When I mentioned bamboo ukuleles before, there was a bit of discussion about whether you should care about the environmental impact of your uke and it got me thinking about the issue.

And, of course, there’s the ever increasing selection of woods there are to choose from.

Neither issue I’m particularly knowledgeable on. So I threw a few questions at Evan from House and Mill Tonewoods in hopes of enlightenment.

Can you tell us a bit about House and Mill?

We are a brand new company dedicated to providing quality woods to builders of Ukuleles. We know that Ukuleles are capable of being wonderful instruments when made well, of excellent woods and we want to establish ourselves as the suppliers of the very best of those classic instrument woods, spruce, cedar and maple. We will also offer a limited list of accessories such as a great capo, colored strings, and other ukulele related items that meet our standards for quality and uniqueness.

We are a family organization as our website relates, three generations of folks who love and respect wood and music, and ukuleles.

Why have you chosen to focus on ukuleles?

Firstly because we are passionate ukulele makers and players. We think this great instrument is being largely ignored by most of the purveyors of luthier supplies. Our own uke building led us to a major supplier of spruce, cedar and maple to the nations largest guitar makers. We discovered that a great amount of perfect wood, too short for guitars but perfect for ukuleles was simply being wasted. Saddened by the waste of this precious resource we saw an opportunity that would advance the ukulele cause and create a business opportunity for us.

Your wood is responsibly sourced, what does that mean. Why is it important that ukulele woods are responsibly sourced?

The wood we sell, despite it’s excellence, would be discarded and burned if we did not rescue it in the shorter ukulele lengths. The old growth Spruce and Cedar used in top grade acoustic instruments is a precious resource that must not be wasted. Much of the worlds supply is already gone, and we must use what is left responsibly. One can make the argument that no more of the old growth forests should be cut. Our point is that if any is to be cut, it must not be wasted.

What should people consider when choosing wood for their ukulele?

Ukulele tonewood should be perfectly quartersawn, stiff, and tight grained, and properly dry. While color and figure are important aesthetic considerations, only the first mentioned attributes are essential to tone and construction integrity. We firmly believe that the beauty of the wood is also very important to a player’s enjoyment of their instrument. Early in our building experience we realized that if you are to put the hundreds of hours into building a fine ukulele it is silly to do so without beautiful wood. As a result, we sell and stock only highly figured maple for backs and sides, and the best, unblemished and fine grained spruce and cedar for tops. The goal is to create an instrument of great beauty that has a lovely tone.

The immortal violin makers of Cremona, Nicolo Amati, Antonio Stradivari and Guarnari del Gesu learned in the 1600’s to make their instruments of maple, spruce. Their violins remain the worlds best. The great American guitar builders of the 1950s, John D’Angelico and James D’Aquisto built their classics of Maple and Spruce. We build our ukuleles of Maple and Spruce, and those are the woods we sell.

Visit House and Mill’s website and watch House and Mill on YouTube.

More details coming out about Eddie Vedder’s ukulele album. The latest is that it’s going to be called Ukulele Songs and will be out on the 30th May. It’ll feature a duet with Glen Hansard and a version of Tonight You Belong to Me with Cat Power. And songs will include Goodbye, Can’t Keep and the first single from it: Longing to Belong.

Don’t be surprised if I end up tabbing them all. Pearl Jam were 1/3 of the reason I got into music as a kid.

Suggested Strumming

The main strum is all downs. But you don’t hit every string, every strum. You start by hitting E and A, then g and C twice. Repeat that. Then EA once and gC once.

Later in the song he adds a d-u-d-u to it.

Twiddly Bits

This time around I’m experimenting with including the twiddly bits in the pdf.

First main twiddly bit is the solo. It’s not too tricky and you can follow the chord shapes (if your eyesight is good) or the tab. Feel free to vary it up. He does.

Dear about a million people,

Yes, I’ve heard Taimane’s Toccata. I featured it here and this was the reaction.

Hugs and smooches,

Al

P.S. Taimane’s new one is in this week’s round-up along with Te Ava Piti from Raiatea, The Cotton Dons (one of whom inherited a love a uke from his granddad Joe Brown) and more besides.

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Eddie Vedder’s much rumoured ukulele album is to be called Uke Songs and you can listen to the first single, Longing to Belong, here.

Ukulele for Dummies is available for pre-order on Amazon US.

If you haven’t picked up your copy of Bosko and Honey’s Ukulele Safari CD, now’s the time to buy it. All proceeds will go to the Red Cross Australia Japan & Pacific Disaster 2011 Appeal.

Patsy Monteleone has been putting out some wonderful stuff in his 100 songs project. I recommend you download them all (click on the song in the sidebar then scroll to the middle of the box)

Craig Robertson has a new CD Perfect Wife. Evidently a title not inspired by George Formby’s wife.

Comedy ukers Jen Kwok, Ben Lerman and Jessica Delfino have got together to perform an all-music comedy showcase in NYC.

I’ve added a few more luthiers to the review section including J C Clark who made this lovely soprano Shrine copy, Eddie Vedder and Kimo Hussey favourite DeVine, and Lichty who answered a few questions for me.

What pi sounds like on ukulele.

For some reason, the number of requests has exploded recently. Unfortunately, I get way more requests than I can do. I’m always happy to receive suggestions and requests from regular commenters. If that’s not you, there’s a fair chance I’ll just delete your email. To improve your chances follow these suggestions.

Photos: Rhoda, 1919, having made straps obsolete Amanda Palmer turns on foot-stools.

Quite tricky to play this one. The first section is made up of campanella bits on G and Am (5450) mixed with short runs. For the runs in both sections it’s worth using pinkie, ring and middle for fretting. It’s a stretch in some places much makes it easier to set up for the chords.

My picking in this video is, I’ll admit, a mess. I use my thumb, index and middle and move them between strings. It’d be better to allocate one finger to each string in the campanella parts. Also, I used just my middle finger to pick the runs. It’d make it easier to speed up if you used index, middle, index in a running-man motion.

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

Back in 2008 when I first did an Irish tabs post I was wondering why there wasn’t any ukulele scene in Ireland. But I’m proud that post helped kick off Ireland’s ukulele group and festival and there seems to be a lot of ukulele interest over there now.

If you’re looking for some Irish music to play for St Patrick’s, here are a few ideas.

Uke Hunt Stuff

Whiskey in the Jar/Kilgary Mountain
The Pogues – Streams of Whiskey
The Pogues – Irish Rover
Father Ted Theme
The Pogues – Fairytale of New York
Van Morrison – Keep It Simple
John King – Larry O’Gaff
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova – Falling Slowly
U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday (Riff) (Tab)
The Pogues – Fiesta

Other Stuff

Ken Middleton has a Celtic ukulele ebook and a few free Irish tune tabs.

Akulele has a number of Irish tunes: Sally Gardens, Drowsy Maggie, Another Jig Will Do, Kesh Jig and The Star of County Down.

The site Irish Ukulele has tab for The Battle of Aughrim and their own version of Another Jig Will Do, as well as a couple of other tunes.

And for your listening pleasure: Ireland on Ukulele Languages

If you know of anything else, drop it in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.

Time again for a week of Irishness starting, as always, with some St Shane.

Another dead simple one with just three chords. Since the instrumental bits are quite long, I’ve included bar lines. Which reminds me, I should probably do a post about bars some time. I’ve written up the full version, the video has a shortened intro.

Suggested Strumming

You can use this strum all the way through (except the stoppy bits):

d – d – d u d u

You can take it at a steady pace like this:

Slow strum

Or you can get into the spirit of the song and go double time like this:

Fast Strum

Twiddly Bits

Here’s the instrumental bits (and the intro is a shortened version of this).

Instrumental section

Donate to British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal

Donate to American Red Cross

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

In honour of the weather warming up a bit here (with apologies to those places under snow) a couple of summery tunes this week from Hellogoodbye and Shugo Tokumaru.

Highlight of the week is the video of Mel Torme busting out the bari that Shelley discovered. And there’s plenty more jazz this week from Sarah Maisel, Honey and the Baldies and Eugene singing a song that could be my theme tune.

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I’ve always associated coconut ukuleles with tacky tourist ukes. But here’s a Cox’s Cocolele from 1937; the year it was invented. You can see the patent here. Turns out old Coxy didn’t intend them as a cheap souvenir but a vast improvement over the heretofore crappy sounding ukulele.

Heretofore ukeleles have been made of mahogany, ohia, monkey-pod or redwood and, in spite of the exhaustive efforts made, fine tonal qualities have not been obtained.

It is therefore the principle object of my invention to produce a ukelele having fine tone, and I accomplish this by constructing a substantial portion of the main body of the ukelele from cocoanut shells.

Strange how that didn’t work out.

Sedlacek Jazz Ukulele

I was quite interested in the Blackbird Carbon Fiber ukulele being a uke impervious to heat and moisture (even if it doesn’t sound that great). But the $1,300 price tag makes it much less appealing.