Plinky Plonky Pete

I’m really enjoying recording songs on the computer and have just recorded “Tickle My Heart” which is a song written by Joe Brown and Roger Cook. They wanted to write an old-fashioned type of song especially for the ukulele. Please find a pdf file of the music below and I’d recommend you having a go.

Tickle my Heart

On the recording I used my Magic Fluke tenor ukulele (as seen in the above photo) together with my 8-string ukulele for the rhythm track. Then I added the vocal track, followed by the bass track and the percussion track for which I used my stomp box. It’s great fun building up the various tracks and here’s a wav file of the song which I hope you enjoy.

Just for fun I recorded a message to put onto my answerphone. It’s a parody of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” and is called “Answer Machine”. I’ve double tracked the vocals so that it sounds like there’s a whole group of me singing.

Hi there, apologies for not posting recently but I’ve had a mixture of work commitments, hospital visits and a holiday but in the words of the song “I’m All Right Now”.

Recently I bought myself a digital audio interface which is the little red box in the above photo. This means that using suitable software, such as Ableton Live, I’m able to record some songs. Please find below one of my first attempts at being a “one man band”, my version of “Rockin All Over the World”. I started by recording with my 8-string ukulele to give a rhythm track, then added a vocal track, followed by a bass track and finally used a stomp box to give a drum and tambourine track. When I listen to it I’m aware of my mistakes and wish to record it again. However it was done without any trickery playing the tracks straight through. With more experience and practice I should improve – hope you enjoy the song.

Last weekend I attended and thoroughly enjoyed the Grand Northern Ukulele Festival (GNUF) which was held in Huddersfield. There were workshops and the opportunity to join in with a variety of ukulele jams and singalongs. On the main stage there were world-class performances from professional ukulele artists and groups. If you are interested in playing the ukulele I would fully recommend attending next year’s festival which will be held on 10th/12th May 2019.

One of the artists was Petey Mack who had come over from Memphis and he led some ukulele jams. Here’s a video of one of those jams which took place in the bar of the Lawrence Batley Theatre where the Festival is held. It’s interesting to note that Petey Mack’s approach to the ukulele follows his own “kiss” theory. This is “keep it simple and strum” which means make everything as simple as you can and most importantly enjoy yourself. His number one rule is ” Yah gotta have FUN!”

Here’s another number from my recent landmark birthday party. I’m on bass and vocals as we perform our version of Prince’s “Kiss”.

The title of this post is quite true. It’s quite amazing that there are lots of songs, if not hundreds of songs, that you can play by just using four chords on your ukulele. So I expect that you’re wondering just what are those special chords. In fact, they are the four chords mentioned in a previous post (C, Am, F and G7).

If you try strumming through those chords a few times you’ll start to recognise the chord progression of some well-known songs. Then if you change the order slightly you’ll recognise even more songs. This is because the combination chords work well together, so much so that musicians keep coming back to this progression time and time again.

Continue reading ““Quick Start” Guide 6 – playing lots of songs with just 4 chords”

At my recent landmark birthday party I set up a photo booth where the guests were invited to take a photo as a souvenir of the party. It was designed for taking mug shots with various signs being  held up in front of a height chart which was stuck on the wall. Here’s one of me wearing my new sweater with its logo after being charged by the Music Police for playing the ukulele in the wrong key.

Once you’ve mastered playing one chord, you’ll be eager to learn some more chords. As mentioned in a previous post, a chord is essentially a group of notes that are sounded together. Chords which sound good together are grouped into chord families. Such chords are grouped together because each chord is made up of notes from the same scale. For example, the C family of chords are all made up of notes in the C major scale and this is a good place to start. Then once you’re confident with this chord family, you can expand your chord vocabulary by learning a few more chords every week.

Continue reading ““Quick Start” Guide 5 – playing some more chords”

I celebrated a landmark birthday at the weekend and we held a party which included a performance from one of my ukulele bands (The Ukunauts of Stone). We did a set of six songs together and here’s a video of our opening number “Bad Moon Rising” on which I played bass ukulele. I also performed a couple of solo numbers on my tenor ukulele and I’ll post these videos at a later date. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and our set was well received by the guests.

I’ve just returned from seeing Joe Brown in concert at Stafford Gatehouse. He’s an absolute mega musical talent and a very skilled ukulele player. He was great friends with the late George Harrison with whom he used to jam on their ukuleles. Joe ended the show with “I’ll See You In My Dreams”, a song which he also played at the Concert for George Harrison.  Continue reading “Joe Brown concert”