Friday Links
September 21, 2007
In case you missed the link earlier in the week, Buke is a new website dedicated to the baritone ukulele with many tabs divided into elementary, intermediate and advanced.
Stefans Ukulele is a Swedish uke site (written in Swedish and English) has some handy hints and tips, chordcharts and a very interesting article about taking care of your ukulele.
New York Uke Fest 2008 announced April 3rd – 6th.
Louis A Gaspar ukulele dissected and remade.
Wigan’s Formby statue erected.
Tiki carvings and Tahitian ukuleles on Tiki Central forums. And some very detailed plans for creating a Tahitian ukulele (in French).
The banjo-lele blog I mentioned before is in Czech.
Two new Jake Shimabukuro releases reviewed.
Fernando Carulli – Andante
September 19, 2007
Fernando Carulli – Andante (Tab)
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.
New Ukes: Rio en Medio
June 7, 2007
It was only a matter of time before someone on the freak-folk/naturalismo scene picked up on the ukulele. Last month saw the debut release by baritone ukeist Rio En Medio (aka Danielle Stech Homsy). The album features some of the cream of the movement including Devendra Banhart, Andy Cabic (Vetiver) and David Coulter
David Coulter deserves not just a blog post to himself, but an entire blog. He plays a vast array of instruments including ukulele and a quite terrifying electric saw which you can hear on his MySpace. Recent projects include Musical Supervisor of Damon Albarn’s opera Monkey: Journey to the West and guest appearances with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.
With a friends like that, it’s no wonder Rio En Medio’s makes some beautiful, chilled and trippy folk music.
