143 means I Love You...

Jake Shimabukuro is in town for a concert tonight (The Cedar in Minneapolis) for the 4th time in the last 3 years. That's almost mind boggling when I think about it. The Twin Cities isn't exactly a hotbed for ukulele yet each time I went, the shows were sold out. Sure, the show at the 1500 seat Ordway a couple of years ago wasn't actually sold out, but considering there was a big snow storm that night, the turn out was pretty phenomenal. I think during the last time he was here, he mentioned that his manager has some ties to the Twin Cities, so I guess that explains why he has been here relatively frequently.

Anyway, I wasn't able to go this time, as I didn't find out about it until fairly late (although that was a couple of months ago) and decided against making arrangements to go. The three shows I've been to by and large were the same. I never did get to see Jake play Going to California or Thriller, which I wish he would have played, but I did enjoy the show each time. I bet he will play some songs I have not heard him play live this time. Maybe even Bohemian Rhapsody. Oh well. Hopefully he has a few more trips here in the future and I can catch another show.

Oh yeah, I guess I should get to the title of this post. I had some time alone with my baby son tonight at home, and I had been planning to take a video of me playing 143, so I tried playing it while holding the baby. He is almost 6 months old now and he has been a pretty good little boy so far. I did about 3 takes playing this song and he was pretty good sitting through them. You definitely can't do that while playing a guitar! LOL!



143 is a very simple song. The fact that I can actually play it halfway decently while holding a baby kind of proves it. It might be the easiest Jake Shimabukuro song I've tried to learn. I'll throw out some of the fingering for this if you are interested in learning. The only difficult part has to do with the opening "chorus", where your middle finger has to do a pretty severe bend to hit the A-string. My hand actually hurts after playing this song, so that's no joke!

Anyway, the chorus goes something like this (it would probably make more sense if you sound out the stuff I'm writing below and compare with the video above):

Strum
2400

Alternate strumming between
2400
2404
2404
2400
2405
2405

and

2400
2404
2404
2400
2402 (This hurts!)
2402

Then it's:

Alternate strumming between

2200
2204
2204
2200
2205
2205

and

2200
2204
2204
2200
2202
2202

strum
4220
4222
slide up to
6444
back to 4222

Picking part:

Out of this chord

2240

Pick in this string order
C, E, G, A, G, E, C

Then out of this chord

1120

Pick in this string order
C, E, G, A, G, E, C

Then these three chords picked in the same string order as above
2240
4440
6654

The "interlude":

strum
6400
4300
3200
2100

On the way back to 6400
strum

4200

The "ending":

a) strum
2100
4200
6400

b) then strum
6400
7600
9800

c) then strum
11-900
9800
7600

d) then strum
9800
7600
6400

Repeat

At the very last run through the ending, after part c):

strum
11-900
13-11-00
14-13-00

That's pretty much the entire song. I don't know if the above makes any sense. If not, please leave me a comment here if you have any questions.