My latest tactic in combating UAS (ukulele acquisition syndrome) is to only look at ukuleles at the other side of at least 106.4 million square kilometres of water and which I couldn’t afford short of selling one of my uglier children into slavery. Here a few ukes currently causing me to dribble all over my keyboard.

If you’re on some sort of Brewster’s Millions quest, you might want to add this Lyon and Healy 5K style Koa Shrine ukulele to the fire wood pile for $26,000. But if all your assets are tied up in long-term debentures, you’ll have to settle for the Black Bear replica at a very reasonable $3,360

In a more recognisable shape, there are a couple of Martin tenors.

Or if you find the Lyon and Healy a little too conventional and mundane, you might like a Manta Ray Tahitian ukulele.

While some ukes go for head-turning craziness, this Laughlin 3k soprano modeled after a Martin 3k gets my vote as prettiest ukulele. The maker says it’s, “so close to the original that it is like being able to go back to 1928 and buy a brand new 3k.” Which has to be up there with ‘shoot lil baby Adolf’ on the list of things to do when you invent a time machine.

Le Freak midi

Not all the best riffs come from hairy rockers. This funky disco gem has to be included in any list of great riffs.

Put your curry-stained ‘Disco Sucks’ T-shirt away and grab a white suit. If Slash of Guns ‘n’ Roses can go for this song, so can you.

Note: This arrangement of the riff is in Dm rather than C.

Buy Le Freak

Andante midi

There was a brand new website launched on Monday dedicated to the big daddy of the ukulele world: the baritone uke. Buke already has a healthy collection of baritone ukulele tabs including classical pieces and Beatles tunes. As far as I’m aware, this is the first site solely for baritones.

The baritone seems to be a very hip choice of instrument at the moment and is a favourite of Michael Leviton, Rio En Medio, Josephine Foster and Madame Pamita. I’m looking forward to watching Buke develop.

Even if you’re bari-averse, it’s well worth a visit. It inspired me to make a lil-uke version of Fernando Carulli’s Andante (one of the tabs available on the site). Fernando Carulli was an early 19th Century composer and guitar virtuoso who wrote a large number of etudes (short musical studies). Many etudes for the classical guitar sound too like studies to be fun but I got a kick out of playing this one.

There are a few tricky sections in this arrangement. The first comes in bar 7. Here you need to barre across the fifth fret in order to reach the eighth fret easily but it still leaves a big jump down to the start of bar 8.

The other tricky section is in bars 11 and 12. My first instinct was to fret the pairs of notes using my index and middle or ring finger as in the rest of the piece. However, this makes for a very tricky move to fretting the C string at the second fret. So I’ve suggested different fingering in the tab.

This is repeated at the very end of the piece with a slight variation meaning you have to remove the bar earlier to accomodate the open C string.

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

Satisfaction midi

If you decide to cover (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, you’ll certainly be in good company. It seems like all the world’s coolest musicians have covered this song: Otis Redding, Devo, PJ Harvey and Bjork, Cat Power and Judah Bauer, Amanda Palmer and Stevie Wonder.

Continuing the list of ukulele tracks you can get for free on eMusic. You can read all about how to get them in part one.

Beirut

7. Elephant Gun
8. Postcards From Italy
Indie-uke darling Zach Condon’s first album Gulag Orkestra and the Elephant Gun EP are both available on eMusic. These two tracks are essential listening.Grab the tab for Elephant Gun and Postcards from Italy.

Beirut’s latest album, The Flying Club Cup, will probably show up on eMusic soon after it’s released. Until then, you can content yourselves with this track from their website

Beirut – A Sunday Smile (mp3) via beirutband.com

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

9. Somewhere Over The Rainbow/Wonderful World
10. You Don’t Know Me

Braddah IZ’s cover of Somewhere Over The Rainbow is by far his most popular song. The version on eMusic is the one from his debut album Ka ‘Ano’i – a more reggae-fied version than the most famous version. But my favourite track on the album is his cover of You Don’t Know Me (made famous by Ray Charles). You can pick up the chords for the song here.

John Lithgow

11. You Gotta Have Pep

I don’t think words have been invented that fully describe how much I love this song. Most actors when starting a career in music make morose songs in a desperate attempt to prove that they are 4real. Lithgow (Third Rock From The Sun, Shrek, The World According to Garp) goes in completely the opposite direction and makes outrageously theatrical music with a healthy dash of banjo-uke in the bargain.

Ralph Shaw

12. Puttin’ On The Ritz
It takes some gumption to crown yourself ‘King of the Ukulele’ but he hasn’t had too many people disagree with him.

The Magnetic Fields

13. Absolutely Cuckoo
Don’t listen to the haters, Stephin Merritt has a genius way with a tune. The triple album 69 Love Songs has plenty of uke and non-uke delights. You can pick up the chords and tab to both at Stephin Songs.

The Magnetic Fields tracks aren’t available on eMusic in the UK or, I’m guessing, many places outside the USA.

Stephin Merritt

14. This Little Ukulele
UK eMusers can console themselves with this ode to the ukulele from the soundtrack to Eban and Charley.

On Jen Kwok’s appearance on Midnight Ukulele Disco, she and Jason Tagg were discussing playing classical music on the ukulele. There has been quite a bit of classical music arranged for the uke. John King’s The Classical Ukulele and Wilfried Welti‘s arrangements (you can download his tab here) leap immediately to mind. But they were talking about playing classical music by strumming rather than fingerpicking and I couldn’t think of any. So I decided to take up the challenge myself.

My aim with this was to make the easiest strumming classical piece it’s possible to play on the ukulele. I’ve chosen a very simply tune: Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. There are only two basic chords in the it C and G and the strumming is just a steady up and down. The melody notes are put inside these chords.

You don’t have to do anything to make these notes stand out. Because these are the only notes that are moving the ear picks them out as a melody (particularly with a well known piece like this).

The first part of the tune is very simple. Here it is played slowly:

When the tune moves to G it is a little more difficult to play and requires a bit of fancy little-finger work. Good luck with it.

Apologies for all the hacking and wheezing in the background of these mp3s. I’ve been laid up in bed with a cold all weekend. And apologies to everyone I owe an email or a message to.

Another bumper crop this week. Jake Shimabukuro’s performance at the SF Ukulele Festival, new Taimane clips and a number of videos from a ukulele get together in Dortmund with a whole bunch of Uke Hunt favourites. Not to mention some ukulele juggling.

Watch more clips including Stephin Merritt reworking a kids’ classic and a GUGUG going solo over the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a great couple of weeks for those of us who can’t get enough of the latest comedy ukulele sensation Jen Kwok and her sidekick Uke-icorn. She recorded a show on Midnight Ukulele Disco (check out the full show for the song Desert to the Sea, it’s incredible) and there’s a new edition of the Super Cute Sex Show (vaginas: “not just for tampons.”).

Duane Heilman’s latest Black Bear creation is this stunning soprano harp ukulele. There’s a great article about harp ukes that Ukulelia pointed up and you have to check out the Knutsens and their harp instruments. If you missed out on the harp uke, you could console yourself with a Martin 0 style uke he rebuilt which looks decidedly tasty.

Hot on the heels of the success of Night of 100 Ukes, comes the Sunset of 1000 Ukes: a flash mob singing of Waterloo Sunset in London. Check out their MySpace for more details.

Dirty Bronson have an mp3 of Bishop Allen’s Click Click Click.

In depth ukulele string analysis.

A recent thread on The Parlor Room has uncovered a few people who love the uke so much they feel the need to have one indelibly drawn on their flesh.

I don’t have any clue what’s going on with this page but it has some entertaining ukulele flashes.

I’m sure having a top ten list is going to kick off a bit of a debate. The fact is, I’m making the list up as I go along. So, if you want to influence what gets in there or if you just want to call me an empty headed, bat-faeces speckled dolt for my choices so far. Here’s your chance to let me know what your favourite guitar riffs are.

Warning: If you don’t manage to talk me out of it the list will include The Final Countdown and Girls Aloud.

If you want to be sure not to miss any of the list subscribe to Uke Hunt via RSS or receive updates by email

Gay Bar midi

Are Electric Six still going? Apparently, they released an album last year. I had no idea.

Back in 2003 they were the hottest band in the UK. The singles Danger! High Voltage and Gay Bar shot to the top of the UK chart. Danger! boasted backing vocals from Jack White but Gay Bar had the best guitar riff I’d heard in decades and one of the most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen.

Buy Gay Bar