Masterful Hawaiian slack key guitarist Cyril Pahinui has died. In his time at the forefront of Hawaiian music he played with ukulele greats like IZ and Peter Moon.
Thunder has many elements that make it great for a uke adaption: a strong melody, Simple chords in the key of C and some fun solo parts. But it also has that damn squeaky-voice section. That section was the hardest to get right and I’m still not sure it entirely works. There’s a note at the 15th fret in that part. If your uke doesn’t go that high you can replace it with the A-string, 10th fret to get a similar effect.
The piece starts out using thumb and two finger picking for the verse and pre-chorus. Then in switches to mostly strumming to blast out the chorus and then uses a combination of strums, picking and flicks (flicking the index finger upwards to hit the A, E and sometimes C strings).
Last week Weezer surprise-launched the Teal Album comprised entirely of cover songs. The record itself is a bit hit-and-miss but the song choice is top-notch. So I decided to write up riffs (and one solo) from every track on the album.
The Weezer versions stick very close to the originals (so much so you could mistake the intros for the originals). I’ve made a note of where they’ve made any changes below.
The trickiest riff. There’s a very quick switch between the chords and the riff. Which itself meanders in a way that was hard for me to get a handle on. I wrote up chords The Wellies’ version of this way back.
Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World
The Weezer version of this is in the uke-unfriendly key of B. What you can do is move everything down a fret and replace the open C-string with C-string, 2nd fret.
A slight difference in the Weezer version: the B note (E-string, 7th fret) at the end of the second bar of the riff is replaced with an E (A-string, 7th fret).
This is in the key of the Weezer version. Again, they’re half a step lower than the original. So move everything up a fret to play along with the Jackson version.
And a final song which they moved down half a step. That puts it in the awkward key of Ab. I’d recommend tuning down half a step if you really want to play along with the Weezer version.
The fifth season of Steven Universe has just wrapped up with a couple more ukulele tunes prime for a tabbing. Starting with the title song from the penultimate episode.
After that quick picking in the intro, the rest is very straightforward. Making it a good place for beginners to start. I’m using thumb and two finger picking all the way through. But after the intro the thumb doesn’t need to move away from the C-string.
If you don’t want to tackle the picking, here are the chords. They do jump up the neck a few times so take note of the starting fret at the top right of the chord boxes.
Suggested Strumming
You can keep the strumming very simple and just play down-strums all the way through.
Intro: Two on the Cmaj7, two on the C6 and three on the Fmaj7.
Verse: Three down-strums for everything until the last Fmaj7 where you play two lots of three.
Chorus: One set of three down-strums for everything except the Fmaj7 on the second and fourth lines (four sets of three for those) and the Fmaj7 on the last line (two sets of three) and ending on one downstrum on the Fdim7.
When I got my first ukulele, I was completely clueless. This was in those dark, long forgotten days before the internet had been discovered. I didn’t even realise that the strings weren’t supposed to go thickest to thinnest and restrung it.
But you can save yourself from the social disgrace I experienced. I’ve put together a free mini-ebook covering the basics that every first time uke owner needs to know. Here’s what it contains:
Five Things to Know
Five Chords to Learn
Five Patterns to Strum
Five Songs to Play
Five Websites to Visit
Five Things to Get Free
Five Things to Buy
Five Videos to Watch
Five YouTube Channels to Subscribe to
That’s it from me for this year (other than the ebook for new ukers). I’ll be back at the end of January 2019 (the last year before these start making sense as ukulele chords again).
This Frank Loesser song was originally recorded by The Orioles but has become a bit of a ukulele classic since being covered by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt in 2011. I wrote up the chords back then and now time for a tab.
In this post a year ago I mentioned the three albums I was most anticipating this year were from Arctic Monkeys, Kanye West and Zoe Bestel. As it happens, only one of those was able to both release and fabulous album and refrain from claiming slavery was a choice.
Transience is an absolute joy. Every element is beautifully put together and the production is top notch. You have to give it a listen.
Their name may have been hijacked but the singer-songwriter supergroup of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan released a fantastic collection of tunes this year. With the ukulele-heavy title track See You Around providing the highlight.
This category is always the hardest for me to pick a winner in. There are so many talented and inspiring players out there and I learn new stuff and crib ideas from them all the time. I have to give a shoutout to the amazing Brazilian players Aline Kelly, João Tostes and (last year’s winner in this category) Vinícius Vivas who have been putting out consistently great music all year.
But the winner is a late entry from Paul Hemmings who has just started putting up his collection of arrangements of Duke Ellington tunes from an upcoming tab book.
The most nebulous category. I don’t try out enough ukes to know which is actually the best so I go with the one I lust after most and can’t afford. And with a $4k price tag I’m never going to get a Kanile’a 2018 Platinum but it looks and sounds incredible.
It really does seem like I’ve had to do far more tribute posts the last few years than I did in the early days of the blog. This year saw the deaths of Mark E Smith, Dolores O’Riordan, Pete Shelley, Hugh Masakela and (the one I took hardest) Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit. But the biggest loss was Aretha Franklin who has to be the greatest singer of my lifetime. Even in the field of soul music where a vocalist’s ability to convey emotion is so highly (and correctly) valued she stood above everyone.
I still regard myself as too dumb to play jazz properly. But I’m working on it. And I really enjoyed using this tune as a springboard for some soloing. The tune is so strong and airy that it’s very open to (and forgiving of) fretboard meandering.
Having an album of songs all exactly a minute long seems like a cheap gimmick. But Whack World is put together with such a sense of fun and creativity it’s immediately charming. And paired with the 16 minute video of the entire album was my favourite musical experience of 2018.
