the Mac-Daddy and, indeed, the Daddy-Mac of ukuleles. They have the fancy filigree on the headstock and no line down the centre of the fretboard to immediately distinguish them from the style 3. You can see a 5K in action in a number of Brian Hefferan’s videos.

The 5k is very sought after and valuable. There was one on eBay with the quite staggering asking price of $50,000. That strikes me as over-valued. If you find one, you’ll probably get five figures for it. The Antiques Roadshow recently valued one at $10,000 to $12,000. And who could disagree with David Bonsey?

Martin did briefly make a mahogany version of the Style 5. But they’re very rare.

Martin have recently started making Style 5’s again and you can find them for sale on Elderly. They have also made (in Mexico) other modern ukuleles such as the S-O and the HS-O. These tend to be not so highly regarded.

Happy hunting.

There’s no doubt about the highlight of last night’s Brit Awards; “You remember Kenzie? His little face beaming?” The Brit School love-in was getting a bit much. And it’s great to see one band willing to goad the powers that be into cutting their speech short.

Having said that, I don’t have anything against the Brit School. There are a few killer songs that have come out of it, which makes it worth putting up with The Feeling in my book. Foundations is one of the songs that makes it worth putting up with them (and maybe even The Kooks as well).

The chords are dead simple. The tricky part is working out how the hell the lyrics fit around them and adopting an unconvincing cockerney accent.

For the strumming at the start, you can just play each chord once. When it gets going, I like to use down, down, up, up, down. Which sounds like this slow:

And this up to speed:

Slides

Slides are another method of moving between notes without re-picking the string.

Slides are produced by picking one note then sliding along the string to the new note.

Example 1

Slides are tabbed in a similar way to hammer-ons and pull-offs. They are shown with an arch between the two notes but they also have a diagonal line between the notes (an upward sloping line for slides up the neck and a downward sloping line for sliding down).

Shift Slides

Shift slides are slightly different. As well as sliding up, the new note is re-picked. This is tab by removing the arch and just having the diagonal line.

Example 2

In plain text tab, no distinction is made between regular slides and shift slides. They all look like shift slides. You have to listen to the music to decide which is correct.

Slide In/Out

Some slides do not have a definite start point or end point. These are indicated by the same diagonal line but with a number at one end only.

Example 3

In this example, the note slides in ‘from nowhere’ up to the fifth fret. Then the fifth fret is played again and then slides off to nowhere.

Read the rest of the series here: How to Read Ukulele Tab.

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

I got so many people emailing me about Beirut chords and when Saltatory was going to be back up, I decided it would be quicker just to set about tabbing the whole Beirut back catalogue.

Gulag Orkestar (Chords)

The first part of this tune is played very loosely, so it’s tricky to keep up with the chords. The Dm – A – Bb flat move is one that’s common in flamenco playing.

Prenzlaurberg

I couldn’t find lyrics for this song and I haven’t got a blind clue what he’s singing, so you’ll have to go without a chord chart for this one. Luckily, the chords are straightforward. They’re Ebm – Abm – Bb all the way through. The chords aren’t too difficult to play in standard tuning, but they’re made even easier if you tune up half a step or capo at the first fret. That’ll make the chord shapes Dm, Gm, A.

Brandenburg

Dead simple chords: Dm – Gm all the way through. You can jazz it up a little and follow the mandolin by taking your index finger off for the last few strums of the chords (creating a Dsus2 and a Gsus2 respectively).

Postcards from Italy (Chords and Tab)

Mount Wroclai (Idle Days) (Chords)

This one really does require you to use a capo or tune up a fret if you’re going to play in the original key.

Rhineland (Heartland) (Chords)

More of those F and Bb add9 chords that crop up in most of Beirut’s ukulele based songs.

Scenic World (Chords)

The cheesy drum machine cracks me up every time.

Bratislava

Another song with that flamenco move in. The chords are A – Bb all the way through.

The Bunker

The first half of the song is G – Dm7. The second half is Gm – C – F.

The Canals of Our City

Another one with impenetrable lyrics. I’m 96% sure the first few lines are, “Wolves gone over the sea, but nod for me/Watch now, I ho lay na ho had I and no tie, no tie.” The chords make a lot more sense. They are G – Dm throughout.

After the Curtain

A tough one to get sounding right on the uke. Using the chord progression D – Gsus2 – D – Asus4 is about as much sense as I could make out of it.

That’s it for Gulag. I’m working on Flying Club Cup (which should be done by this time next week) and Lon Gisland and others (by the week after). There’s already some of that stuff up on the Beirut chords page.

Shigeto Takahashi – 12th Street Rag (mp3)
Shigeto Takahashi – Lover (mp3)
You can download a bunch more on the mp3 page of his website.

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned Shigeto Takahashi, but he’s been a busy chap since then. He’s played his uke on top of Mt Fuji, at Yosamite, and at Nikko. He’s recorded an album’s worth of material. He’s produced tabs for the Japanese ukulele magazine Rolling Coconuts. He’s been on a mini US tour after Mike DaSilva was so impressed with his playing he invited to perform in Berkley.

And little wonder. Shigeto plays with tremendous verve and has an irresistible charm. His repetoire is largely the traditional ukulele music, but he injects it with a new spirit and vigour.

It’s great to see how successful the ukulele is in Japan. I wish I knew more about what was happening on the Japanese ukulele scene. Maybe I should learn Japanese. How hard can it be?

His website.
His homemade tabs page
His YouTube page.

I’m off to see Juno this week and even if it doesn’t live up to the hype it’ll be worth sticking with it to the end to hear Antsy Pant’s ukulele tune Vampire.

Antsy Pants started life as a collaboration between anti-folker and Moldy Peach Kimya Dawson and twelve year old ukelelist Leo Bear Creek. The project grew to include a whole raft youngsters.

Vampire is sung and uked by Leo and it’s a very cute song. The chords are dead simple.

From what I can make out, Leo plays the ukulele left handed but strung in the right hand way (so the strings are upside down). It got me thinking about it, and it actually makes more sense this way up. D chords and E chords (the bane of uke players) are much easier to play this way round and none of the other main chords are more difficult than the usual way.

Requested by Anika

James Hill and his imaginary friends, Dent May and his Magnificent Ukulele, bolomusic and his two necks and plenty more.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ukulele Review will be launching a competition today. There’ll be three concert Fleas up for grabs along with a whole load of other goodies (including my ebooks – which are, of course, the real draw). Make sure you stay tuned for it.

Uke Thingy has been knocking out ukulele tabs for classic guitar riffs including Day Tripper, Eye of the Tiger and Crazy Train.

Mike has a few new chord sheets up on his ukulele page including more Mountain Goats and No Surprises.

Uke Hunt friend Andy (AKA zym) has start his own blog ilovefizzypop (every time I read that name I start singing Helen Love’s I Love Indie Pop – no bad thing). As well as ukes, ilovefizzypop covers monkeys, games and robots. What more could you want?

A big thanks to Gary for drawing my attention to a two part audio documentary on the uke at The Human Chorus. It charts the ups and downs of the ukulele’s popularity from its introduction in Hawaii up to the 1990s and includes chats with Jim Beloff and Herb Ohta.

NukeDoc has a video showing you how to change the strings on your ukulele. Including using a power-drill to take the wrist work out of all that peg turning.

Buy yourself a handmad ukulele bag from Sugar Kane. (KDUS got there first)

Jake Shimabukuro has a new look website including a page packed with ukulele videos.

Daily Growl is a long term fixture in my feed reader. It usually covers the latest, hippest folkies (which reminds me: listen to Thao Nguyan if you’re into that sort of thing), so it was a very pleasant surprise to see The Fabulous Heftones as the Valentines Day choice.

How did Robert Plant deal with the stresses of the Led Zeppelin reunion? “I just lay in a dark room playing my little ukulele.”

The uke appears briefly amongst the lingerie models in The Raveonettes video for Candy. (Well done to uncle budd for spotting that one).

Art Ukes at Celtic Connections festival. (More pics here).

“Here’s a tip: if you are thinking of buying this ensemble, accessorising the look with a ukulele will make all the difference and help to bring out a certain music-hall je ne sais quoi.” Sound fashion advice from Laura Barton in The Guardian.

A novel solution to loose tuning pegs.

Am I shallow for judging ukuleles almost entirely by how sexy their headstock is?

Clockwise from top left:

Martin 3K: It’s a classic shape. Sharp, sleek and sexy. Been ripped of a million times.

Gibson Mele ukulele Inelegant in comparison.

Fluke: Part of the rip it up and start again approach of the Fluke. One thing most people prefer about friction tuners is they don’t stick out to the side ruining the line of the headstock. But, because it’s so unusual and distinctive, the Fluke gets away with it.

Ukulele Ike plastic ukulele: Good, old fashioned celebrity endorsement. There’s a bit of a mystery as to who made this ukulele. Tiki King (who would have a much better idea than me) says it’s, “probably made by Mastro or Carnival.” I was under the impression that all Maccaferri (Mastro) ukes had a zero fret (which the Ike doesn’t). And the headstock is different to most Carnivals’ rounded design. To me, it looks closest to the Mauna Loa. If anyone has more information on this, I’d love to know.

KoAloha Superconcert: The KoAloha headstock is instantly recognisable. It’s a very modern design. I thought it had a slight air of satanic menace about it, but Ukulele Ghetto pointed out that it’s actually inspired by the Okami’s Christianity. Superconcert is the brunch of ukulele sizes.