A Beginner's Ukulele Resource Kit

Burning Uke Festival poster by Michele Vanparys

Spot-on lovely work promoting the recently passed Burning Uke in Gent, Belgium (August 25) (artist’s blog and portfolio)

…a ukulele festival for the Gent-ry, with plenty of live music, rarities, open mic, raffle, market en much much more.

(via ShellyRickey)

Ghostly Jack-o’-Lantern Ukuleleist Sketch

‘Tis the season! Idled away a pleasant afternoon sipping Jones coffee(s!!!!) and iPad-doodling Halloween songbook covers. First up is just this simple Jack-o’-lantern ghostie fan strumming her ukulele (sidebar: shortly after moving to the States a friend’s son excitedly carved his first pumpkin, only to tearfully learn that we don’t actually wear them like this).

(via Pizza By The Slice)

Vampire ‘n Uke Bat Sketch

…a quite friendly vampire summons his bat-ukulele pal (yeah, revisiting last year’s vampire bat uke illustration). Big thanks, of course, to Ludlow for suggesting the moon and wing tips (even the name’s fitting — but of course a vampire would wear ‘em).

(via Pizza By The Slice)

Cliff Edwards (Ukulele Ike), illustrated by Paul Andrews

This from a book I wrote (well, my alter ego, Arthur Ravenscrag) called Ode to Uke.  It’s available on the iBookstore and Kindle and has illustrations, songs, and some ramblings.

via www.ukulelebook.co.uk

Hat tip ukuleleporn

Fingering Diagram versus Tablature

Just as pictograms preceded our phonetic written language, every ukester quickly learns to read “fingering diagrams” before learning tabs.

Fingering Diagrams are just pictures of the ukulele’s fretboard, zoomed-in, showing where to place your fingers. They’re awesomely intuitive!

Tablature (aka “tabs”), on the other hand, aren’t immediately obvious, being a hybrid of diagram (the four lines are, in fact, your uke’s four strings) plus written instructions (the column of numbers indicating the fret to press on each string).

Whereas a fingering diagram shows where to place your fingers (which frets to press down) tablature tells you which frets to press.

That’s it — that’s the difference!

The “trick” for either method is to know the orientation: if you can locate the G string you’ll be fine.

For fingering diagrams hold the ukulele away from your body, but facing you — this will place the G string on your left (the A string’s to your right). See top picture.

Now, still holding your uke at arm’s length, rotate it counter-clockwise 90° to a horizontal position — this puts the G string on the bottom. This is how the lines in tablature are drawn; “A” at the top, “G” on the bottom (see bottom picture).

Now all that’s left is jotting down which frets to play, so, using the simple, triangle shaped G chord as our example we’ll begin with the “G” (bottom) string:

• the G string is played “open” (you don’t press any frets at all) so we write “0”
• on the C string we press down the second fret, so we write “2”
• on the E string we press the 3rd fret, so, yup write “3”
• finally, the A string. We need to press the second fret, so, sure, write “2”

Congrats! You can read tablature!

By the way, this is how chords are written, G string to A string, so we wind up saying a G chord is:

0 - 2 - 3 - 2

Why use tabs? Well, it’s a very compact way of writing lots of chords (or single notes), but more on that later.

Jerrold Connors’s toothsome goat hawks Elvis’s sticky uke; ink drawing for his self-published ukulele instruction book.

Sumatra-born, Jerrold was “weaned on a mix of old Warner Brothers Cartoons and French comic books” you’ll find his artwork on Flickr (“It’s Meng!”).

When not making treasure maps for the neighbourhood kids Jerrold can be found writing and drawing for Alligator Boogaloo. Jerrold is also the author of Now, Louie! and Jimini Kokopo’s Ukelele Sing and Strum Fun Book.

(via Sugar Frosted Goodness!: Post Somethin’ Monday: Ukulele-Selling Goat)

Muppet-esque Monster Posing with His Ukulele (Sketch)

Doodling whilst watching the Olympics. Apparently had The Muppet Movie lodged somewhere in my noggin — perhaps it’s Ludlow’s bounce-running like a Muppet, throwing his head back and yelling “yaaaaaaaaay” in a Kermit-y voice every time anyone does well (yes, your life would be much richer if you could see it, and yes, it’s prime Tumblr animated gif fodder, but, no, I’m resisting such a posting for the moment). Sketched with Brushes for iPad.

Of course, you can get in on the act — learn The Rainbow Connection, truly one of best amphibian tunes around, no?

• Watch Mike Lynch’s how-to lesson
• Grab the solo uke tabs from Ukulele Hunt
• My notes about finger plucking the intro (stolen from Ncinaz’s performance)
• Lyrics plus chords from Alligator Boogaloo

Some friends choose this song, played on a cello, in lieu of that traditional wedding march — not a dry eye in the house.

PS. Naturally the sketch makes an awesome iPad wallpaper. duh

(via Pizza By The Slice)