Category Archives: Music

Tales of the Uke – Part 15

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After performing a couple classical pieces, including one that was submitted for a recital, I’m back to pop music. This time out, it’s the Beatles with a children’s song, Yellow Submarine. The tune was a hit for the band in 1966, reaching number two on the Billboard  Hot 100. Trivia note: It was released at the same time as Eleanor Rigby, on a double-A side single.

Yellow Submarine, like many songs for children, is simple in nature and fairly repetitive. This allows me to toy around with playing the lyrical verse a bit differently each time:

In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed the sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines
So we sailed up to the sun
‘Til we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

The song is fun to play, and in the beginning I add tremolo. This takes a lot more practice to sound just right, but it’s a new concept I’m learning and was encouraged to add for variety:

Yep, it’s a nautical theme, so quite a few of my daughter’s bath toys are hanging around the microphone. She had some questions about this. Ha! A fine and colorful collection of rubber duck, fish, and sea turtle groupies. It’s one of my larger audiences.

Up next, I hope to get a Coldplay song finished before Christmas music starts later in November. The song I’ll do requires a lot of work all over the fretboard and has a famous riff that takes extra effort to play on a string instrument. Good times!

Tales of the Uke – Part 14

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From one classical music piece to another! This time it’s Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, from the play, Peer Gynt. Synopsis: Peer is a boy who loves a girl he can’t marry. He runs off into the mountains but is taken prisoner by trolls who bring him to their king. Eventually he escapes. The music should be instantly recognizable, having been featured in movies, TV, video games, and commercials.

This is a slightly different performance than my previous videos. In late summer I agreed to take part in a virtual recital for the Northwest School of Music, where I’ve studied ukulele for two years. It’s not the same experience as my first recital last Christmas. Instead of going on stage with sweaty palms, racing heart, and acute amnesia on how to play my instrument, it’s just me and a camera in my studio. (And multiple takes!) The video was submitted and will be grouped with other student contributions to be shown at a future date. You, however, get a sneak peek:

I’m moving on to pop songs next, specifically the Beatles with a hit from 1966.

Tales of the Uke – Part 13

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The summer has been busy. I’ve worked on numerous songs and am preparing for a virtual recital in September. The music has become a bit more complicated, and I’ve labored on more than one song at a time, so I’m behind in getting these on YouTube. My last video posting was June!

This is the first classical piece I’ve tackled on the ukulele. It is Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria, which has a fascinating history and was written in 1825. Trevor gave this to me for practicing a couple exercises: reading tablature and moving fingers into chord positions while playing only the single notes of the chord. The song’s arrangement is a little different, and I’m playing an abridged version, but it’s recognizable:

I use my Islander ukulele with the standard reentrant tuning because the lower octave G on my Kala doesn’t work here. Next up, my recital music, which is a classical piece from Edvard Grieg that should be instantly identifiable. It is frequently heard in commercials and on TV shows.