Competitions, Buy a Ukulele, Ukulele Hero

Technical difficulties abound: It looks like there are a few problems with the RSS feed updating. The emails and the feed itself seem to be fine. If you resubscribe by clicking here, it does return the latest posts (hopefully). Also, there was a problem with the tab and chords page in Internet Explorer and now all the tabs and chords are on one page.

Just one day left to enter buy a ukulele contest. But still plenty of time to enter my Review Your Ukulele competition to win a Kala Pineapple.

There’s still work to do on it, but as of now the Buy a Ukulele section of the site is officially open. It’s been prettified and has a load of reviews of various ukuleles (gosh, a lot of people have Lanikai ukuleles).

If you can’t wait until Friday for your ukulele news fix, you should follow Ukulele Hero. He covers everything ukulele related on the web (and I mean everything).

YouTube had a front page covered in ukulele videos earlier this week, along with Ukulala on the YouTube blog and Aldrine on the LA Times blog.

Join JoCo on stage in NYC and uke-out.

Rush’s Closer to the Heart on Uker Tabs.

MP3s: Frekvens has Thos Henley, Stop Okay Go has Mareva Galanter’s version of Bang, Bang, Hero Hill has The Burning Hell and Popsense has Mirah’s Engine Heart.

UOoGB on the Beeb next Tuesday and Saturday. (Thanks to both Garys for that).

Worst film review ever: “Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

Nancy Sinatra/Mareva/Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Bang Bang

[youtube axlc6KnXBDY]

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s latest album, Precious Little, contains a version of this song (made famous by Nancy Sinatra’s version on the Kill Bill Soundtrack) but they’re not the first to do it on the uke. Former Miss France, Mareva Galanter did a ukulele version on her Ukuyeye album (which combined two of my musical loves that I never thought I’d see together) she also has the only flash website so cool it doesn’t make me run away and look at a blank sheet of paper for half an hour.

Ukulele Boogaloo has the chords and tab for the intro but the way they’ve written up the intro strikes me as crazy. It makes more sense to play it this way:

At the start of the intro bar your index finger across the third fret and leave it there until bar 4. Let as many notes as possible ring into each other – to recreate the sound of the original. The notes in brackets are ‘ghost notes’ i.e. played more softly than the others. These aren’t fully part of the tune but help to support it – it’s your choice whether to play them or not.

Buy Kill Bill Soundtrack US UK

(that must be the first time I’ve anything cheaper in the UK than in the US)