Jake Who?

Last night I met a ukulele god.  Well, I didn't actually meet him, because my hubby wanted to go to the club after the show, but I did see him on stage and have been totally blown away.  His name is Jake Shimabukuro and he is my master now.  In the course of his performance, he managed to make the ukulele sound like a blues guitar, a banjo, a frickin' snare drum, a flamenco guitar and a koto (Japanese 13 string harp).  And also a ukulele.  But, well....an AMAZING ukulele. 

Enough blather!  Here, I'll show you.  Some Rock 'n' Roll:

And the flamenco guitar?

And the banjo?

And the koto?

I could go on, but I'll allow you the pleasure of looking it up for yourself.  Here's his home page.  He's got albums.  Go buy.  Support this man so he will keep doing what he does!!

I lurves the interwebs...

So, I recently got onto Stumble Upon and loaded it with every music love I could find.  Today it gave me an encyclopedia of plucked instruments.  And as I was perusing the lute section I complained to my Dear Husband that the picture of the chitarrone was too small for me to see all the wonderfulness that they described in the article.  So, he did a Google Image Search.  Wow!  For an instrument I'd never heard of, there was a butt load* of pictures on the web.  This is the instrument in question:

Pretty cool, huh?  But wait.  That doesn't really give you a perspective on the instrument.  Allow me to try again.

Yeah.  That instrument is wider than my torso.  I could in no way have ever played it.  Not to mention that my fingers couldn't reach all the way across that fretboard.  But it does have a pretty sound.

Didja notice that there is a tail that he had to sit on to make sure that the instrument would stay in place while he played it?  Pretty damn cool.

And for those who want the details, a chitarrone is a bass lute that was developed in the Renaissance.  Mozart was known to include a chitarrone part for some of his orchestral pieces.  So, now you have a wonderfully useless bit of trivia to spout at people when you want to ensure blank looks. 


*Butt load = two hogsheads

Still limping along...

I've just been entirely too short of funds to go to shows and have been limiting my music purchases.  That last being said...

As you know, I play ukulele (at least I think I've gotten to the point that I can say that.  Still not anywhere near being able to say I've mastered the instrument, though).  So, you'd think I'd have some Hawai'ian music in my vast quantity of music.  Well, to be honest, up until yesterday the only Hawai'ian music I had was the two pieces that were on the Lilo & Stitch soundtrack.  Mostly, when it comes to the uke, I've been concentrating on learning songs that I know, figuring that I'll learn the chords better if I already have an idea what the song should sound like.  So.  Last week I stumbled upon a great mash up of "Don't Worry, Be Happy", "I'm Yours" and a medley of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World".  The later two songs by a gentleman called Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (goes by IZ for some reason).  Having no idea who he was, I hit Wikipedia and found out he was big in Hawai'i. 

Literally.

Sadly, he died young, but in the time he was alive, he recorded a lot of traditional Hawai'ian songs along with covering a few English songs.  He had a beautiful voice. And he played the ukulele.

Yeah, somehow the uke looks bigger when I play it. 

So, now I have one of his albums - Facing Future - and I'll probably be getting all of them, because he's that good.  The following song is from that album, but I can't find anywhere on the album that says who wrote it:

This one makes me want to learn to hula:

The next is probably his most famous recording, mainly because most Americans aren't going to listen to a song if they don't know the language.

So, I suppose I'll leave you with that.  I highly encourage you to go find his music yourself.  It makes me Dance!

Did another CD run

We went to Best Buy with the slim hope that they might have the new Gotye album.  (No, not Goatsy.  That's gross.)  Seeing as he's from New Zealand and not on any of the Clearchannel Stations, we didn't have much hope, but Best Buy has surprised us before.  Not this time, though.  So, instead we picked up Florence and the Machine, Ceremonials and then dug around in the $5 bargain bin.  After much hemming and hawing, I decided to replace two Billy Joel albums that I lost when my record collection died a horrible death - 52nd Street and Glass Houses.  "You May Be Right" from Glass Houses was my first exposure to Billy Joel (at least that I can remember).  I loved the song, so bought the album.  When the whole album turned out to be great I went out and bought 52nd Street and The Stranger.  Still haven't replaced the latter, but I'll get around to it eventually.

Ceremonials turned out to be just as good as I was hoping.  I really like every song on the album.  I love the fact that Florence doesn't have a cookie cutter Pop Princess voice. She puts a lot of emotion into her vocals.   Florence and the Machine have definitely earned all the nominations and awards they have gathered with this album.  Hopefully, they will be able to maintain the quality of this album through their career. 

Lost another Songbird

Davy Jones was 66 when he died of a heart attack today.  I know, I know - he wasn't the most talented musician on the planet.  As far as I know the only instrument he played was maracas (but he could play 4 at one time, by golly!).  He did not have the vocal talents of Whitney Houston and he did not have the writing talents of Amy Winehouse.  He broke no barriers and made no huge changes in the world.  However, he affected me more than the two ladies listed by a longshot.  Why, you ask? 

Rock and Roll.

I grew up in a house that listened to Country Western Music with the odd bit of Mexican music when Mom pulled out her records.  It was not a very musically varied place when you had access to a few radio stations and pretty much nothing on TV (MTV didn't come out until I was in High School and I didn't get cable until my 3rd year of college).   I still like C&W, there is a lot of good music in that genre.  But it was The Monkees and The Banana Splits that introduced me to Rock and Roll.  Mind you it was a very fluffy, family friendly type of rock, but it still wasn't what I was used to listening to.  It was the gateway drug for a 10 year old chick from the country to expanding her horizons music-wise.  I still like The Monkees and have several of their song on my iPod.  I may have to hunt down Davy's last album (came out in 2009) to see if his music ever matured or if he just stuck to what he knew he was good at. 

So, Good-bye, Davy Jones!  You made me a Believer

So there I was...

messing about with my ukulele.  I flipped through my sheet music and stopped at Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" because a) I like the song and b) I hadn't tried to play it yet.  Except when I started, I suddenly froze up on tempo and chording.  Well, what I usually do when that happens is pull out the iPod and play the song, except that I don't have this song.  Instead I drag uke and music to the office and pull up YouTube.  And this little guy pops up:

Isn't he adorable?!  He has no idea of the words, but, by golly, he's got the chords down pat.  I love this.  Make the music and don't worry if you have it right, just enjoy yourself.  And he really looks to be having a blast. 

I did finally pull up the original version and work out my tempo issues. I'm still not sure if I'm even half as good as our little genius in the video, though.

Well, I piddled around with my ukulele specific sheet music and then got to wondering what all music I had on the shelf that might have chords.  Holy crap, I've got a lot of sheet music.  Most of it is from when I regularly played piano, so there's a lot of 70s and early 80s music.  Happily, a lot of the piano music came with guitar chords as well.  And since chords are chords, I just have to look up any I don't know on my uke chart and hope they're something I can learn.  Among the gems I found were 2 books of early 80s pop music, a Simon & Garfunkel book which I have no idea where it came from, a Glenn Campbell book that I think I got from my mom, and - joy of joys! - the complete sheet music from the original Muppet Movie.  I'm thinking "Rainbow Connection" and "Going to Go Back There Someday" will be at the top of my list for my next practice session.

Because OK Go are geniuses...

Also, there's ukulele...