Bluish Coder: ukulele

Playing Blues on the Ukulele

2008-10-21T01:10:00+13:00

Al Woodshed, author of the Ukulele Hunt website, has written an e-book on How to play Blues Ukulele. This is a great book, over 70 pages, and includes many MP3 files playing the examples from the book. Al goes into good depth covering different styles and techniques. It's the most practical book on playing blues that I've read let alone playing for the ukulele.

There are other blues material out there for the ukulele. These include Del Rey's 'Blue Uke' instructional DVD and Rigk Sauer's Learn to play Blues Ukulele. Combined with Al's e-book I think these show that the Ukulele is a great instrument for playing Blues. * Al Woodshed has an audio sample and table of contents of his book at his site. * Rigk Sauer Blues video * Del Rey Blues video

Ukulele Revival

2007-11-29T09:07:00+13:00

There seems to be a bit of a revival in the Ukulele lately. The mainstream press has been picking up articles on it. The San Francisco Chronicle recently had a great article about the 'Jumping Flea' as well.

YouTube has a lot of ukulele related content. Browsing through there you'll see lots of different Ukulele styles. Some of my favorite uke resources are:

ezFolk.com. Ukulele specific forums and lots of tutorials, tabs, and other helpful tips.
Ukulele Hunt. The series of guitar riffs converted to work on the ukulele is excellent.
How to Play Ukulele. The ebooks here helped me a lot and are well worth it. Especially the one on chords. There's also a free series of lessons on fingerpicking.
Ukulele Blues Workshop. A 'teaser' video teaching a blues chord progression. The author has a DVD with more content.
Dominator's Ukulele Tabs. I've been learning the Staten Island Slide from there.
Beatles songs on the Ukulele. This is a well done site. It has a flash application showing the chords on the ukulele as it plays the midi.

There's a lot of other resources on internet about the ukulele. It's a fun instrument to play, only four strings. Even when you play it badly like me you can have fun! Kids especially seem to enjoy the Ukulele sound. My 2 and a half year old nephew likes to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star while I play the melody on the Uke and he seems to enjoy making sounds on his own one as well :-)

Kapono International Ukulele Festival in Auckland this weekend

2007-10-29T14:22:00+13:00

New Zealand's first ukulele festival is being held this weekend in Auckland. kiwiukulele.com has the details. It features international & local artists:

James Hill (Canada)
Matt Heena (USA)
Azo Bell (Australia)
Sione Aleki (Tonga)
Pi'ikea Clark(Hawaii)
Black Strings (Auckland)
Pacific Curls (Auckland)
Bill Sevesi. (New Zealand)
Chuck Upu (Cook Islands)
Big Muffin Serious Band (Waikato)
International Ukulele Orchestra (Wellington)
The Kiwileles (Combined Schools Orchestra)

The festival is at Mount Roskill Intermediate School, Auckland on Saturday, 3rd November. See the schedule for details. There's even a MySpace page dedicated to it.

Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra

2007-06-01T00:29:00+12:00

Mike Riversdale has some photo's from the Thursday lunchtime event where the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra played in Wellington.

I'm a big Ukulele fan personally. Some neat sites for Ukulele information: