He Is Born

I seem to be on a creative streak. I wrote a song for my Praise Team on Thursday night and recorded it for YouTube and here tonight, it took me 21 takes to get it right, which is pretty bad, considering I should be able to sing and play it since I wrote it.

I originally wrote it in the key of F which is not the easiest key for the Guitar, or in my case the Ukulele, to play in certain chords. I have a Bb2 chord in the piece and to play that on a C tuned Ukulele you would do it would be 3123. Anyway, my hands just did not want to go there, so I transposed it up to G but it was a little hard for me to sing, so I moved it down to D. Which is what I recorded it in. Anyway, I am putting all three pdfs on line, F, G and D. Just click the links above.

Let me know what you think.

Also if you want the song in another key let me know. I will be writing a piano accompaniment so if you are interested in that let me know as well.

ScribeFire and other things

Getting started with ScribeFire - ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging

So I just added ScribeFire to my Firefox browser, and I am trying it out for the first time. This is pretty cool. Maybe it will encourage me to do more blogging during the day and the evening as I sit in front of the computer, practicing my Ukulele.

This has been a busy week and I have a concert tomorrow during the day at the West Chester Rotary Club, which will be at the West Chester Country Club. It will be short program that the 49ers are doing.

It has been a week and a half since we last performed these songs, so hopefully it will go smoothly.

I did it!

My new Pono Tenor Ukulele is on the way, thanks to the wife giving me the green light to get this instrument. I got it on ebay and it should have shipped today. Here is what the seller says about the instrument:

This is a brand new older PKTE model from Pono made with Koa Laminate body and top quality build. Solid mahogany neck and real ebony bindings. Solid EBONY fingerboard and bridge with factory installed Koolau gold strings. Beautiful high gloss finish. Clear and translucent Dean Markley undersaddle offers the option of playing thru an amp or sound system. The sound is clear and balanced...

So I now have a Tenor in my collection. One with a pickup, which I had wanted to have as well, this should keep me busy, getting used to a slightly larger instrument.

This is so cool

I ready Uke Hunt's RSS Feed, and here is something you definitely don't hear every day, Classical Ukulele



The song is called, Spagnoletta, by Mario Fabritio Caroso (1535-1620)

Uke Hunt's blog posting has a link to a PDF tab version of this song, and others. I have been avoiding Tab's because I thought they were to difficult, but a few of these I can play, badly, but I can play them, so now I am learning the song from the video above. I may never play it that fast, but I think I might be able to play it someday.

Like I said, this is so cool.

Collaboration and Family

It is weird, I have not played my Uke in two days, well that is not true, I played it on Sunday Afternoon, now that I think about it.

It was sorta cool, I was copying CD's for my chorus the 49ers, we record the numbers we are working on then they memorize the music using tapes and CD's and just playing around with some Praise Music as the Praise team sings this coming Sunday. My wife came home from church, she had an after church event, she volunteers her time to the Appalachian Service Project, and they were having a luncheon.

She got out her guitar, and we jammed singing Praise Music. I should have recorded it, not that it was earth shattering stuff, just for posterity. We played for about an hour, and talked about different interpretations of the songs and stuff.

I am so fortunate to have a talented wife and daughter, we all love to sing. My daughter wants us to sing at our 9PM service on Christmas Eve, so I brought home the music that she want's to work on. Our 9PM Service on Christmas Eve, I call it the unplugged service, it is a candlelight service, with just candles illuminating the Sanctuary. Our organist plays the piano, and I have several soloists sing. My daughter wants to sing, "Go Light Your World", I think it would be cool if we can get an arrangement together with my wife on the Guitar, me on the Ukelule, and all of us singing harmony. The other nice thing about the song is although it is not thought of as a Christmas Song, its chorus is:

Carry your candle, run to the darkness
Seek out the lonely, the tired and worn
Hold out your candle for all to see it
Take your candle, and go light your world
Take your candle, and go light your world

I can't think of anything more appropriate for the setting of a Church lit by Candles.

Once we work it up I will try and post a audio version here.

My OU2 In Action!

Ok, here is where the pedal hits the metal, I have put an audio file to together which shows off my complete inadequacies as a Ukulele Player. When I bought my Oscar Schmidt OU2 Concert, it came with Black GHS Strings, I really like these strings, but I am looking to try Aquila Low G Concert Set which I recently got, so I have created a mp3 to preserve the sound as my Uke Sounds today. I am not sure when I am going to bite the bullet and restring my Uke, something I have not done yet. When I do I plan on Video Taping so that my struggles will be preserved. Anyway, I am putting up this horrible sample of my playing for all posterity to hear, hopefully this playing will get better in the future. You can hear my OU2 here

What's In Store For Me

Here are the pictures of the Baritone that needs repair. Sorry about the color, my white balance was off when I took the pictures: The bridge is separating, and you can see the gap from the fretboard to the strings is huge. It is hard to see in the picture but the neck is separated from the Body. So I am going to remove the neck and reset it and the same with the bridge. I plan to video tape it so that others can learn from my trials. Also I figure that if it ends up ruined, I couldn't have hurt it much more than it is now.

Buried Treasure! Or Found, 2 Banjo Ukes and a Banjo Mandolin!

Well not exactly buried, my wife casually mentioned that her grandfather had told her that he had built a Banjo Ukulele! 

So Saturday night she went up in to the attic, and the next thing I know there are boxes flying down the steps. Turns out they were empty boxes that I had been stored in the attic, but a little later she came down with a box of 3 Banjo like instruments, one is a Bruno Banjo Ukulele, with a resonator, the only thing missing is a bridge and strings. 

I am ordering them online today. 

I will post pictures this evening. 

She also has another no name Banjo Ukuele, and a Banjo Manolin, so I am ordering bridges and strings for them all. 

As I said, I will post both pictures and audio, perhaps video as well. This should be cool, I had been looking for a banjo uke to play in church as a change of pace. 

I can't wait to see what they are like to play.

Got my Uke in the Mail

I guess for $25 bucks plus shipping and handling, I was asking too much.

Looks like I am going to get a crash course in Ukulele Repair.

I will post some pictures this evening, but I think I am going to have to remove and reset the neck and remove and reset the bridge, so it will be interesting to see if I can actually do it.

Anyway, as I do the repair I will try and keep a photo essay of the work so others can see all the goofs and gaffs, or if I am luck, the success as well!

New Uke On Its Way - Well, New For Me

I just won a Ebay auction for this Ukulele, got it for about $25 plus shipping and handling, I love Ebay most of the time. Anyway it is a baritone Uke, which I had been looking to add to my non-existent collection. So this will be my Third Ukulele, I now have a Soprano, Concert, (which is my everyday instrument) and a Baritone. I ordered strings for both the C tuning and the G Tuning. I am thinking of stringing it as a traditional Baritone, but I may go with a low g, C tuning, if it looks like it can handle it.

The Uke is a Crestwood, which I know very little about, but I got it mainly to determine if my hands could get used to the size. Also wanted to see how I could rap my head around the different tuning.

My thought process was this, I play a lot of praise songs in G, so I thought I could have this ukulele there to play the song in G, for some reason playing G and D and D7 on my C tuned uke causes me intonation problems, it could be the Uke it is more probably my lack of technique. Either way I was hoping having a Baritone in my arsenal would a nice compromise. Wish I would have it for this weekend, we are singing to songs with Praise Team this weekend and both are in G.

My everyday Instrument.

The Oscar Schmidt, OU2, made by Washburn is my everyday instrument, it is a Concert Sized Uke with GHS string, which is how it came from the store. I bought this instrument from 8th Street Music in Philadelphia. The store is small and packed, that is good thing, they have a great website, which is how I knew they had ukuleles, which are hard to find, and from what I can tell anything on their website, they have in the store and you can play it. Which is so important to anyone trying to decide about purchasing an instrument.

I am new to stringed instruments, I am more at home with the Piano or Singing, but my wife is guitar player from way back, and she has given me valuable insight as I learn more and more about playing a stringed instrument.

If you live in the Philly area I would highly recommend stopping by 8th Street Music if for nothing else, than the experience of it all. What I liked about it is it has the feel of the music store that used to be in my hometown as I was growing up and where I took Trombone lessons more years ago than I want to remember.

New Blog! or How I learned to play the Ukulele at my advanced age!

I just had to start a blog about my Ukulele experiences.

I first learned to play the Uke about 15 maybe 20 years ago, I was had the lead in a community theater production of A Thousand Clowns. I had to learn one song, Yes Sir, That's My Baby. I learned it, then I didn't pick it up for 20 years.

About 1 year ago, we started singing Praise Music at our Church, and after just singing, which is what I am by the way, a Singer, I decided I needed to maybe learn the guitar, but I have played the guitar before, and the steel strings hurt so bad, so I thought maybe learning the Ukulele would be better, Nylon Strings, only 4 Strings, and relatively inexpensive. I did not want to spend a fortune on my first instrument.

I had told my wife that I was thinking about learning the Ukulele, she is a music teacher and was taking a class at Villanova University and one of the other classes was selling the folk instruments used in the class to recoup the cost of the instruments. So my wife bought a Mahalo Ukulele, and I started to learn.

I have to say, I had a blast, it wasn't too long that I was playing silly songs and accompanying myself.

I also found that my short and stubby fingers did not work well on a Soprano, so I learned about Concert, Tenor and Baritone Ukuleles.

About a month after I got the Mahalo, my wife and I took a day trip into Philadelphia, to Independence Hall and the Constitution Center. BTW, this is a trip I highly recommend to anyone that is going to be in the Philly area, or if you have lived here all your life and don't go into town make the effort.

Since we were going to be in town, my wife suggested that I look for a music store in Philly that might have Ukuleles that I could play. We found 8th Street Music, which by the way is not on 8th Street, it is on Arch and I think it is between 11th and 12th streets.

We stopped there, and they had some ukuleles, but they were not in tune, and I had trouble getting the Oscar Schmidt Soprano they had on display in tune. We asked someone what else they had and they had a Concert Oscar Schmidt, in the back. They brought it out, we tuned it up, and boy did it sound much nicer than what I had.

My wife bought it for me for our Anniversary, which was coming up in a few weeks. It had black GHS strings, and I just really like the sound.

I was hooked, now I am planning to add a better Soprano, a Tenor and a Baritone to my collection.

In the future, I will be posting reviews and descriptions of my Ukuleles, and talking more about my time learning to play such an unusual and fun instrument.