For those of you jonesing for some uke talk, here’s a list of every ukulele forum I’m aware of:

4th Peg
ezFolk
Flea Market Music
King David Ukulele Station Forum – Francophone.
My Dog Has Flea – a young French forum.
The Uke
UkeClub.nl – In Dutch.
Ukemaker
Uke Surfer (RISA) – In German and English
Ukulele Club – In Chinese
UkeTalk
Ukulele Cosmos
Ukulelekommissionens – In Swedish.
Ukulelenboard – In German.
Ukulelenurkka – Finnish forum (with international section)
Ukulele Underground
UkuleleWorld2

There are also a number of Japanese ukulele boards (translated into English by Google). Here’s a smattering:

NUA
Ukulele Afternoon
Kyushu Ukulele Family

If you know any that I’ve missed, please let me know in the comments.

The big news this week is that Mark ‘JazzUkes’ Occhionero has made public a series of instructional ukulele videos. These are absolutely jam packed with great tips and fancy chord move. You can get the tab for a number of his arrangements at his website.

Get your weekly dose of the best ukulele videos over the fold.
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I’ve started bookmarking ukulele related sites I come across on Uke Hunt’s Tumblr. Mainly for my own reference but there will be plenty of uke related stuff there if you’re interested.

Ukulele warm up exercises on DoctorTrey.

Colorado Ukulele Festival February 9th 2008.

10 steps to ukulele madness from the Ukulele Allstars.

Banjo-lele blog in a language unknown to me.

UkuleleStrummers.com

Minotaur serenades with a ukulele on a sadly unmade t-shirt.

Mix your own samba band (including uke player).

If we’d had a summer this year rather than floods and tornadoes, this would have been the hit of the summer.

The song samples Stand By Me, so you can learn two chord progressions for the price of one. It also makes it well worth learning to play the bass riff mixed in with the chords.

I think the chords and the riff sound even better in D-tuning.

Buy Beautiful Girls

There are many American shows I know only by their parodies on other American shows. The Captain and Tennille, Laverne and Shirley and Gilligan’s Island: I’ve sat, stone-faced, through parodies of them all. So when I was asked to tab out the intro to Gilligan’s Island I was a little reticent. Until I heard it and realised it contained a snippet of one of my favourite tunes to play on the ukulele.

The tune is quite unconventional in that it raises a semitone on each repeat. But my favourite part is the interaction between the lyrics and the music that occurs (even if it is done in a rather obvious way). The challenge is to make these parts stand out from the melody and give each it’s own distinctive flavour.

Buy Favourite TV Theme Tunes

You can get the chords on Alligator Boogaloo but, like my version, you’ll have to capo at the first fret if you want to play along with the original. Also, you’ll have to raise the chords on Boogaloo by a semitone in the second verse.

Requested by James

As they mentioned in their very first ukulele love-in, Bosko and Honey developed their uke playing a long way from other uke players and had never met another uke player before their sojourn to the New York Uke Fest. They’re planning to make up for that by spending most of next year touring the globe, meeting and jamming with other ukers and documenting their travels for YouTube and a DVD.

They’re going to be visiting the east coast of Australia, Japan, the USA, the UK and Europe (which covers everyone who has visited this blog ever apart from one person in Djibouti). So if you want to be one of the strange and exotic animals they observe on their safari – or you fancy jamming with them or putting them up for the night – head over to their website and shoot them an email.

Ukule Flambe – In The Jailhouse Now (mp3) via their website

I knocked up this tab for the intro to In The Jailhouse Now. Some of the positions are different to those Bosko uses.

The chords for the song follow a similar structure – but with a D on the ‘They’ve got him in the jailhouse…“

Earlyguard is a big favourite here at Uke Hunt. I’ve already tabbed his tunes Busy Bee and Blue Smoke. Yesterday he released an album of his ambient and atmospheric tunes Time To Relax which you can download it for free at his MySpace.

Earlyguard’s music is far removed from the ‘rata-tat-tat’ delivery of most ukulele songs. When I asked him about how he developed his style he was typically self-effacing, “I’m not able to play the usual style. My fingers are too slow and my knowledge of the usual playing techniques is still at the very beginning.” His style is very distinctive. It’s the first style I know of that is unique to the electric ukulele (rather than sounding like an amplified acoustic-uke or an electric guitar). All but two of the tracks on Time To Relax were record with his trusty RISA Uke-Solid.

It’s hard to believe but Earlyguard (the name is a translation of his surname, Fruhwacht) only started to play the ukulele at the beginning of this year after commandeering a ukulele he had given his daughter for Christmas. Since then he has produced new tunes in rapid succession. As well as the tunes on this album, you can hear many more on his MySpace and his YouTube channel.

Earlyguard’s influences may not be what you’d expect, “I love music of all styles. The Beatles as well as Metallica for example. I don’t like ‘New Age’ music that much but it’s funny that my own music could be described that way.” Indeed, it was The Beatles that inspired his uke playing, “Watching the beautiful Concert For George tribute on DVD where Paul McCartney played Something on a ukulele – this was the point for me – the wish to play this lovely instrument took over.”

As well as his solo work, Earlyguard is one half of Earlywolf, “Earlywolf is a relationship with WS64 and some friends as guest musicians. It started at Ukulelenboard where I posted a song at the ‘membersound’ section in January. WS liked it very much and asked if we could do some songs together. I recorded many songs in the past years (2004-2005) with my GarageBand software and WS took the single tracks and re-recorded and re-arranged them. His musical skills are extraordinary and so he did a fantastic job I think. On some songs we asked some friends to play a solo or do better vocals than me and it was great fun to work this way.” You can download the resulting album free at earlywolf.com.

I’ve only had Earlyguard’s album for 24 hours but I’m already chilled out and relaxed. I highly recommend you take a little time to relax and head over to his MySpace and download it.

I couldn’t resist arranging this tune for the ukulele. Having suffered through a few debilitating bouts of Neighbours addiction, I knew the tune embarrassingly well. For those of you in the developed world who don’t know, Neighbours is a low quality Australian soap full of questionable storylines, over acting and unnecessary bikinis.

The tune was written by, theme tune legend, Tony Hatch – also responsible for such classics as the Emmerdale Farm and Sportsnight. It has undergone a number of changes (you can read a frighteningly indepth history of the Neighbours theme tune here) which have always failed to bring it up to date – check out the most recent monstrosity.

The tune is so nostalgic that it’s impossible to modernise but so strong that it’s impossible to replace. That’s why my version is based on the old school theme tune. There are plenty of old-time, sentimental chords in this song for you to get your teeth into. If 80’s schlock ever comes back into fashion, this tune will be a goldmine.

Apologies to Americans who have no idea what this post was about. I’ve got the Gilligan’s Island theme coming up for you people.

Download mp3s of all the versions of the theme tune

Buy Neighbours: the Music

The best of the week’s ukulele videos over the fold

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Musicguymic has new KoAloha Sopranino ukuleles. Only nineteen and a half inches long. Aww bless.

San Francisco’s MoCFA is currently holding an exhibition on the Evolution of the Ukulele. It includes a two day ukulele festival featuring Jake Shimabukuro, The Paper Dolls and many others. If you can’t make it, you can still read another excellent article by John King.

Temporarily Distraught has the artwork and tracklisting for the forthcoming Beirut album.

BlipTV has an interview and performance from UOoGB and mad ukulele/bikini skills.

Hipsters/dupes can tune their ukuleles with their iPhones.

BKLYN Song of the Day has an mp3 of Bob Brozman and Rene Lacaille collaboration. Highly recommended.

Fretboard Journal alerts us to the danger that scented plugins pose to the happiness of your instrument.

Flame On! Rock Uke – a death metal ukulele.

Jenny Flame of Ukulele Nation has discovered a family history of ukulele. She was digging around in old family photos when she came across these two amazing photos of her great aunt in the 1940’s. It’s quite clear her great aunt knew how to rock the ukulele and tilted hat look back in the day.