I can’t get enough of the Decemberists’ approach to lyrics. They are full of strange and threatening characters. It’s a mystery to me why murder ballads are dying out – we’re supposed to be living a culture awash with violence. Chimbley Sweep is a little more light-hearted (but with a creepy undertow) – it could be a Mary Poppins song were it not for the blatant euphemisms – but has the usual characters and anachronistic language (‘chimbley sweep’ comes from Martin Chuzzlewit). It also happens to be an excellent strum-along ukulele song.

The original version of this song was recorded by a guitar with a capo on the first fret (as you can see in this video) which puts it almost into uke territory. If you want to play along with the record, you have to tune your uke down half a step to B-tuning (F# B Eb G#) but the chords are named as the familiar C-tuning shapes. Other than that, the chords are the first few you learn.

But I couldn’t help but make things a little tricker on myself. I prefer the sound of this chord progression played when your uke is tuned to C# (or capoed at the 1st fret). The chord shapes are a little more tricky. Try it both ways and see which you prefer.

The Decemberists – Chimbley Sweep (Chords in C# tuning)

Buy Her Majesty US UK

Learn another Decemberists song on Mike’s Ukulele Page.

Read (Decemberist guitarist) Chris Funk’s agony uncle page answering queries such as, “what gift befits a newborn monarch whose father’s untimely death (by your own hand) allowed the succession of such a young heir?” And watch him bravely defend the honour of indie music against Stephen Colbert in a guitar solo challenge.

The 60th Edinburgh Festival Fringe kicked off at the weekend and – amongst the many desperate self-publicists wandering around in lurid, skin tight clothing – are a few ukulele acts.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Sugar Plum Fairy (mp3)
My Baby Does (mp3) via UOGB

The biggest names in the uke world appearing at the festival will be the UOGB who will be appearing at the Assembly for three nights (this Thursday to Saturday) as part of the tour supporting their new album Precious Little.

Stuckey and Murray

Comedy duo who call their music ‘Cognitive Rock’ or ‘Cock’. If that video wasn’t enough to convince you of their cerebral charms, check out the Ukulele Song and download a couple of mp3s on SoundClick.

Appearing at the Underbelly all month.

Liz Bentley

Comedy songs and poetry taking a light-hearted look at bulimia, multiple sclerosis, expressing green breast-milk, public indecency and life as a therapist and a therapee. Her website says she’s willing to smash up a ukulele if enough people want her too. Now that’s just sick and twisted.

Appearing at Just The Tonic all month.

I recently acquired a Fluke and ill-educated people have been confusing it with a balalaika ever since. I’ve given up trying to explain it to them and have learnt to play two Russian sounding tunes on it. The first bit of this video is the tune from Gogol Bordello’s Not A Crime – from a traditional tune called Tromba de Zingari. The second part is a solo version of the Tetris theme.

I’ve tried to retain as much as I could from the duet version – which has made it tricky to play as it shoots around the neck. The trickiest section is bars 5 and 6. Originally I had it tabbed as:

I made it slightly easier for the tab. You can make it easier still by playing it like this:

Which I should have done because I was struggling with this section in the video.

One more hint: in the first bar make sure you fret the A with your third finger so you can play the next few notes more easily.

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

So, so, so many top notch ukulele videos this week.

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Uke Hunt has a MySpace. Friend me up and join the Uke Hunt endorsed Ukulele Nation.

Lyle Ritz and Roy Sakuma chat on NPR (via Ukulelia).

The C-FleaPO & R2-Flea2 Flea ukulele doesn’t exist. But Darth Vader plays uke.

Howlin’ Hobbit is dishing out bi-weekly uke tips.

An ukulele has finally made an appearance in Flight of the Conchords during the song Goodbye Leggy Blonde.

Short lived cartoon character Crazy Ike and His Uke.

A short clip of Aldrine Guerrero in the studio on DoctorTrey and a podcast with him here.

Old Blue Bus has Hawaiian tracks and WFMU’s Beware the Blog has an interview with Tiny Tim (thanks to KDUS).

Another art uke.

Naked ukulele in New York.

Be careful how you type ukulelehunt.com.

The chords for 100 Hawaiian songs.

You’re a fan of an Icelandic psychedelic-folk ukulele trio who released one album in 1964 and promptly split up. They had a stunning uke song that you have to play. The band and their oeuvre are entirely unknown to Google and the massed ranks of Intertubeland. What do you do?

I’ve been asked about this by maduke and there have been discussions about how to work out chords for the ukulele on Ukulele Cosmos and 4th Peg so I thought I’d weigh in with my 5 steps to working out chords.

Step 1. Don’t play your ukulele: At the risk of winning the Ric Olia Award for Pointing Out The Bleeding Obvious, it’s difficult to transcribe a song if you don’t listen to it. Firstly, listen to the structure of the song: where the chords change, where bits are repeated. Try picking out whether chords are major, minor, 7ths.

See if you can recognise a chord progression from a song you know. A huge proportion of songs will include the Louie, Louie chord progression. Not necessarily those chords, but the same relationship between the chords (the I-IV-V progression). If you recognise that progression, you’ll easily be able to work out about half of all songs. Read the rest of this entry »

The Magnetic Fields – If I Were A Rich Man (Chords)

Many of Stephin Merritt’s songs have a strong musical theatre style to them. He has put out an album of showtunes and has said that he wants to write 100 Hollywood musicals. So it’s no great surprise to hear The Magnetic Fields covering a song from Fiddler on the Roof.

The scratchy out of tune uke on this song gave me a few problems transcribing it. I’m fairly sure he’s playing with a capo on the third fret or tuned to Eb (Bb Eb G C), but I’ve written the chords out for standard C-tuning. If you want to simplify the song, feel free to play the open chord positions.

Requested by maduke

Buy Knitting on the Roof US

The Moonlighters – My Blackbirds Are Bluebirds Now (mp3)
The Moonlighters – Hello Heartstring (mp3) via blissblood.com

As much as I enjoyed Bust Magazine’s uku-ladies, there was a glaring omission. Writing about female ukers and not mentioning Bliss Blood is like listing the chalcogens and not mentioning tellurium – unforgivable.

Bliss Blood sings in a dizzying array of retro-groups including The Cantonement Jazz Band and Delta Dreambox along with guest appearances with the likes of Angels of Light. As wonderful as these groups are, the real thrill is seeing her busting out the uke with The Moonlighters or on her lonesome (such as in these recent videos on MUD filmed in front of the tomb of Rustie Lee). Since forming in 1998, they have become something of an NY fixture and they have even, thanks to their foot-long necks and monocles, been immortalised in New Yorker cartoon form.

The Moonlighters recreate the music made in the 20s and 30s by mainland US musicians influenced by Hawaiian music. I find the music created when two cultures mix to be fascinating. Many of the greatest musical genres arose a decade or so after guitars entered a culture (blues, African rhumba and, indeed, Hawaiian music). The mixture of ragtime/early jazz bands and Hawaiian music certainly produced its share of great songs which The Moonlighters perform beautifully. Many of the songs they play are penned by Blood but you wouldn’t notice as they fit in seamlessly.

As well as Blood, at various times Moonlighters have included former Squirrel Nut Zipper Ken Mosher, Henry Bogdan formerly of hardcore metal nutjobs Helmet and Mike Neer.

Download the entire show from which the video comes at mikeneer.com.
Download more Moonlighters tracks and other Bliss Blood projects here.

Buy Hello Heartstring US

Jake Shimabukuro‘s version of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps is deservedly the most popular ukulele video on YouTube. It accounts for three of the top five most viewed videos. Unsurprisingly, this has lead many others to record their version of the tune. Which would be great if they didn’t all try to ape Shimabukuro’s version – even the sections which are obviously improvised. None of these come close to Jake’s. So, in the hope that you’ll use it to come up with your own interpretation, I’ve tabbed out a basic chords and melody arrangement for you to spruce up however you see fit.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps – Bare Bones Version (MIDI)

The first difference you’ll notice between this and the Jake version is the key. I worked this out in the original key of Am on a d-tuned ukulele (so it’s in Gm on a c-tuned uke) whereas Jake’s version is in Cm. Feel free to transpose it into any key you like.

The first way to start making the tune your own is to harmonise the melody. You can use thirds, fifths or any note that you like the sound of from the G minor scale for the first section and G major for the second. For example:

Example 1 (MIDI)

Or you could go all out and start using more unexpected notes:

Example 2 (MIDI)

The simplest way to do this is to use chromatic notes to move between chords (such as in bar 3 of this example). Unexpected notes add a sense of tension and movement to the tune but they have to be used carefully. Be sure to always resolve to a vanilla Gm chord at the end of the phrase or the progression will feel like it’s still moving.

You may want to add a strummed section to the song. There are plenty of chord inversions to choose from. Here are a couple:

In both these examples I’ve used Ebmaj7 for the final chord. This means that three notes are ringing through the chord changes while just one is descending.

My favourite way to arrange a tune is to image it played in a different style. The version I’m working on has a sort of bluegrass banjo style. Here’s the opening section of it:

Example 5 (MIDI)

I hope that this has given you a few ideas for your own arrangement of the piece. I doubt there’ll be a ukulele version of this song that doesn’t owe something to Jake’s version – even my bare bones version borrows elements – but giving it your own twist will lift it above the second-rate Shimabukalikes.

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Head over the fold to watch this week’s best ukulele videos.

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