One surefire way to get your video featured is to do one of my requests and do it as fantastically as uketreehugger did.
Also this week: a Christmas song from cuddly Japanese super-cuties U900, cuddly backwoods super-cutie Jake Wildwood, cuddly Canadian super-cutie Ukulelezo and plenty of other cuddly super-cuties.
I’m a bit confused about what Washburn are playing at. They used to make ukes under the name ‘Lyon and Healy’, then they syphoned off the ukuleles to their ‘folk instrument’ section Oscar Schmidt. And now they’re selling ukuleles as Washburn Lyon. And they seem to be exactly the same as the Oscar Schmidt ukuleles. If there’s a difference between that uke and the Oscar Schmidt koa, I can’t spot it.
You don’t see many leopard skin Flukes around. I suspect those bleeding-heart liberals don’t think it’s worth killing leopards to make ukuleles. Damn hippies.
I’ve been eying up this National resonator.
Photos: sad man with busted up ukulele, Shirley Temple.
You can pre-order your copy of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s already legendary Proms performance on their website and watch a clip of it here.
New Zealand builds a human ukulele out of 961 kids and set a new world record.
Der Spiegal talks about the London ukulele scene (the entertainingly translated version) with Tricity Vogue, Eleanor from the “BonnyMcGees” and Mighty Ukulele who list the ukulele events in London.
Rolf Harris’s ukulele Christmas song. (Thanks – sort of – to Andy).
Build a Pez dispenser humidifier.
Cherryade’s Christmas album includes Uke Hunt favourites The Bobby McGee (who are ripping me off good and proper) and ‘Allo Darlin’.
On Uker Tabs: Corinne Bailey Rae’s cover of Editors’ Munich, Lust for Life by Girls and The XX – Islands.
Obviously all the models are playing ukulele – another to add to the list is Maxim cover (NSFW) girl Jessica Warner – but you know something’s really fashionable when the luge champions start doing it – Bartt has pictures of Kate Hansen ukeing and lugeing if you need the proof.
MP3s: My Crazy Music Blog and newdust have a couple from Galapaghost. And I recorded a couple myself: Eye of the Tiger (for a trailer for a film about chess-boxing) and The Bar-Kays’ Soul Finger (just for giggles).
In the comments: Ron Hale’s been kicking things off again with his appraisal of Dent May and campness.
Photos: Ukulele player practicing on the seawall, time has told me, Ukulele Girl
Is it a good idea to microwave a ukulele? (Thanks to April in Autumn).
You have to be comfortable with a very high level of camp to play a cowboy Fluke. I think Dent May is the man for that job.
Requested by Fiona.
More Dent May
Meet Me in the Garden (Chords)
Oh, Paris! (Chords)
You Can’t Force a Dance Party (Chords)
Daddy Stovepipe’s bluesy ukulele videos are a favourite of mine and he’s recently tabbed up one of his tunes. So I took the opportunity to throw a few questions at him.
What’s your musical history? How did you come by the uke?
I started playing blues fingerpicking guitar when I was 16 years old; I mostly learned from records and with the help of the Stefan Grossman tablature books.
The reissue label Yazoo, specialised in blues music recorded between 1926-32 (the golden age of country blues) also had an lp by Ukulele Ike. I liked the album but never went any further. It’s only after starting with my Youtube channel, a few years ago, that I came to know uke players like my fellow countrymen Winin’ Boy and Ukulelezaza. Winin’ Boy is one of my subscribers and I always visit their channel to get to know them. Surfing the internet did the rest; your website proved very helpful to get to know the ukulele world. Same goes for your 101 book.
Who are you big musical inspirations?
Mainly the “old blues guys” who recorded in the 20-30ies; men like Lonnie Johnson, Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell, the inevitable Robert Johnson of course, etc.
What are your top tips for playing ukulele blues?
Listening to the music you want to play, is half the battle.
So far I only focused on keys like C and F as you can use the open top-string often and there is a lot of material in those keys. I found that the more jazzy blues by players like Blind Blake or Mississippi John Hurt works best for the ukulele.
Do you have any favourite blues licks?
Bending the 3rd and 4rd fret of the second string, when playing in F comes to mind,or playing the 3rd string fretted at the 3rd fret simultaneously with the open 2nd when playing in C.
How do you approach playing blues on a uke differently from blues on a guitar?
I approach it as a guitar with less strings. My thumb plays a monotonic bass on the 4th string or an alternating bass between strings 4 and 3. With the alternating bass I sometimes get in trouble if the 3rd string is needed for a melody note but then I simply quit the alternating bass pattern.
What I especially like about the ukulele is the re-entrant tuning. The sound of the high 4th string really does it for me.
Are you going to put together more uke tabs?
I sure will.
Subscribe to Daddy Stovepipe’s channel and visit his website.
I’ve loved this tune for many years (after hearing Colin Reid’s version of it) so when I found Penguin Cafe barrister Geoffrey Richardson was a uker I decided I had to find a way to play it on the uke. How hard could it be? Five months later…
The first thing you need to do to play this arrangement is tune the g string up to a (so it’s aCEA). This lets me do one of my favourite things on the uke: play the same note on every string then do a bit of very close harmony. The picking pattern for this section is thumb, index, thumb, middle.
In the main section of the tune I’m picking what was the g string with my thumb, the E string with my index finger and the A string with my middle finger. As for the left hand, I use my ring finger on the E string, middle finger for for A string 4th fret and pinkie for the fifth fret. This makes it easier to slide down for the second phrase.
The middle section of the tune (starting at bar 16) is the one I had most problems with. For the picking I’m using the same finger set-up as the previous section but with the thumb covering the G and C strings.
The strumming section was a late addition to the arrangement – I thought it needed something more forceful to finish it off. As I result, I haven’t got this section nailed down as much, so you might have to feel your own way through this section.
PocketFox – No One Knows (MP3)
Pockets – The Final Countdown (MP3)
Pockets – A Fake (Ukulele Empire) (MP3) via Mmm… Fruity
Me when first seeing this video: Hmmm, kazookeylele. Nice gimmick. We’ll never hear from him again.
You can download a whole pile of his stuff (and as half of PocketFox) on Mmm… Fruity.
I’ve done a whole load of tabs of John Williams tunes (Star Wars, Cantina Band, Olympic Fanfare, Indiana Jones). Yet I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a line up and I regularly get him mixed up with the guitarist of the same name.
This arrangement does miss out a lot of the original. If you can recreate all the swirling strings, you’re a way better player than me. But I have included the two main sections of the piece. The first is a slow waltz and the second a rapid 4/4. The other arrangements I’ve seen miss out the second part – not sure why since it’s much more fun to play. And it’s fairly straight forward – mostly just moving the minor chord shape up and down. The tricky part is the speed so start slowly until you’ve got it under your fingers then build up speed. To give it a bit of variation, I play the first half of this section strumming with my thumb and the second half with my fingers (all down strums in both cases).
After a bit of a male dominated week last week, the girls are back in force
I was originally going to post Via Tanya’s video for Wonder Stranger but the version she did for Shoot the Player. Also this week: Sophie Madeleine doing my second favourite song of hers for a Crypt session (watch the whole session in dazzling HD here), Victoria Vox previewing a song from her next album and plenty more.
Prettiest ukulele this week has to be the Kahiko Concert Flyer.
And ugliest ukes this week have to be the Luna Ukuleles. You have to question the design sensibilities of any company that would use the papyrus font in their logo.
And ukulele I haven’t made my mind up about yet of the week is the Kala Acacia. I haven’t quite come to terms with the open-headstock look and the twirly fret markers are a bit much.
The Kala/EleUke marriage looks to be working well. The new look EleUkes aren’t a whole lot different from the old look but they’re definitely more elegant.
Since I seem to be obsessed with looks this week, cute guy plays ukulele 4 fun.
Receive the latest Uke Hunt posts in your inbox.
