Greg Hawkes

When I was in just out of high school I would hear “The Cars” on the radio. I really liked their unique sound. I found a member of “The Cars” playing the ukulele on “Midnight Ukulele Disco” and I really love it. Here’s Greg Hawkes. Enjoy.

Songs from “The Cars”
Moving In Stereo w/Tim Mann
Drive w/Tim Mann
Tonight She Comes

Greg Hawkes Classics
Pennies From Heaven
Greg Hawkes version of old time tune…
Blue Jay Way (G. Harrison)

Kharmachanic

Cover songs with Kharmachanic personality!

Heart Full of Soul (Yardbirds)
Backstabbers (O’Jays)
Beginnings (Chicago)
Temptation Eyes (Grassroots)
Let Your Love Flow (Bellamy Brothers)
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Paul Simon)

Brook Adams

(New videos)
Abbey Road Medley
The Ballad of Larry Craig Idaho Thrillbillies (with Mike DaSilva)

In Other News…

I’m going to be away next week (nowhere exotic). Thanks to modern technology, there will still be posts cropping up but I won’t be replying to emails or comments until I’m back.

See you soon.

Design a logo for the New York Uke Fest.

The ukulele is so easy to learn a chimp could do it.

Bill Tapia’s 100th Birthday Show kicks off a little early.

Ukulele Tonya at the Southern Californian Ukulele Festival.

Howlin’ Hobbit on the ukulele’s trouble-making past.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain on This Morning.

Del Ray’s new album with Britain’s most photographed shed on the cover (at Rye Harbour).

GUGUG on Q Magazine Blog.

Any chance of a self tuning robot ukulele any time soon?

If you’re reading this as soon as I post it, head over to Radio Ulster and listen to Stuart Bailie’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 Uke’. Or you can use listen again if you’re not so quick out of the blocks.

I thought I’d celebrate my 200th post by putting up a song that will make you lose any respect you might have had for me. This is my favourite song at the moment (with Sexy! No, No, No a close second), I can’t get enough of it.

For those not in the UK, Leona Lewis won last years X-Factor (like American Idol but with water fights). She’s always being compared with Whitney or Mariah, but this song is far better than anything they’ve ever done.

UPDATE: Craig Robertson has recorded a cover of Bleeding Love and it’s fantastic. Here it is:

Craig Robertson – Bleeding Love

Buy Bleeding Love

I have to admit to being a little disappointed with Jens Lekman’s latest album, Night Fall Over Kortedala. Not because of the songs but because of the low ukulele content. I admit it, I’ve got a one track mind. But there are a few uke-heavy versions of the songs floating around. You can pick up versions of Your Arms Around Me and You Are The Light on False 45th.

And it’s from that version of Your Arms Around Me that I’ve taken the chords (although they’re the same for the album version). The song is in D-tuning and the chords are straight forward. I’ve written D6 in the tab but he’s actually moving between D6 and Dmaj7 (like D6 but with the B string played at the second fret).

The little solo he plays in the middle goes (a bit like) this:

Lekman adds quite a lot of fancy doodles around these chords. If you want a basic strumming pattern, a good one to go for would be down, down, up, up, down. Here’s that pattern played slowly, then up to speed.

Requested by Ben

Buy Night Falls Over Kortedala

Despite the increasing amount of tab and chords for ukulele on the internet, we still have to rely on guitar chords for most songs. If you’ve done this a lot, you’ll have come across – and possibly confused by – chords that look like this: D/F#. These are known as ‘slash chords’.

On the guitar, it’s almost always the case that the lowest note played is the root note (the note the chord is named after). Slash chords are used to indicate where the lowest note is not the root of the chord. The first part of the slash chord is the chord played and the second part is the lowest note. In the example D/F#, the chord is D and the lowest note is F#. So it could be played like this on guitar:

It’s often not the case on the ukulele that the lowest note is the root. As there are only four strings, we have to take the notes wherever we can find them. So, what do you do on the uke when you come across slash chords?

That depends on what the bass note is. If the bass note is part of the chord, you can ignore it and play the usual chord shape. If it isn’t part of the chord, you’ll have to add it in somewhere.

Here’s a typical guitar chord progression with a few slash chords:

C – C/B – C/A – C/G – G – C

The first slash chord in this sequence is C/B. B is not part of the C chord so you have to add it in (A string second fret).

The same is true with C/A – there is no A in a C chord so add the open A string.

There is, however, a G in the C chord. So at that point you can play the usual C chord. Giving us this progression:

If you’re not sure how chords are made up and what notes they contain, check out How To Play Ukulele Chord Progressions – it’ll give you a real understanding of how chords work and what you can do with them.

Mirah (or ‘Yom Tov’ to her mum) was the first act that I ever got into solely because of the internet after I heard the epic Cold, Cold Water on SixEyes (it’s still available that post if you want to download it – and you do).

Million Miles is markedly less epic, but it does feature a ukulele.

The riff slides around a great deal which makes it tricky to play. All the notes are played with the first finger barred across all the strings. You have to use just the right amount of pressure so your finger is loose enough to slide smoothly but tight enough so you can hear the note.

It’s also a challenge to get the timing right. For example, the slide between bars two and three. You have to hit the fifth fret right on the first beat of the bar – and also play G string at the same time.

If all that’s a little too advanced for you, the chords she plays in the strummed section fit over the whole song.

Requested by Julie

Buy You Think It’s Like This But Really It’s Like This

When Spencer requested this song I thought it was the most ridiculous, inappropriate song to try to play on the ukulele – which is why I had to have a go at working it out (and it gave me an excuse to watch the ‘groovy dancing girl’ video over and over).

The intro is the trickiest part. It’s a quick change between the Bb and the C, so I suggest you use the Bb chord shape and slide it between the two. Then the main chord progression kicks in. Although the chords and lyrics remain pretty much the same throughout the song, they get squeezed as the song goes along so that the words and chords move against each other. It’s quite a nifty trick and suits the theme of the song.

The final part of the song is the only part that is hard to make work on the uke – it’s just bass and vocoder. The chords I’ve put in are at least half invention. So feel free to change them.

If you want to play along with the original you’ll have to tune down a fret to B.

Download Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger on Amazon

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Life on Mars
Wuthering Heights
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Satellite of Love
Should I Stay or Should I Go

The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra

Hey Ya
Take On Me

In Other News…

Those of you highly attuned to this sort of thing will have noticed that Uke Hunt has a new look. If you’re reading by email or on a reader come over and have a look.

There has also been some very scary behind the scenes jiggery-pokery. So if you find something not working as it should, I’d be grateful if you let me know in the comments or by email.

In case you missed Monday’s post, this week I launched a new website, How To Play Ukulele. The site is a companion for Uke Hunt and will have the in depth ukulele knowhow. I’ve written two ebooks so far, How To Play Ukulele Chord Progressions and How To Play Ragtime Ukulele, and you can sign up to the mailing list for discounts and a free six-part introductory course to fingerpicking ukulele.

I’ve been a busy little bunny this week. I’ve also set up the page best.musicalinstrument.ever.com. The Ever Project lets you grab a best/worst/strangest/ugliest etc. name and sets up a page about it. I had to grab best.musicalinstrument.ever.com for the uke. Head over there and rate the page, leave a comment or add a link (to your own site if you want) because they threaten to take away the name if it isn’t developed. If that happened, it might end up in the hands of a banjo player. I sure you don’t want that on your conscience.

Le Soir‘s Ukulele Sessions keep coming. Recent performances include Herman Dune and I’m From Barcelona. This might be your last chance to watch Jeremy Warmsley’s session (which is my favourite thing on all of the internets right now) before it tumbles off the bottom of the page.

Earlier this week, Christina reminded me that I hadn’t mentioned Tom Hodgkinson’s How To Be Free on the blog yet – a terrible oversight. As well as featuring a uke on the cover (in the UK), he states that the ukulele is the cure for boredom and, therefore, the cure for spending your money on useless tat. It’s an inspiring book. It made me even more unemployable than I was before reading it. Although he’s lost it recently and started saying that real life is better than the internet. You’re far freer on the net than you are in real life.

Here’s one guy who knows how to use the uke as a force for good.

I regard myself as a complete novice when it comes to Hawaiian music, so when IanB suggested I did a series of posts on Hawaiian tunes I was a bit reticent. But reading Nerd’s Eye View‘s trip to Hawaii (and particularly her visit to the Ukulele Gallery) has put me in the island mood. So, I had a go at tabbing out Papalina Lahilahi.

The arrangement is just a simple melody with the accompanying chords. If you want to work up a solo version, it’s easy to do. Hawaiian melodies are usually very strongly based on the chords. You can create an arrangement by holding down the chord shapes and strumming the chords while there are no melody notes. Here’s my attempt at it.

Download mp3

According to this article in the New York Times, “In Hawaiian songs, lovemaking is referred to poetically by mentioning mist, spray, rain.” Which makes the line in this song, “Your dainty cheeks/Always damp from sea spray,” sound decidedly icky.