#ukulele

Music tagged "ukulele" on Bandcamp, should you be in a shopping or listening mood: https://bandcamp.com/discover/ukulele #Music #Ukulele #Bandcamp #BandcampFriday

I'm THIS happy to let you know that my new album is now available on Bandcamp. https://choan.bandcamp.com/album/less-is-enough Less Is Enough compiles eight new recordings of original tunes for solo #ukulele, of minimalistic nature, written along the last five years. I hope you'll like it! Also: it's #bandcampFriday, which means that if you acquire music today in Bandcamp, artists get a bigger part of what you pay.

That’s the spirit! Thomas Benjamin Wild is working on a new album with a very deliberate theme. #Ukulele #Politics #Protest

Charlotte Pelgen: "Love (Your Spell is Everywhere) – 1929" https://youtube.com/shorts/mDzTIFPbTeA #Ukulele #1920s #PleaseRotate

Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq: “Let’s Put the King in a Nice Little Flat” https://youtu.be/bHn3jeEEqGc #Ukulele

“Middle English edition”? Do you really mean that, Amazon? Ich doute nat that Chaucer wolde be wel plesed. #Language #Ukulele #MiddleEnglish

Honestly, it's a little crazy how difficult I have found it to make a playable (to me) version of this song. Most ukulele chord sheets for it leave out the introductory verse, but trying to piece together a full version from someone else's chorus with my attempts at writing up the verse has been quite a struggle. I *think* I might have got there at last. Even so, this won't be anything like the way that Cliff Edwards played it: he tended to use what would be chord shapes from the key of F (if he were playing a gCEA ukulele) but on a uke with a different tuning to make the end result fit the key he needed. I'm simply not yet knowledgeable enough about music theory to get that to work here, so this version is in C. The tune itself is an absolute classic and does, as the title says, have a fascinating rhythm to it (one of the reasons I've found it so hard to play). The most famous recording may be by Fred Astaire and George Gershwin himself, but I don't think it's ever been performed better than by Cliff Edwards, who introduced the song on Broadway with Astaire in the 1924 musical "Lady, Be Good": https://youtu.be/brFJ4_CcYs4 #Ukulele #UkuleleIke #CliffEdwards #Gershwin

If you missed my musical concert last week at #NHAMfest26, or if you’d like to catch it again, you can stream it on my spanking new hyper8 site: https://video.futzle.com/concerts/live-in-absentia/ #SingerSongwriter #IndieMusic #piano #guitar #ukulele #clank #TextsWithVoid #BigBoatStuckSong

The Quiet American: "The Quiet American Concert, With Lyrics, July 26 2025" https://youtu.be/tf5N9df_9pQ #Ukulele #Americana #Music

And for those of who fancy taking a crack at the Indiana Jones version: Yi wang de si wa yi kan dao Xing li bian yao la jing bao jin tian zhi dao Anything goes Yi wang yi lu jiu cha zhen mei hao Qing shu shu shua le feng ye ni dao yi dao Anything goes Wan hua chen shi yi yi dao dao Bian hua wei bao bian wei dao Meng huan dong shi da du shi Do shi wei ni fu shao Ze qi wo dui fei hua long qing liao Dong hua dong feng song dao shou yi ding hui bao Anything goes Dong hua dong feng song dao shou yi ding hui bao Anything goes #Ukulele #1930s

The title song from the 1934 musical (one of those for which P.G. Wodehouse did some writing), this has been frequently revived since its debut, almost always with the officially revised lyrics I'm using here. The original included a lot of contemporary references that have not necessarily aged well and probably fit rather better into a song that's part of a bigger show. The transition from B7 to B9 is best achieved by simply adding your little finger on the 4th fret of the A string. Plenty of performances to choose from, including Kate Capshaw singing mainly in Mandarin in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," but here's Ella Fitzgerald: https://youtu.be/as-whCYL4ns #Ukulele #1930s

"But Jon!" I hear you exclaim. "Surely this song has been written up a thousand times before and knowledge of how to play it forcibly implanted to the brains of ukulele players across the globe?" That's true, yes, but as usual the verses are almost always victims of convenience, excised and discarded to be forever left in the most dismal corner of History's shed. Let's bring them out into the sunshine once again. We have the remarkably industrious and talented May Singhi Breen to thank for the arrangement here, as well as for the excellent ukulele playing on the linked 1926 recording of the song. Gene Austin provides the vocals, with spirited piano from Dave Franklin. https://youtu.be/1U65UQvzsiQ #Ukulele #1920s #Flappers

If you feel that your strumming isn't up to par, or want to show someone that there are worse things that getting into ukuleles, then try this top-hole number from Frank Crumit. Moderate pacing and familiar chords allow plenty of space to playfully deliver the lyrics without getting your fingers in a tangle. I want you to know that including only two slightly golf-related puns in this description involved an Herculean effort on my part. Anyway, here's the man himself performing the song: https://youtu.be/JROnGjdXmV4 #Ukulele #Golf #1930s

With the arrival of the motorcar the American woodcraft movement, begun after books by "Nessmuk" and others in the 1880s, expanded into quite an industry. Horace Kephart, Ernest Thompson Seton, Stewart Edward White, and John Muir addressed both the practicalities and the romance of heading into the woods for a time, to escape the stress and baleful influence of modern society and enjoy the more "real" pleasures of time spent under canvas. Indeed, the idea of camping as a leisure activity really only gained traction in the early 20th century, with advances in equipment design. Attachments turned the family car into a fairly spacious tent and outfitters like Abercrombie & Fitch flourished (long before it turned into a teenage fashion factory). These days Americans in motorhomes head south to Florida, rather than folks in flivvers* fleeing to Tennessee, but the idea is the same: cars meant that ordinary people could leave the harshness of northern winters behind them. This 1926 number with a tune by the great Harry Woods captures that excitement of escaping the humdrum without dwelling on the potential pitfalls. Miss Lee Morse & Her Blue Grass Boys released a fine version that same year, with a very slight change to the title: https://youtu.be/JFgiV8fHJBo #Ukulele #1920s #TentingTonight *A rickety old jalopy

Different performers often make changes to a song. In the Tin Pan Alley days it was very common to only sing the chorus, so many of my songsheets are effectively restoring a part of the song that may be unfamiliar. In this case I can completely understand why part of the song (the second chorus in this case) was generally dropped, as it takes an unwelcome turn from good-natured fun and implied ribaldry to misogyny and domestic violence. Definitely not what I was expecting. I've decided to reproduce the complete lyrics here as they were presented in 1925, but I would seriously suggest making your own decision as to how to perform the song, as I don't think that last chorus can really be justified. The simplest option is simply to use the first chorus again; the change is only a couple of lines. This performance by George Olsen and his Music, which is how I first heard the song, shortens the piece and replaces the casual violence with a musical joke: https://youtu.be/s_i0K9p5eeo Here's a player piano version with the full tune and lyrics: https://youtu.be/USn4-12Uqz8 The sheet music contains the following note: "The best effect is obtained by speaking the verse in the manner of a serious recitation" #Ukulele #1920s #Music

A brief departure from my usual fare of neglected 1920s songs this time, prompted by reading that it's fifty years since Australian art school band Mental As Anything got together. It was a toss-up as to whether I picked this song or their 1979 track "The Nips Are Getting Bigger," but in the end I opted for the more widely known of the two, written by the late Greedy Smith, which achieved international success after featuring in "Crocodile Dundee." It's a quite beautiful, uplifting piece that benefits from also being tremendously catchy, paired with a goofily stylish video that was perfect for the booming MTV era. As for playing it, basically G, Em, D and C are your companions throughout, aside from F#m and Bm making a single appearance each in the middle eight. https://youtu.be/g5B8AFvWk8Y #Ukulele #MentalAsAnything #1980s

After resisting (just) the temptation of a 1923 Martin 3M soprano that’s being sold through the Ukulele Underground forum, someone is now waving a 1920s Martin 2K soprano under my nose (next model down, but made from Hawaiian koa). “Luckily” I’m still skint and can’t afford this one either. But what a beauty… #Ukulele #1920s #MusicalInstruments

Put in a little effort to learn this piece today. Not as easy as it looks (for me at least) with a couple of unusual changes and slightly unconventional timing, but overall not too bad and it definitely started to come together by the end. I’ll have another crack at it tomorrow. Sounded a little better on an ADF#B soprano than a GCEA one, I thought (using the same chord shapes, so the D-tuned ukulele played the tune a tone higher). Of course, nobody plays it like Cliff: https://youtu.be/Rk6LFs2JgYY #Ukulele #CliffEdwards

A successful number from its debut in 1908, this is a song that became a staple of film and television, maintaining popularity for decades. Even Laurel and Hardy took a crack at it. The Wikipedia page is worth a look for notes about the murky authorship and the varying order of the months in the chorus (I've opted to follow Leon Redbone's version in that respect, as I think it simply flows more rhythmically). It also lists some of the many, many recordings you can explore to find your favourite, but here's a 1931 disc from Ruth Etting who returned the song to its Ziegfeld Follies roots: https://youtu.be/D7Mu9fh23dY #Ukulele #RuthEtting #1900s

Probably a bit of a long shot, but is anyone else on here going to be at #Shrewkfest next weekend? Looking forward to a twangy few days. #Ukulele