When I got my first ukulele, I was completely clueless. This was in those dark, long forgotten days before the internet had been discovered. I didn’t even realise that the strings weren’t supposed to go thickest to thinnest and restrung it.
But you can save yourself from the social disgrace I experienced. I’ve put together a free mini-ebook covering the basics that every first time uke owner needs to know. Here’s what it contains:
Five Things to Know
Five Chords to Learn
Five Patterns to Strum
Five Songs to Play
Five Websites to Visit
Five Things to Get Free
Five Things to Buy
Five Videos to Watch
Five YouTube Channels to Subscribe to
That’s it from me for this year (other than the ebook for new ukers). I’ll be back at the end of January 2019 (the last year before these start making sense as ukulele chords again).
This Frank Loesser song was originally recorded by The Orioles but has become a bit of a ukulele classic since being covered by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt in 2011. I wrote up the chords back then and now time for a tab.
In this post a year ago I mentioned the three albums I was most anticipating this year were from Arctic Monkeys, Kanye West and Zoe Bestel. As it happens, only one of those was able to both release and fabulous album and refrain from claiming slavery was a choice.
Transience is an absolute joy. Every element is beautifully put together and the production is top notch. You have to give it a listen.
Their name may have been hijacked but the singer-songwriter supergroup of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan released a fantastic collection of tunes this year. With the ukulele-heavy title track See You Around providing the highlight.
This category is always the hardest for me to pick a winner in. There are so many talented and inspiring players out there and I learn new stuff and crib ideas from them all the time. I have to give a shoutout to the amazing Brazilian players Aline Kelly, João Tostes and (last year’s winner in this category) Vinícius Vivas who have been putting out consistently great music all year.
But the winner is a late entry from Paul Hemmings who has just started putting up his collection of arrangements of Duke Ellington tunes from an upcoming tab book.
The most nebulous category. I don’t try out enough ukes to know which is actually the best so I go with the one I lust after most and can’t afford. And with a $4k price tag I’m never going to get a Kanile’a 2018 Platinum but it looks and sounds incredible.
It really does seem like I’ve had to do far more tribute posts the last few years than I did in the early days of the blog. This year saw the deaths of Mark E Smith, Dolores O’Riordan, Pete Shelley, Hugh Masakela and (the one I took hardest) Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit. But the biggest loss was Aretha Franklin who has to be the greatest singer of my lifetime. Even in the field of soul music where a vocalist’s ability to convey emotion is so highly (and correctly) valued she stood above everyone.
I still regard myself as too dumb to play jazz properly. But I’m working on it. And I really enjoyed using this tune as a springboard for some soloing. The tune is so strong and airy that it’s very open to (and forgiving of) fretboard meandering.
Having an album of songs all exactly a minute long seems like a cheap gimmick. But Whack World is put together with such a sense of fun and creativity it’s immediately charming. And paired with the 16 minute video of the entire album was my favourite musical experience of 2018.
In tribute to Pete Shelley I had to write up this punk classic.
As much of a punk classic as it is, it doesn’t follow the I-IV-V three-chord belter of most punk songs. It even has a key change in the outro. Some other punk songs also use key changes such as I Wanna Be Sedated and Bad Reputation but they tend to use a I-IV-V progression.
With the song being in the uke-unfriendly key of F#, this arrangement uses a capo at the fourth fret. And making the chords simpler lets you concentrate on tackling the tricky strumming.
Suggested Strumming
Intro and verse: For all the Am – G changes you can play this pattern on the Am followed by one up-down on the G.
d – d – d u d u
d u d u –
Then this twice on the C:
d u – u d – – u
– u – u d – d u
Chorus: For everything until the last line you can use this once per chord:
d – d – d u d u
The last line has some rapid changes:
Bridge: Just down-up over and over.
Outro: The outro is similar to the chorus so you do the rapid G-C strum with the F-Bb change and the chorus strum for Eb-G.
A new tab from David Beckingham. This time he’s covering John Philip Sousa’s The Liberty Bell which, despite being used in the majority of US presidential inaugurations, is still best known as the Monty Python theme tune.
I did my own version of this tune a while back (tab in the Songs of the States ebook) and it’s interesting to compare the two versions. My version is in F while Dave’s is in C. That means he has more space to play with high notes later in the tune but requires a bit of octave switching earlier on (in bar 9).
When I got my first ukulele, I was completely clueless. This was in those dark, long forgotten days before the internet had been discovered. I didn’t even realise that the strings weren’t supposed to go thickest to thinnest and restrung it.
