Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Learning Jake Shimabukuro songs

I plan on doing some blogging about my learning process for the ukulele up to this point. Before I get to that, I just wanted to write a little bit about learning to play some songs by Jake Shimabukuro.

I first learned about Jake when I was browsing Youtube looking for ukulele related videos and lessons. I think it was maybe a month or two after I started learning the ukulele when I came across this video, which had already been seen by millions of people:


I was so completely blown away by it I searched iTunes store and downloaded his "Gently Weeps" album almost immediately. For me, the album showed me just what can be done on the humble instrument that is the ukulele. I dreamed of one day learning to play "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". I was listening to the song in my car constantly, over and over again. I thought I would never be able to play it or any of the other Jake songs.

After learning various chords and being somewhat adapt at chord changes in the first position during the first few months of my ukulele playing, I thought I'd try for more of a challenge. In May of this year, I contacted Dominator about obtaining the tabs for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". I had searched high and low for it and it seemed like he was the only one who had these tabs but was asked to remove them from his site. I thought it was worth a shot to ask him for it, and he was very generous in sharing it with me. I was really excited about trying to learn it and got to work on it right away. To my surprise, the gist of the song wasn't all that difficult. I was playing something that resembles the song within a few days. Maybe because I already knew what the song sounded like forwards and backwards, but it wasn't the impossible song to learn as I had previously thought. So after getting to the point where I can play it from memory, I asked Dominator for another one of Jake's tabs. He asked me to send him a video or MP3 of me playing the song to make sure I had put forth enough effort in learning it before sending me another set of tabs. I thought this was very good of him as it kept me working on one song at a time.

So lately, these Jake songs I've learned are all I've been playing on my spare time, as you can deduce from my Youtube postings. These songs are fairly challenging but not at all impossible to learn, even for a relative novice like me. It is so much fun playing these songs and thanks to these songs, my ukulele experience has been exponentially more enjoyable than it had been before. And it wasn't bad before.:)

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey thanks for posting this info. It helps me to believe that I can progress to playing the song too. I found a copy of the TABS for this song but find them hard to follow. It would be good if you could put up a video tutorial of this song.

Anonymous said...

hey thanks so much. im a ukulele player. im known around our town. it would be great to learn them. i went to see his concert. i bought a CD, got my shirt signed. he is so amazing. if you could post the tabs on a site without having to download, that would be really great. my computer doesnt let me download things that easily. email me at tillytillytango@gmail.com. thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hi, I am totally amazed by this song. Would you be able to send me a copy of the tab please at darkare@hotmail.com Many thanks!

GX9901 said...

www.liveukulele.com actually have link to tabs of Gently Weeps: http://www.edwhitehead.co.uk/weeps.pdf

Check it out.

stringman said...

Yeah, I am trying to learn the ukulele weeps by ear, it is taking a long time of course. If you can I would appreciate a copy, feel free to send it to beautifulwuss@hotmail.com . Thank you for all this info, and your time

leumas eht rehctub said...

you would be makin me a very happy man if u could please send me the tab/sheet music/ANYTHING!! to help me learn that song please send to : samboreno@live.come

Unknown said...

Hey, thank you for this information. I have been searching for this song for ages and i was hoping you could send me the tab at ghostgtar@gmail.com, i would really appreciate it! thanks again

Crowder said...

i have tried finding this everywhere, and have asked around, but as per Jake's request, it is unavailable everywhere... could you possibly email me a copy of the tab? it looks like you've done that, looking at older posts. That would be awesome. chris_crowder@sbcglobal.net

cheers

Matt said...

Please could you send me the link to dean.matt@hotmail.com. Like you i have also spent a lot of time searching for it.

Andreas said...

woww this guy is very the best uke player i ve seen :o
This is exactly the kind of music i m trying to play with my ukulele! Please could you send me this great tab to my e mail (andreasp@live.fr)
please :p

Anonymous said...

I love Jake's music. he's definitely on of the best ukulele players around. Could you email me the tab/sheet music as well? cometslax@cinci.rr.com

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the info can someone please send me the tab for this song thank you in advance please email me at tony@kingrockmedia.com

Tiffany said...

could you please email it to me at tiffanywebb@charter.net? i have been searching for ages for that song, and as a fellow ukulele player i would enjoy learning as well! thank you so much!! :)

GX9901 said...

Here is copy of the tabs to Gently Weeps:

http://edwhitehead.atwebpages.com/weeps.pdf

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