Enough of the fake Ukulele Orchestra, from now on only the real guys; this week covering one of my favourite songs of all time. Also this week: Neutral Uke Hotel (going by The Motion Uke) covering one of their own songs, Uketreehugger (brace yourself for some drunken shouting around the 1:40 mark) and the return of Sebi’s Monkey Island themes and ginormo-bass.

Secret Home Party – See Saw

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Back in Black

The Motion Uke – Winged Bicycle

Little 6ster – I Was Born With The Blues

Tiny Tim Overdrive – Can’t Keep

Katie Herzig – Forevermore

Sebi – Monkey Island: LeChuck’s Theme

UkuleleDav – Cinématographe

Uketreehugger – Single Ladies

Most interesting uke this week is this 1930s electric Rickenbacker ukulele. It has to be a one off. The price and rarity makes it collectors only, but you have to read the eBay description. Interesting, informative and with a yarn in there.

If you happen to be in Honolulu this weekend, the ‘Ukulele Guild of Hawai’i are having their annual exhibition at the Hawaii All-Collectors Show. Sure to have a number of weird and wonderful ukes. Also present: Imperial Storm Troopers.

Beltona resonator – I shall watch and despair as the price on that one rises.

Nice unmarked 20s ukulele.

Not exactly ukulele related but Aardvark Manifesto.

Jim D’Ville asks National Reso-Phonic three questions.

Acilius did such a good review of the UOGB re-releases I don’t think I’ll be able to do one myself.

The Guardian lists John King’s Partita No. 3 as one of the best reworkings of Bach.

Spare a thought for Ukulele Ike.

Maccaferri plastic guitar catalogue.

As a proud Yorkshireman, it’s good to see the Yorkshire/ukulele connection getting recognised: Ralph Shaw spreading the Yorkshire aloha and H.U.G. will take part in Sunday’s Yorkshire Day Symphony.

Familiar voice on the LV ad.

Ukulele lessons help teacher walk again.

MP3s: You have to listen to and download Craig Robertson’s version of I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You.

Photos: UOGB take a dip, find the queen without a king, meff ‘n jojo’s Tiny Instrument Revue, Nice hat, dear (NSFW and you have to be logged in to see it), Seductive like an orangutan

In the comments: Can anyone give Uke-Less-Liv advice on how to manipulate her parents into getting her a uke?

Tallest Man on Earth is probably my favourite act at the moment. So much so I’m considering a rare field-trip schlepping to Salford to watch him play here. So it didn’t take too many requests to get me to tab up this song.

Open-F Tuning

He plays the song in open-C tuning with a capo at the 8th fret. To mimic that you can tune to open F (fCFA) by tuning the g-string down a whole step and the E-string up half a step.

Intro – F-Tuning

Open-F Intro

The chords aren’t exactly the same as he plays on the guitar, but I think these sound about as close as you’re going to get:

Chords – F-Tuning

One extra thing: keep playing the hammer-y on bits from the intro on the F chords in the verse.

Standard Tuning

With a few adjustments you can play the intro in standard tuning (with the capo still on the third fret) without losing much.

Intro Tab – Standard Tuning

Standard Tuning Intro

A few more adjustments to the chords and you can play it like this:

Tallest Man on Earth – King of Spain (Chords)

The chords are named as if the capo wasn’t there. So when you see F you play the F chord shape.

Requested by Erin and Andrew

What You Get

Tab and standard notation intended for high-G tuning (although 13 of them can be played on baritone or low-G according to the book) for

Ahi Wela (which you can download tab for on his site)
All Through the Night
Aloha ‘Oe
Blue ‘Ukulele Blues
Danny Boy
Dona Nobis Pacem
E Ku’u Morning Dew
Galiarde
Gaviotas
Greensleeves
Hilo March
Isa Lei
Kaulana Na Pua
Las Mananitas
Mbube (Wimoweh)
Minuet
Minuet in G
New Spanish Fandango
Over the Rainbow
Planxty Irwin
Pua Sadinia
The Ragged Little Flea
The Southwind
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Wehiwehi ‘Oe

As the title suggests, it’s all fingerpicking.

It comes with a CD with a recording of each arrangement (but no tuning notes).

You get brief guides to reading music and tab (probably not enough if you’re entirely new to them but a decent reference) and fingerpicking; performance notes for each piece and a list of chord inversions.

The Good Stuff

Perfect for Intermediates: I think this is the best book around for intermediate players who are experienced with chords and want to start tackling fingerpicking pieces. Each track has some performance notes that are going to offer you some guidance.

And the tunes are arranged fairly simply.

There’s a lot of crossover between the tunes in this book and those in, the more advanced, John King’s Classical Ukulele. They make for an interesting comparison. Here are the opening bars of Greensleeves arranged in Fingerstyle Solos (at the top) and Classical Ukulele (at the bottom) in the same key.

Mark Nelson’s version is much easier to play but less elegant.

Mbube (aka Wimoweh aka The Lion Sleeps Tonight) and Over the Rainbow: Easily my two favourite arrangements in the book. Over the Rainbow is particularly useful for occasions when someone you want to impress requests it.

FYI: Using Over the Rainbow to impress a potential suitor: acceptable. Using I’m Yours or Hey, Soul Sister to impress a potential suitor: entirely unacceptable. Using Wimoweh to impress a potential suitor: very much encouraged.

The Not So Good Stuff

Lack of Variety: You might have noticed I like to play uptempo tunes. Unfortunately, Fingerstyle Solos for ‘Ukulele is very heavy towards the slow, light tunes. There’s very little fast tempo stuff.

Not always carefully arranged: Some of the position choices in the book completely baffle me. For example, here are the opening notes for Planxty Irwin:

I can’t see any reason for that big jump between 3rd and 8th fret when you could play the C note much more easily on the g or E strings.

I have found myself rearranging a lot of the tunes in the book to suit my own style. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Overall

Definitely a recommended book for people looking to start of fingerpicking. Also a lot of fun to use as a basis for your own arrangements of tunes.

You can get a free arrangement from the book on his site.

Buy it on Amazon

Darren Hanlon – All These Things (Chords)

How adorable is Darren Hanlon in this video? So adorable I want to pinch his cheeks, ruffle his hair and give him 20p for Sherbet Dip.

Good news: Darren’s latest album, I Will Love You At All, (from which this song is off of) has been picked up by Yep Roc Records. Making him label-mates with fellow ukers Peggy Sue.

I’ve written the chords up as they’re played (with barre chords) but they sound perfectly good if you want to use the standard versions.

Suggested Strumming

For most of the song you can use this once for each chord:

But you need to be careful in the bridges and the third line of the chorus (on the F chord). There you can use all down strums.

Twiddly Bit

My favourite bit of the song is this little run using thirds:

Pre-order/buy it on Yep Rock

Requested by MandyMoo, Gillen and Issy.

The rest of the videos are, of course, a feast for the eyes with people who are uniformly radiant as a sunrise made flesh.

Clock Opera – A Piece Of String

Michelle Blades – My Own Home

Lila Burns – Driven

Fred King and May Singhi Breen – Waitin’ Around

Wendell Hall – It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo

Love Leighs – Sparks Fly

Audrey Lighting – Welcome Tokyo

akehawa

The Uke Hunt Podcast is up on iTunes (or just search for ‘uke hunt’ on iTunes) so you can subscribe and have every episode delivered straight to you. If you enjoyed the first episode, I’d be really grateful if you could leave a review on there.

You read all about them in the London News“, now you can watch the “United Kingdom Ukulele Orchestra“. The canned laughter is excruciating. According to the real UOGB site they’ve been giving people the impression they’re the real UOGB. Please do give that video the thumbs down.

A guide to successful street performing.

The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra are doing workshops for beginners and intermediates. Details here (PDF link)

In an idea I intend to steal adapt, Ukulele Pr0n asks what does your ukulele case say about you?

MP3s: Quite a few people were enamoured of Matt Griffo’s narwhal/unicorn song last week. You can get it free on his Bandcamp. The best track on the Amanda Palmer Radiohead EP is the one without any ukulele.

Pictures: Cthulkhelele (via Ukulelia), Giant ukulele 1926. Amanda Palmer has been painting some ukuleles.

Btw. no ‘Ukulele Window Shopping’ this week. I think my UAS is broken.

Bjork – It’s Oh So Quiet (Tab)

Two rarities in this post: me doing an instrumental arrangement of a vocal track and, horror of horrors, me smiling.

It’s no surprise that’s it’s the second one of these that everyone has commented upon. So much so I thought I should skip the tabs and doing a smiling tutorial instead.

I highly recommend watching this video and painstakingly recreating that radiant natural smile of hers whilst applying lashings of Frownies. Try not to get those crow’s feet.

This is my personal choice. So, if you think I’m an idiot, let me know what I’ve left out (or shouldn’t have included) in the comments and why it deserves to be here.

In no particular order:

James Hill – A Flying Leap

He’s got more tasteful and understated with his recent albums but I love this one for its spirit of , “Hey, Mum, look how high I can swing.” There’s an unrelenting enthusiasm to the entire album. Tunes like Uke Talk and Down Rideau Canal blast along like he’s desperate to play every note on the uke in as short a time as possible. He’s got total command of his ukulele and he’s enjoying every second of it.

With highly skilled players of any instrument there’s a tendency to sacrifice enjoyable tunes for technical wizardry but A Flying Leap doesn’t fall into that trap. Even a quite pretentious idea like the One Small Suite for ‘Ukulele is packed with hummable tunes.

James hasn’t made any secret of the fact he’s a bit jaded with the ukulele at the moment and, really, where do you go after an album like this?

Standout Track: Down Rideau Canal
Buy It: On Amazon
Play: Uke Talk, Skipping Stone and Song for Cheri on Dominator
Read: James Hill interview

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Live in London #1 and #2

If you tour for 25 years, you tend to become a pretty good live act. And there’s no doubt that the UOGB are best experienced live (they’re currently up there with Dillinger Escape Plan and AC/DC as my favourite gigs). These two albums pack in all the hits (with the merciful exception of Smells Like Teen Spirit) along with the atmosphere and jokes as old as the band.

As a nerd, what fascinates me about these records are the arrangements. Most uke groups just have most people strumming the same chord while a couple of flash-Harry’s have at it. But their arrangements are crafted.

Standout Track: Just one? Hot Tamales
Buy It: On their website.
Play: Shaft, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Anarchy in the UK, They’re Red Hot.
Read: Will Grove White interview

tUnE-YaRdS – BiRd-BrAiNs

If someone had asked me a few years ago what I’d most like to hear I’d probably have said, “MIA covering Frank Zappa on a ukulele,” and I would be imagining something a lot like tuNE-yArdDS. Connecting TUne-YArds to those to is the masses of ideas they cram in each track and their ability to combine sometimes wildly avant-guard sounds to make something enjoyable, listenable and popular.

Standout Track: Hatari
Buy It: On Amazon
Play: Hatari
Read: UkeToob’s interview with Tune-Yards.

Miss Jess – Jammin’ at Jackson’s

The Luddite part of me thinks every album should be made this way. Write some great songs, get together a bunch of great musicians, sit them around a single mic and give them a day to produce something incredible. Miss Jess followed that tactic and it paid off spectacularly with this record.

Standout Track: Philadelphia
Buy It: On Amazon
Read: Miss Jess interview

The Bobby McGee’s – S’Amuser Com Des Fous

I liked this EP so much I bought it on vinyl despite not having a record player.

Standout Track: When Father Died Ferrets Licked Away the Tears (aka Forever and a Day).
Buy it: On iTunes
Play: Forever and a Day
Read: Bobby McGee’s interview

Jake Shimabukuro – Gently Weeps

Jake Shimabukuro is idolised by many ukers for his individuality and originality. Which is why they try to play like him.

After the effects- and instrument- heavy Dragon, Gently Weeps is much more open and direct. Other instruments don’t get a look in until towards the end (where they make the sound much more cheesy). The album is the perfect showcase for Jake’s ability and contains some captivating performances.

Jake has such an individual and recognisable style it’s a shame that he inspires more people to imitate him than he inspires to find their own style.

Standout track: No one agrees with me on this but my favourite is Grandma’s Groove.
Buy It: On Amazon

Beirut – Gulag Orkestar

“Yeah, I’m in a band. I play guitar. And Billy’s on drums. And Mike on bass.” Oh, piss off.

With all the incredible instruments in the world it baffles me why 95% of bands just stick with the obvious. By the simple expedient of using brass, ukuleles and accordions, Zach Condon makes music far more interesting and captivating than most of his contemporaries.

Standout Track: Elephant Gun.
Buy it: On Amazon
Play: Beirut tabs and chords

Sophie Madeleine – Life, Love, Ukulele

It’s tricky writing songs that are timeless without being retro. It helps to be an impossibly talented songwriter. And that voice. Being something of a white-trash thug myself, I can’t resist the posh voice.

Standout Track: Take Your Love With Me
Buy It: On Bandcamp
Play: I Just Can’t Stop Myself (Writing Love Songs About You), Take Your Love With Me (The Ukulele Song) (Chords), The Knitting Song, You Are My Favourite
Read: Sophie Madeleine interview.