The All Purpose Ukulele Thread (Now with added interest)

[Marty McFly]

I actually got a concert ukulele last week. It's a cheapy cheapy rubbish one, with friction tuning, that I bought because it was effectively being given away free with a hard-case and I was trying not to buy an autoharp (god I want an autoharp). Sounds lovely though, with an almost mandolin quality to it.

I'm all about sitting around doing fuck all while staring at the guitar and zither at the moment, though. I really need to squeeze out some proper ukulele time.

I've seen lots of those on eBum but I cannot stand friction tuners. I have a spare set of decent geared tuners that are easy enough to fit but I'd hate to buy one and modify it only for the headstock to be too wide for the case. on your hard case is it pretty narrow in the neck area? ooh er.

[ozziechef]

I'm stilll hammering away at learning. I can play Somewhere over the rainbow now even though my strummings still a bit off (but is improving).

YMCA is also a good song to play as well as I wanna Be Like You from the Jungle Book.

Ukes rock for sure.

[Jemble Fred]

is anyone watching s8 of scrubs? anyway kate micucci is on it and you might hate her but i think she's adorable

Almost... too adorable? But seeing as I've added her on Twitter, I must love her.

One thing that was bugging me though – Ted was going around bragging about her being his first girlfriend, and I thought when he first appeared he was newly divorced from his wife? Ah well perhaps that's a debate for another not-terribly-popular thread.

[Retinend]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjdmuqPzYwk[/youtube]

just uploaded - my cover of Todd Rundgren's 'I Saw the Light', complete with harmonies and a uke solo.

[Jemble Fred]

Well I'll risk killing the thread by saying that that was jolly good. I have a bit of a Rundgren prejudice, as to me he was just some twat who had that spat with John Lennon in the 70s, but listening to Radio 2 so much, I recognised the song immediately. Could have done with just a little kazoo, but still: top stuff.

[Marty McFly]

a bump with some great news for comedy and ukulele fans everywhere.

together with Mr Woodshed from Ukulele Hunt I present to you, the legendary Stanley Rogers ukulele song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl_QWkvtCXI

if you want to play this along with the video you'll need to detune your uke from GCEA just over half a step. I got it about right by using a chromatic tuner, tuning to GCEA with a capo on the first fret and setting the tuner to 433hz rather than the usual 440. it sounds fine in normal tuning, though. the whole song, other than the bridge bit detailed below, is based on the same pattern, very easy once you pick up the rhythm of it.

Code Select Expand


C                     F
She said leave it til Monday
G     Gsus2  G  C
I said          no

(Gsus2 = 0230)

She said leave it til Tuesday
I said no

She said leave it til the end of the week
I said no go

Cos why put off till tomorrow
What you can do today

  F                          C
I don't want to cause you no sorrow
    D7                      G7
But this I just have to say

   You've got to..
A---------0---2--
E--3-------------
C----------------
G----------------

Have your apocalypse now
Don't leave it til later

Have your apocalypse now
Don't be a procrastinator

I don't want to cause a row
I don't want to lower the tone

So have your apocalypse now
And then we can all go home


[Jemble Fred]

Cor, cheers. Can you find Stutter Rap for me next please?

I have a three-year-old nephew who is completely hooked on dancing, so just recorded a cover of Eddie Cochrane's 'Do You Wanna Dance' for his birthday which may be the best uke cover what I ever done. Am pathetically proud.

[Marty McFly]

Eddie never recorded that song, though! unless you mean his 'C'mon Everybody' ? 'Do You Wanna Dance' was recorded by Bobby Freeman, our old mate Cliff, Bobby Fuller, Del Shannon and probably some others, but definitely no Eddie.

both are great (and easy 3-chord) songs, mind. I'll see what I can do with Stutter Rap..

[Jemble Fred]

I stand corrected. He did record it, but not write it. I got the chords from an Eddie Cochrane site, and he was such a great songwriter, I presumed...

[Blue Jam]

Posting here to announce that I've joined the CaB ukulele club... my friend Carmen offered to teach me how to play on Saturday and I went along with it, thinking "I'm so unmusical, here goes making a complete tit of myself in a London park"... in about an hour (I'm told) I could play both Teenage Kicks and The Killing Moon and now I've got a borrowed uke I can't put down.

Thinking of getting this one as my first uke, I've been told to go for Makala over Maholo and that paying a little extra would be worth it... but really I just want a bright green one:



The dolphin-bridged ones are "popular with children" apparently, that'll do me.

Well you could get her started on Urban Spaceman anyway, it's a piece of piss. Wish her luck!

This is a top tip... just tried it now, thanks Jem

[Marty McFly]

welcome aboard Blue Jam!

I've seen both Mahalos and Makalas in shops for about 20 quid, so it might just be a case of trekking around and playing a few to see which one feels best to you.

also one thing to bear in mind is that even the cheapest ukulele around can be improved vastly by

a) slightly filing down the nut with a thin file of some description so the strings sit lower at the neck end

2) similarly sanding down the bottom of the bridge (that little white plastic/wooden bit at the other end)

d) fitting a good set of strings - Aquilas, for example - and stretching the new strings a hell of a lot for the first few days, every time you play, so they settle nicely and keep (mostly) in tune

the first two steps will give you a lower action, that is the strings will be closer to the fretboard and thus easier for the fingers to press firmly behind the frets, and will most likely improve the intonation as well.

[Jemble Fred]

Or if any of that talk of intonation and filing and whatnot scares you as much as it scares me, having been playing for five years, don't worry about it! ;)

[Blue Jam]

Hit my firt problem: I can't tune the fecking thing. Bloody sure it's the E string I can't get right, but I've been playing round with this thing so long I can no longer tell. Is there a slightly different-sounding one I could use or should I give my ears a rest?

[Jemble Fred]

That there's the best tuner you'll get online. If you pop into any music shop you'll find they're mostly likely to have only four-pipe A-D-F#-B tuners, which is why all bar one of my ukes are in that key. For some reason tuning it that high also makes it stay in tune longer.

Annoyingly, though, most folk tend to have theirs tuned lower, so it makes it harder to jam together.

[Blue Jam]

Thanks Jem... it's definitely the E string, for some reason I seem deaf to that tone, the others are all fine. Think my ears need a rest...

[Blue Jam]

*sigh* I can't quite get it in tune right now, and I was doing so well! How long does it take to master this, and would it be worth buying a proper tuner?

[TotalNightmare]

*sigh* I can't quite get it in tune right now, and I was doing so well! How long does it take to master this, and would it be worth buying a proper tuner?

A simple 'whistle' tuner will be fine for tuning a uke... the main problem for new ukes it that they take a while to settle into their notes.

You will probably have to retune it daily and everytime you use it for a while, until the strings settle on the tension and relax into it. You'll probably notice that it tunes out a lot at first.

Once you get lots of use out of it, it won't be so hard to tune anymore and you'll also find that you'll need to use the tuner less and less too and do it by ear.

[Blue Jam]

Thanks, this one is a borrowed uke and the strings have settled already, I'm just tone deaf!

[Marty McFly]

I've just got one of these little beauties:


http://www.imuso.co.uk/ProductDetail.asp?StockCode=AC00398

it's got a built in piezo sensor, so you can tune the strings via the vibrations when it's clipped on the headstock. very useful in noisy environments.

[Marty McFly]

ever have one of those moments where you're prattling away at something with the TV on in the background, and you hear something that just makes you stop whatever you're doing to listen?

I had one of those.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IqdqeZeQo

just lovely!

[Marty McFly]

What ho, fellows. I feel like I'm talking to myself here, posting the third reply in a row, but it's either that or start another all-purpose ukulele thread.

Anyway, I know there are quite a few Whores in or around Norwich (not the ones in the red light district, this time), so I am posting here because I'm in the process of joining a new ukulele players' club kind of thing. And inviting you to PM me if you're interested in joining too. I think the plan is to meet up once every fortnight for an evening of drinky drinks and uke-strumming.

Hoping I'm still not the only one on CaB uking..

[Jemble Fred]

No, but I live in the other corner of England, otherwise you'd be very welcome here: http://www.myspace.com/ukulelekaraoke

[Jemble Fred]

Ronnie's meet thread has kind of made this all a bit pointless maybe, but on Thursday July 15th from about 4pm there's going to be a bit of a ukulele jam meet-up in Hyde Park – specifically that cool half-stage shell-like bench thing by one of the exits towards Paddington. I'm in town anyway, waiting for Ghost Stories in the evening, so hoping to get as many uke-players as possible to turn up. Also, if enough do show, recording the proceedings for CaB Radio.

All welcome!

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

That was a well timed bump. I was just given a uke by my sister for my birthday, which I was most pleasantly surprised by, as I'd been thinking of getting one (or maybe a mandolin) and she's usually rubbish at getting me presents.

I couldn't make head nor tail of it to start with, as I don't have any pitch pipes or tuning forks and no microphone to plug into my electric tuner. Also I expect/hope I'm not the only person to have been thrown by the bottom string being the thinnest. So for the first few days I made do with ignoring the bottom string and tuning the other three as best I could, which actually worked quite well, but didn't sound very ukulele-ey. I just used that online tuning guide at the top of the page there though and instantly it sounds the way you expect it to. Thing is, having gotten used to my alternative tuning, I might go back to it as it was good for playing nice little folky/bluegrass melodies which (thanks to the uke's miniature proportions) I could play much faster than I can on a guitar. I should possibly just get a mandolin after all, but they're expensive.

[Jemble Fred]

Just don't do what I did and learn GCEA chords on an ADF#B tuning. I've tried to adapt, but I'm still stuck with it – the bass player in my band needs to do complicated maths every time we play a song, due to my utter musical idiocy.

[Bored of Canada]

DESPITE MY BEST JUDGEMENT, I HAVE RESURRECTED THIS.
My country has deemed a Ukulele song the best of the year, beating out sure things Lorde and Get Lucky, and many more.

Vance Joy's Riptide.

It's alright, actually. I heard it earlier on in the year a bit, and it's really quite good, not my favourite track of the year, but I'm posting it for all you fuckin' Ukulele fans, scurrying about like RATS. Something to cheer you up in these dark-times, hiding from the scrutiny you very likely deserve.

Birdie will love it, if she's not already heard it.