Sunday, April 1, 2012

Martin C1K sound sample

So I've been gushing about the Martin C1K since I got it in Hawaii last week.  One week into it's ownership, I still think it sounds great.  It's definitely a manly ukulele as it takes well to hard playing.  But up to this point I have not recorded anything using it.  I had a little bit of time today so I shot a video with it playing Jake Shimabukuro's version of Rolling in the Deep by Adele.  I actually learned this one before Don't Stop Believin' as I've been playing it for a few weeks now.  Much like Don't Stop Believin', this one is pretty straight forward.  Come to think of it, a lot of Jake's more recent arrangements are pretty simple.  But to me he has a knack to make them sound really good even though they are technically simple arrangements.  Those of you who want to learn these songs, hopefully my videos present a clear enough view of the fretboard so you can get an idea on how to play them.

I'm not sure how well the sound from this video represent this ukulele in real life.  I think it sounds a lot more impressive in person, but that impressiveness may be difficult to capture on video because it has a lot to do with how powerful it sounds, which could be hard to hear from a video recording.

Anyway, here's Rolling in the Deep played on the Martin C1K:

Glee...

I've never actually watch a second of the show "Glee", and have no idea what it is about.  But after watching a few videos of Jake Shimabukuro playing a cover version of "Don't Stop Believin'", which is supposed to be used on "Glee" as some sort of theme song, on the ukulele and then actually seeing him play it live, I thought it would be a nice arrangement to learn sometime.  A couple of days ago I decided to tackle it and found that it was surprisingly simple and fun to play.  There is this quick picking bridge part that is kind of hard, but otherwise the arrangement required no difficult skills to play.  So it came together pretty quickly and I thought I'd take a video playing it while I was wearing a somewhat Aloha shirt-like shirt today (Har!).

As usual, I can never get through a video mistake-free, and that bridge part is pretty bad, but what the heck.  I think I'll make another video later if I can play it better using another uke as a sound demo or something.  By the way, if you hear some sort of whining sound in the background, that's my dog.  I'm not sure what was up with him.  Maybe he couldn't stand my ukulele playing.  Just ignore it.

Which uke should I bring on my next trip to Oahu???

What's the maximum you'd spend on a ukulele case for your best uke?

If you could steal one of my ukes, which one would it be???

How curly do you like your koa? (preferably on a uke)

What's the maximum number of ukes a perfectly sane person should have???

Poll: How often do you play the ukulele???

Poll: Which guitar company's approach to ukes do you prefer???

Poll: What's your favorite type of headstock???

Poll: The new basic Collings concert uke (UC-1) sells for about $1k, your reaction is: