Kalei Gamiao: Awesome!

I must admit I haven't really looked up many professional players out there. Other than Jake Shimabukuro, Aldrine Guerrero, and a few others, I haven't been exposed to too many ukulele virtuosos out there.

Last week I stumbled upon a video of "Kiss from a Rose" played by Kalei Gamiao. I thought it was a cool arrangement and began working on learning it. Later I checked out another video of him playing his own composition called "Mach 4" and I was floored by it. So now I'm trying hard to learn that one too. Perhaps I'm one of the last ukulele fans to discover Kalei Gamiao's stuff, but if you haven't seen him play, check it out.

Ukulolo?? Burger??? ????

One of my all time favorite ukulele compositions is a nameless song found on Youtube that's composed by Tyler Gilman of the Waikiki ukulele shop Ukulele Puapua. I've wanted to learn this since I first saw it, probably a couple of years ago, but it looked so far over my head at the time that I never really gave it much of a try. When I was in Hawaii this past March, I got the urge to try this song after visiting Ukulele Puapua a couple of times. I kind of figured out the first passage of the song but gave up shortly after that because it still seemed pretty daunting and I didn't feel like trying that hard to learn it. Fast forward to yesterday. For some reason I was looking for that video again and found a couple of covers for it as well. I checked out one of the covers done by a couple of Korean guys (well, the video had Korean words in it so I assume they are Korean) and it had a pretty clear shot of the fretboard so I figure it would be easier to try to learn from it.

After working on it a little bit, I noticed that there are a couple of other covers on the Youtube page and clicked one that had the title "Sharing a Burger". It was the same song and I soon discovered that there are a few covers out there covering this Burger cover (one rather funny cover has a couple of guys playing this while walking in a grocery store). I then went to Ukulele Underground forums and searched for Burger to see if anything turns up, and sure enough there's a thread with tabs to this song (if you want the tabs, just do the same thing I did, search for Burger in the UU forums' tabs section). It turns out the guys from Sharing a Burger covered the song, which is actually called Ukulolo (CD available at PuaPua), and called it Burger because the Youtube video didn't have a name for the song. I was pretty happy to locate the Burger tabs because it would make learning the song quicker than trying to figure it out from watching the videos. Since I already could play the first passage, the rest of the song came surprisingly easily armed with the tabs (pretty decent but not completely accurate) and the clearer videos. By the time I went to bed yesterday, I more or less got the solo part of the song figured out. The weird thing is that the backing chords seem harder to decipher and I'll need to figure that out some other time.

I think I'll try to make a video playing this song because I think this is such a great sounding tune. Too bad I can't really play a duet with myself, so I might have to just post something with either the backing chords in the background or just play over the CD. This would be fun to play with another ukulele player. Hmm...maybe sometime when I could make it to StrumMN again I could have someone try it???

John King

I'm guessing most of you who visits this blog already have learned about the passing of John King. He was a great ukulele historian and virtuoso in classical music. While I did not follow him like I did Jake Shimabukuro, I've always respected his music very highly. I've seen some of his Youtube videos and his skills has always amazed me. One of my favorite ukulele videos is Carol of the Bells that he played on a DaSilva Santo reproduction ukulele. I was very impressed by it the first time I saw it as it sounded great yet seemed so difficult to play. Now that I own one of those Santo reproduction sopranos, I appreciate John's virtuosity even more as it is definitely not an easy ukulele to play high up on the frets due to its shorter scale length. After seeing John's video for the first time, I wished that some day I can play this tune on this ukulele. Now I have the ukulele, but it may take a lifetime to try and learn to play it like him.

John King is definitely an inspiration to many ukulele players out there. While I have never met him or seen him play in person, it's not hard to see how much he was respected by the ukulele community. It's sad anytime when someone passes away so young (John was only 55), but he does leave with a great legacy and I hope his music will live on forever.

Dusting off the sopranos

If you've read this blog for a while, you would know that I play mostly tenor and concert ukuleles and rarely touch my sopranos. Well, a few months ago I saw a video by Neal Paisley playing an original tune called Gossip. I was blown away by his skills on the soprano in that video and thought it would be cool to be able to play that song. Of course, I do not have the skills to learn it by ear and didn't have enough motivation to try and learn it by watching the video, so it remained a fantasy in the back of my mind.

Several weeks ago, I found out that Woodshed from Uke Hunt had tabbed out this arrangement on his website. I had to check it out. After trying it for a little while I found it difficult but seemed to be doable eventually. I thought it would be cool to learn this and play it using my Kiwaya KTS-7, because I actually bought the KTS-7 from Neal. Since starting on the tabs, I had not spent too much time learning it so I hadn't made too much progress. Then a couple of days ago I received my DaSilva Santo reproduction soprano. It was a like a shot of motivation to learn the song on the soprano sized ukulele and I've since made a little more progress on it. The Santo repro has also rekindled some interest in soprano ukes and caused me to take out the KTS-7 several times lately. I'm beginning to appreciate it more. I've always thought it was a very good instrument, but really have not spent much time playing it. I had contemplated selling the Kiwaya since I hardly played it, but I think I'll hang on to it now. I still love the style 3 appointments and it really is a great sounding and playing instrument. I guess it's better late than never to come to appreciate a fine instrument. I don't think I'll ever become a "soprano person" (sorry Howlin' Hobbit :p), because I just feel more comfortable with tenors and concerts, but I'm pretty sure sopranos will always have a place in my collection and I've always considered them the "true ukulele".


Anyway, here's the video of Neal Paisley playing Gossip. Hopefully I can get it down soon and post a ghetto playing version of it soon:

Gypsy Master

I recently saw a video on Youtube that really caught my eyes. It's a video of Mike Okouchi playing "Gypsy Ukulele". So of all the new ukulele videos that pops up on Youtube all the time (including my ghetto videos), why did this one make a special impression? That's because I have a "Gypsy Rose" ukulele being built by Kevin Crossett of Kepasa Ukuleles!

Mike Okouchi is, of course, awesome in this video, but when I saw it, I just thought "how awesome would it be to play this song on a Gypsy Rose!" So, I'm determined now to learn how to play this song using Dominator's tabs for it. It's going to be difficult though, as the song's difficulty seems to be above my skill level. It will probably be a month or two before the Gypsy Rose will arrive, so I've got some time to do it. If I'm successful, I'll be sure to post some results here.

Meanwhile, here is the kick butt video of Mike Okouchi playing Gypsy Ukulele: