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The Concept of the “Work Ukulele”

I have a work ukulele.

I bought it specifically to keep here at CHNM. It’s a Makala MK-S, a glossy black soprano with a goofy little dolphin bridge. They run less than forty dollars. With some Aquila strings, they really sound pretty good for a super-budget ukulele.

I think having a work uke is a great idea, and anyone who plays ukulele should definitely go out and get one. The work uke has several advantages: it means that you play outside of your typical comfort zone– in my case, this means playing anywhere but my living room, bed room, or my stoop. It also invites others to play. This is my little bit of stealth ukuelele evangelism. People who may have experience with guitars or other stringed instruments will stop by my little area of the lab, pick it up, and play around on it a bit. I’m hoping to get a ukulele convert or two out of this office.

Finally, the ultimate benefit of the work uke is that it’s great for getting things unstuck. When I’m just not able to figure out a problem, a couple verses of Five Foot Two are a great way to jump-start the brain, get things moving again. They say that music has a profound impact on the brain, and some have argued that it enhances creativity. Or maybe it’s just the same “distraction effect” that so many people have experienced, where you get your best ideas when you walk away from a project for a moment, having profound realizations about your work while showering, having a smoke, or making a peanut butter sandwich.

So– uke players of the world– and even non-ukers who may want to learn– go out and get a work ukulele. And tell your boss it’s only making you a more productive, more creative worker!

My "Work Uke"

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(Semi-)Weekly Ukulele Post

I love ukulele orchestras.

The sound of a single uke can be sublimely beautiful or twee and plinking, it’s much more versatile than people give it credit for being. (It seems that Jake Shimabukuro’s helping to change that somewhat, although I still love the uke primarily as a rhythm instrument.)

The sound of a single uke can evoke a lot, and be pretty amazing. But there’s nothing in the world quite like the sound of, say, fifty ukuleles, playing as one. The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain are becoming minor Youtube celebrities, and I can see why. They’re a little stiff and droll for me, though. I have to say, I prefer the raw fun of The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra— who can be heard here in a rousing rendition of Outcast’s “Hey Ya.”

Well, a band that’s already been in pretty frequent rotation on my iTunes just came out with a new song featuring a ukulele orchestra. Needless to say, I’m jazzed.

The band is the Bastard Fairies, a group I often explain to my friends as “LA’s answer to the Dresden Dolls.” Like the Dresden Dolls, they’re a male-female two-piece, heavy on the theatricality, childlike music, and dark themes. But where Amanda Palmer is a bit of the waifish Victorian china doll, the Bastard Fairies’ singer, Yellow Thunder Woman, is the Native American answer to Betty Page. Where the Dolls seem to draw inspiration from Weimar Republic Caberets, the Fairies prefer punk rock, regressed to childhood. Nursery rhymes about sex, death, and beer.

What drew my attention to the Bastard Fairies wasn’t actually their music– it was their delivery system. These guys were ahead of Chris Anderson in the belief that the future of business is free.

The then-unsigned band elected to make their excellent debut album, Momento Mori, freely available for download, and then look for someone to distribute them. A lot of people, myself included, downloaded the album out of sheer curiosity. The album got picked up by Adrenaline Music, the download page went away, and the CD was released with additional tracks. It can be even be purchased now on Amazon. Go pick up a copy– it’s worth it.

Anyway, I’ve been listening a lot to this new uke orchestra Bastard Fairies track.

Allow me to introduce the Bastard Fairies’ cover of Melanie Safka’s “Brand New Key”, featuring the Uncle Lincoln Ukulele Club:

Links:

The Bastard Fairies’ Website
The Bastard Fairies’ Myspace
The Bastard Fairies on last.fm

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I’m a Ukulele Hero!

So I’ve been loving the Kala KA-S Mahogany soprano uke that I bought over Christmas. I’m learning– still not great, but improving. But the ukulele bug has apparently bitten me HARD.

I went to Guitar Center today, just intending to get a strap so that I can play standing up. Instead, I walked out with a strap, and also with a Mitchell MU70 concert uke. It’s quiet– surprisingly, quieter than my soprano. But the sound is really rich. I’m going to have to replace the strings, though– I really prefer the sound and the action of the Worth CM strings on my Kala.

But overall, it’s shiny. It’s new. I like.

A picture of my two ukes, with my roommates’ Les Paul-style Guitar Hero controller:

Ukulele Hero

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Let’s Play Ukulele: A Great Use of Dynamic Website Design

What does the Leisurely Historian do in his leisure time?

Well, given that I’m a grad student, there’s not a whole lot leisure time, to be honest. I spend most of it feeling guilty that I’m not working or reading.

But over winter break, I finally broke down and did something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I bought a ukulele. I love the sound, it’s easy to play, it’s compact, the small neck is easy for my somewhat stubby and ungraceful fingers.

Playing the ukulele isn’t like playing guitar, though. There’s not as many people who play it. I have two friends who even own one– one lives over an hour away, in Baltimore, and the other lives in Texas. Lessons are out, too. When was the last time you looked at a bulletin board and saw someone advertising uke lessons?

So, being the nerd that I am, I turned to the internet. And let me tell you, the net is the friendliest place in the world for a fledgling ukulele player. The ukulele lessons on the newly-launched Ukulele Underground are amazingly well-done. Sheep Entertainment’s Ukulele Chord Finder was a godsend. I especially enjoy that the flash program itself can be downloaded onto your computer, so you don’t have to be online to remember what a D# 7sus4 looks like when you come across it in tablature.

There’s the rub, though– tablature. Most tabs you find online are for guitar, which has a different tuning. So my only recourse has been, when I’m not using the (limited, but still quite impressive in their variety) uke tabs on Ukulele Boogalloo, has been to find the guitar tabs, open up the chord finder, and figure it out from there.

Tom Smith, the author of The Let’s Play Ukulele Songbook, has done ukulele novices everywhere a serious solid, though, with his new site Let’s Play Ukulele. This is an inspired use of dynamic website design.

I haven’t bothered to look under the hood, but from what I can tell, the site mostly works to compile things found elsewhere. Guitar tab sheets– which can be found all over the web– are brought in, and (again, from what I can tell) metadata as to the artist, title, and chords used in each song are attached. Image files of the appropriate ukulele fingering for each chord are appended to the top of the file. One can search by song or artist, of course, but that’s too basic.

The really exciting search ability is to search based on the chords you know, so you can find songs that you can play immediately. The results are then ordered by the number of chords per song, so that the simplest songs come first. It’s rather brilliant, a great tool for people who are trying to learn the instrument.

However, the most exciting part is where Tom goes one step further. On the logic that the easiest songs to play are the ones you know, and know well, the site gives you the ability to put in your last.fm username, and provide you automatically with songs you actually listen to– again, in order of ease of play!

To give you some idea how this works, here’s my results page.

It’s certainly not “scholarly,” but I think this is an excellent example of what digital pedagogy is really capable of. Even getting personalized lessons, I wouldn’t be able to find a teacher who would be able to teach exclusively songs that are to my taste. The ability to search, to remix, to deal with large amounts of data, and to do so in a user-friendly, simple interface– this is really an indication of how digital media can be used to individualize, to tailor what we learn and how, to engage students…

It’s still in alpha, and it can be a little buggy, but this site is great, and really instructive. Even if you have no interest in playing the ukulele (though I’d argue you should reconsider that, as well) you should check it out, and play around with it a bit.

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