I always think the best protest songs are the ones by the people directly affected by the issue. And Pussy Riot’s latest adds weight to that by being the best song by political prisoners since Mzwakhe Mbuli’s Triple B.
I’ve included phonetic lyrics cribbed from this site which also has the English translation.
The strumming starts off dead easy. It’s just down strums. I like to play it with my thumb just to give you a bigger contrast with the loud bits. After that it gets a lot more complicated. My best advice is to go with the flow. Otherwise you can watch his pared down performance and follow that.
Twiddly Bits
On the second pair of Fmaj7-F6 in each line he does this little twiddle:
I haven’t been paying as much attention as usual so this week’s video roundup is a bit shorter than usual. If you’ve seen any videos I should know about leave them in the comments.
But among the videos I did find is one by the ever excellent Wilfried Welti. He’s just released three new e-books from Wilfried Welti. More on those when I’ve had the chance to check them out.
My fingers kept tripping up over this one so I simplified it by removing the lead in note at the end of the second bar. If you’ve got mad skills you can play it like this:
Okay, so this is an intro more than a riff but it warrants inclusion by being great. It’s based on a 12-bar blues riff which is something you don’t hear a lot of in hip hop.
It’s in B so I’ve moved everything up a fret for the uke version.
I included Jay Z twice in the last hip hop post and again in this one. I’m sure this fact will be bragged about in the next song he does about how awesome Jay Z is.
Keep the notes on this one really short by releasing pressure on the strings right after you play them. I’d recommend barring the third fret with your index finger all the way through.
He was kind enough to send me a copy and here’s what I thought of it.
What You Get
Tab and standard notation for all the songs the Juke’n the Uke album and six others.
All but three of the tunes are for low-G ukulele. Each has a short description with hints on playing and fingering (there’s no fingering in the notation itself).
Short Lessons
Introduction to reading tab, blues scale, bottleneck slide, chord inversions for major, minor, 7 and minor 7 chords, transposing.
What you don’t get: A CD.
The Good Stuff
Adaptability
Learn the patterns in this book and you’ll probably be able to cobble together a version of any number of blues and hokum tunes.
There’s a fair amount of blues licks stuff out there. Which is useful. But not so much stuff that will set you up to play full songs. Juke’n the Uke fits there very nicely.
Because so many blues and hokum songs follow a similar pattern the ideas you pick up in the book (and there are plenty) are going to apply across a huge range of songs.
Videos
There are a few video lessons of tracks from the book on Mark’s YouTube channel. All done in a friendly and accessible way and perfect for people who like to learn by video.
Level of Difficulty
The book definitely isn’t for beginners. You have to be fairly confident with fingerpicking before you tackle it. But if you are then there’s a very good range of difficultly. Some stuff you’ll be able to pick up after a couple of runs and some stuff you’ll have to practice hard to get.
Slide Songs
Four of the songs in the book use a bottleneck slide (the type you put your finger through and play with your ukulele upright). They make for a nice bit of variety and something fun to try out.
The Not So Good Stuff
Low-G
All but three of the tabs are for low-G ukulele. The back of the book says they are, “Playable on any ‘ukulele (low G preferred).” Which, I suppose, is true but that doesn’t necessarily mean they sound good.
Here’s a snippet from the first low-G tune Richland Woman Blues played on low-G:
The dissonance between the A and the Bb creates a nice bit of tension in the low-G version (where the notes are nearly an octave apart) but earache in the high-G version (where they’re right next to each other). This sort of thing crops up a number of times in the arrangements. And there’s the fact that sometimes the alternating thumb line doesn’t sound right with the high-G.
So I’d say the book is really only for low-G fans. That’s a deal killer for me.
Gets a Bit Samey
Because many songs in this genre are very alike, a lot of the tabs in the book are quite similar. I counted eight in the key of F. Most of the arrangements involved alternating thumb patterns on the G and C strings with additional notes on the E and A strings.
No CD
I was actually going to put this in the “good stuff” section. I hate CDs! And you can listen to the whole album on Spotify and on Rdio. And he has videos for most of the tabs that aren’t on the album. But these ways are restrictive and I think people might feel a bit short changed not to get a CD.
Tune Order
The books are arranged in terms of difficultly. Which makes sense. But I had wanted to play along with the album. But I was using a PDF of the book. It wouldn’t be as much of a pain to find what you’re looking for if you’re using the real book.
Conclusion
Mark’s books are always well put together and full of ideas. But I wouldn’t recommend everyone dashes out and buys Juke’n the Uke like I would Fingerstyle Solos for ‘Ukulele.
The tunes are arranged for an album first and a tab book second. So it’s not ideal for learning purposes. If it’s an area of music you’re interested in I’d definitely recommend checking out Mark’s album and then grabbing the tab book if you want to play it.
I have a bone to pick with the end of this song: it really annoys me when a song that’s been in a minor key switches to major right at the end. You never hear a major song turning minor right at the end (watch the comments fill up with examples). It’s the worst sort of discrimination in the world by far.
Nevertheless, it’s an excellent song and picked up a fair few requests when I posted the uke version by Sophie Madeleine and Pearl with the Beard.
It’s worth keeping your index finger barred on the third fret to make for easier chord changes. But that does make it tough on the left hand because you’re barring for the whole song. So if it starts feeling sore while you’re practicing take a break.
Suggested Strumming
For the longer strums you can use old faithful:
d – d u – u d –
And for the short ones just two down strums:
d – d –
The tricky bit comes at the end of the choruses. On the C7 do old faithful then two down strums. One down strum each for Db7 and C7. Two down strums each for Fm and Db7. Then back to old faithful for C7.
On the Fm at “things that you do to me” she plays crochet triplets. But old faithful will work fine there if you’re not comfortable with those yet.
It’s not often I repost the same song from the same band. But it’s happened twice this week with Shiny and the Spoon reprising their cover of A-ha and Keston Cobblers’ Club. Also on the list is Scott Avett with a horrible ukulele, Walk off the Earth tossing around a Flea banjolele (head to 2:54 if you only watch their videos for headstock guy) and an instrumental from War Jacket.
I’ve had a lot of despondent messages since Ukulele Dav and Arnaud D’s site disappeared. But now their tabs are back. If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s well worth a visit for tabs of classic ukulele tunes.
After a break of four years, I’ve returned to Last.fm (I realised it’s the only social network I used that I actually liked because it’s about something). Do friend me up and feel free to join my long neglected ukulele group. This week I’ve been mostly listening to Sun Kil Moon, Mary Epworth and Nas.
One of my favourite techniques for rut-busting and expanding my playing is to listen to other instruments and brazenly steal everything. It’s instructive to learn from other weirdly-tuned, four-stringed instruments like the cuatro. But there’s also plenty to be learned from instruments that are completely different.
And it doesn’t get much more different than church bells.
Even so, this is far from the first time bell ringing has cropped up on the blog. I’ve long been fascinated with John King’s campanella technique of playing every consecutive note on a different string and letting the notes ring into each other.
If you thought the ukulele was restrictive, that’s nothing compared to bells. As well as being very restricted in the number of notes, they’re also restricted in the amount of time you can have between rings. Because of the bell’s momentum there needs to be a certain amount of time between rings. That’s why you don’t hear church bells playing tunes.
Instead there’s been the tradition in the UK and elsewhere of “change ringing”.
1. Every bell has to sound once – and only once – in each set.
2. Bells can only move by one position in the order they’re rung.
3. Once you get going you can’t play the bells in the same order twice.
4. You start off and end by repeatedly playing all the bells in descending order – known as a round.
Within these rules it can get very complicated and mathematical.
Bell Ringing Notation
Bells aren’t rung using standard notation but by numbers. And, unlike every other system, number one is the highest and then they’re numbered sequential going down the scale (usually the major scale). For these examples I’m going to use the A major scale so the numbers are:
1 = A
2 = G#
3 = F#
4 = E
So playing them in descending order – a round – you get this:
1. Call ringing: where a conductor calls out what changes are to be made to the order. 2. Method ringing: where the bells are rung according to a certain sequence (ranging from fairly simple to horrendously complicated).
The simplest method is the “Plain Hunt”. This involves pairs of bells switching with each other. So in our example of four notes:
Step 1: You start off playing rounds (1234). Step 2: The first two bells swap places and the last two bells swap places (2143). Step 3: The middle two bells swap places (2413). Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you get back to playing rounds (1234).
Here’s a little study I made in attempt to take the bell ringing ideas and combine them with the strengths of the ukulele. So I’ve kept the ideas of cascading notes ringing into each other, the changing patterns, starting and ending with repetitions of the same sequence.
But I’ve been much looser with the rules, made it more intuitive to play and taken advantage of the greater range of notes (not often you get to say that with the ukulele). And I’ve used a lot of open strings since they ring more than fretting ones.
The notes are all from the C major scale. But I was thinking more in terms of chord shapes. So it starts off with a Cadd9 shape (5435). Then a Dm7 shape (2213). I’ve tabbed the suggested fingerings once for each new shape.
