Ukuleles: Automatic Happiness!

Tsunehisa Ikeda not only figured out the tabs for "As Many Times As Always," the Joe Hisaishi-penned theme from the Spirited Away soundtrack, he recorded a video of his own performance, with the chords superimposed at the bottom. Color me hella impressed -- it sounds awesome.

"ソロウクレレで「千と千尋の神隠し」"いつも何度でも"を弾こう！ Spirited Away solo ukulele lesson" (Watch on YouTube)

( Click here for tabs )

This has been a personal project of mine on and off since this spring. I've finally come up with ukulele-friendly tabs for "Sigh No More, Ladies" from Kenneth Branagh's excellent Much Ado About Nothing. The only tabs I'd been able to find were for guitar, but after some tooling around, I've come up with the following. I think it sounds pretty good!

( Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more / Men were deceivers ever... )

You can download a PDF here; sorry the above isn't text-only, but the formatting wasn't holding in terms of spacing out the lyrics with the notes. If anyone wants the plain text (RTF), drop me a line. If the formatting isn't making sense either, let me know. Happy Monday, gang!

Some days Daily Ukulele happens because I have an earworm and want to see if someone's made a ukulele cover; some days it happens because I have no idea what a particular artist would sound like on a uke, and I'm curious. No one seems to have recorded "I Like Dirt" that I can find, but the licks from "Scar Tissue" and "Californication" translate pretty well, all told.

( Two videos, one with vocals, one instrumental )

For "Californication," the performer says in comments: "Chords were Am, and F for verse. They were C, G, D, and Am for the chorus."

You've probably heard the Champs' classic '50s instrumental "Tequila." You haven't heard it like this before, though. Props to this guy, not just for his awesome playing and his wall of cool instruments behind him, but his epic vocal interjections!

The chords (if not the tabs), translated from the comments on the video:

The chords are almost always F and Eb alternates.

At the Bridge: G # and F 3 times then G and C.

Hey folks! This is me coming to you from the other side of the Festival of Aloha World Record attempt. We didn't quite break the bank, but it was a really great hour or so of ukulele awesomeness -- if you ever get a chance to fill up a public space with ukulele players, it's a blast! This is the song we were taught, and Lanialoha Lee was a great, great teacher. Here's the sheet music, but try it just from the video; it was a new experience for me, and certainly the first time I'd really managed singing and playing at the same time.

For the interested, some pictures from the event!

( 14 photos )