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July 4th, 2009
As it's been a long time I actually haven't learned anything (that's what 9-5 jobs do), I thought my brains would be unresponsive as well as my left-hand fingers (damn ring finger still is) but slowly the learning process is kicking again. Here are the chords I can now play by heart without even looking at my hand:
A/A7/Am/Bb/C/Csus4/C7/D/Dm/Em/Em7/E7/Fsh
These are very easy chords to play but I'm quite proud after just a month of practice. The strumming is not easy on the other side and juggling with all '3' (chords, strumming, singing) is a real challenge (how did I ever manage to once be able to read two key charts, coordinate two playing hands and sing at the same time, I don't know!).
The most helpful websites I've found are:
Pineapple's Pete Uke School: http://www.ukeschool.com
Very good online lessons (a shame there are not more), an online tuner, play-along sections and step-by-step instructions
Chordie: www.chordie.net
Chords and tabs with the possibility to select your instrument and transpose the song to different keys. The layout is very appealing however some chords are not very accurate
Ukulele chord finder: http://www.sheep-entertainment.nl/ukulel
Useful to find out what a set of chords sound like. Helps when you're trying to figure out a song by hear
Chords transposer: http://www.logue.net/xp/
One of the greatest tools around. You simply copy and paste the song with the keys and it automatically transposes it to another key
Strumming exercises: http://guitar.about.com/od/freebeginnerl
Chord chart: www.kiwiukulele.co.nz
An excellent chord chart classified in groups (all the time played/sometimes played/hardly ever played) and are finger-numbered
Shortly after I got my ukelele, I also bought a chromatic tuner that turns out to be handy to find keys out in a song. Ukuleles are very touchy little things, they love to get out of tune. The chromatic tuner enables perfect tuning (much better than the still good online tuner above). I also bought a pack of Aquila strings (Italian made!) as they're supposed to improve the sound quite noticeably. The strings are still laying about in a drawer because I can't be bothered changing the strings. My Stagg sounds ok to me for the moment. But I'll give it a try when I can play a bit better.
I also started to track down the songs I liked and wanted to play. Funnily enough, they don't necessarily sound great on a ukelele. They can even be disappointing. However, some pop songs of bands of singers I don't particularly like sound absolutely stunning. Pop songs have another advantage for beginners: They practically all use easy chords like A/C/G/D/F.
So far I gathered the following songs in my songbook and I can play them fairly ok!
- Wish you were here/Pink Floyd (great great song)
- Hung up/Madonna
- Don't speak/No Doubt
- Confide in me/Kylie Minogue
- Can't get you out of my head/Kylie Minogue
- Toxic/Britney Spears
- Everytime/Britney Spears
- Baby one more time/Britney Spears (Travis who did an acoustic cover of it a few years ago opened the way for turning cheesy pop songs into really interesting sounding stuff)
- Honey honey/Abba
- Does your mother know/Abba
- Elisa/Serge Gainsbourg (for my little niece Lisa and the only french song I can bear playing, really tried hard to find anything else but apart from Gainsbourg, it's pathetic)
- Suspicious minds/Elvis Presley
- Cool/Gwen Stefani
- Call the shots/Girls Aloud (god knows how much I dislike girls bands especially that one)
- What goes round/Justin Timberlake (the original is already a gem, the ukulele loves it too)
- What's up/4 Non Blondes (ouch, I know...)
- Lonely Girl/Pink
- Be my baby/Vanessa Paradis
Other songs I'm trying to figure out as no chords are available:
- Ballad of pure thought/Millionaire
- We've had enough/Michael Jackson
- Brendan Benson/Lesson learned
.
So far so good!
This would deserve another entry but I'll stick it in here. Youtube has an audioswap function that allows people to get tracks for free to go along with their videos. This often happens when a person has used a copyrighted track and YT has removed it. One artist had the great idea to let people audioswap therefore videos (even from other artists) are played with HIS songs. It's a very effective advertisement system because people looking for let's say Greenday end up watching a Greenday video with the track of someone else. If they want to buy the track, they're redirected to iTunes...
I understand the concept of copyright however I've always questioned myself whether paying £10/15 for a CD (that'd be the average price in France, UK is a bit luckier with places like Fopp) was really a fair price. I never thought it was. Stripped off the 'box, CD support and booklet', the price drops down at 89p or so on iTunes. What justifies such a price difference? Why people are so offensive towards executives or politicians' salaries when they have no issue purchasing CDs at that price? The music business has always been a complete rip off. In 1984, the average price for a LP was round £8 (so that's 25 years ago!). In the late 80's we were forced into the CD technology at double the price! Now people should ask themselves the right questions about illegal downloads and stop whining. I also think that no matter what, using a copyrighted track on a home-made video is a way of inciting people to buy. Me, the first! Countless times I had forgot about songs then bumped into them by chance on YT only to think "I need to get that!".
I'd say the same for movies. Who ruined the once enjoyable experience of going to the movies? What's all about these places where all you can hear is people eating, crunching, answering their mobile phones and just generally behave like they were at home with no consideration whatsoever for other people in the theatre? These are the reasons why I've become more and more reluctant to go to the movies with the time. I'm probably one of the few idiots who still buys DVDs (Thanks Fopp) because I have no interest to store so much data on my computer and see no enjoyment in watching a bad quality rip off on my tiny screen!