Sudden interest in the grace of the ukulele after seeing a master player rendering Sonny & Cher and Tony Orlando songs at a preschool marshmallow roast the other night. Then baald, who recently lent me his own uke so I can learn a few White Stripes songs to play for Miles, sends me this Jake Shimabukuro piece:
… which makes me weep. Get that idea that the ukulele is an instrument for strumming in the back of a canoe out your head.
Whoah!
I love those chords towards the end, the rhythms he’s pumping out. Awe inspiring.
I’m actually building a Soprano Ukulele right now (from a Stewart-Macdonald kit).
It’s a very underrated family of instruments.
PJ, what a gas to build your own! I just wrote to Steward McDonald to see whether they know of any Bay Area classes available.
That guy is astounding. And his uke has better tone than 95% of the ukes I’ve ever heard. I’m sure that’s partly talent … but also partly that there are a lot of really shitty sounding ukes out there. BTW I think that is a baritone ukelele … it’s bigger than a standard uke.
You really shouldn’t need a class to build one. They’re not that complicated, and the instructions are pretty clear.
Wow. Do all Uke players finger pick?
Les – No, it’s primarily a strummable. But as you can see, it can be done.
All – Grab the MP3s at Duke of Uke. Search and Destroy, Anarchy in the UK, Smells Like Teen Spirit. Damn! (Thanks mnep).
Lindsay Marshall at Bifurcated Rivets often posts ukulele- (and mandolin- and banjo-) related links. Searches for ‘uke’ and ‘uku’ yielded a few you might be interested in….and which I’m just too lazy at the end of a glorious four-day weekend to copy and paste!