Hallelujah

Maybe it was the fact that the start date for my Mya Moe concert is approaching soon, but maybe a couple of weeks ago I felt a jolt of motivation to learn some new songs on the ukulele (kind of bad to have UAS as a source of motivation to learn new stuff. Gotta change that...). Having been listening to Jake Shimabukuro's Peace Love Ukulele quite a bit lately, it's only natural that I wanted to learn some of the new stuff from the album. Bohemian Rhapsody has always been on my wish list to learn, but I have not really gave it a shot until just a few days ago because it seems too difficult (trying to piece it together now, realizing that the difficulty is not in the technical aspect, but rather how long the song is). So I tackled Bring Your Adz. This song seemed to be manageable for my playing level but while I was able to learn it fairly quickly, I still have a long ways to go before I can play it smoothly enough. While browsing Youtube videos to learn Adz (my primary way of learning new songs these days), I saw a related Hallelujah (Jake's version) video. I viewed a couple of those and decided to try and learn it. To my pleasant surprise it was pretty easy and I was able to play it reasonably well in a few days. I had some time on my hands yesterday so I decided to shoot a video of this song. As far as number of takes go to get a presentable video, it wasn't too bad. So here is Hallelujah.

New wood

Char from Mya-Moe emailed me yesterday regarding the wood set for my concert ukulele. She had found another set that she thought was closer to what I had originally asked for and sent me a picture of it. This set of myrtle had some really nice curl, more so than the set I had picked out before, so I went for it. I love me some curly wood, and this one should be pretty good looking. The uke is scheduled to start around the end of March, so it's definitely closing in. I guess I need to have a few songs ready (just learned "Bring Your Adz" & "Hallelujah" and about to tackle "Bohemian Rhapsody") so I can make some videos with it soon after it arrives.

Here's what the wood set looks like:

What was that about UAS again??...?

So much for my contention that I don't have any UAS right now. I browsed the Ukulele Underground forum briefly today and read a post about the Epiphone Les Paul ukulele. That was all it took for me to place a pre-order for one of these babies with Sam Ash. Pretty crazy. Then again, it is only $100. To me, just the fact that this is a Les Paul shaped ukulele with an Epiphone logo on it makes it worth the Benjamin, even if it sounds like something that should only be purchased by clueless tourists on Waikiki. I've always loved the Les Paul shape, and have once owned a Kiwaya K-Wave just because of its shape. I've also lusted after the Earnest LaPaula since basically when I started playing the ukulele. So to have an "official" Les Paul ukulele is pretty cool, I think. It is supposedly coming out in March, so hopefully I'll get to see how good or bad it is. But whether it's a decent beater uke or a piece of crap, I will be able to say I own a real Les Paul uke! That's gotta be worth something right???....ok, maybe not, but it's still cool!

Cobwebs!

Whoa! It's been quite a long time since I've posted here. Cobwebs have definitely been growing in the ghetto!

Well, since the last holiday season, I guess my attention have been quite divided. Besides having 3 kids to handle, I've also been getting back into a couple of other hobbies. I didn't get any new ukuleles for Christmas, but I got myself (people my age basically use Christmas as an excuse to buy stuff for themselves. At least I do, har!) other stuff that occupied my attention for the last couple of months. Ukulele kind of taken a backseat in terms of me learning new stuff and following what going on in the ukulele world. My temporary UAS binge (Lanikai zebra and Kala pocket) totally went away, and while I busted the ukulele to play most days, there were a few days where I didn't even get around to playing the ukulele. I still enjoyed playing the ukulele, but it was kind of a "time away" from my ukes. I think that's good though, because I know ukulele is pretty much in my blood, and I will always be interested in it and come back to it.

I've been listening to Jake's new CD in my car fairly often of late, and sure enough, I got an itch to learn something from that disc. I know I would like to play his version of Bohemian Rhapsody someday, but it's really long and probably not that easy to learn, so the next song I really wanted to learn was Bring Your Adz. I have no idea what "Adz" means, but the tune is pretty cool. I started messing with the opening section last week and kind of figured out how it was played. Then a couple of days ago, I decided to tackle the song hard and dug up a few Youtube videos to attempt to learn it. It isn't a hard song to learn, so I more of less got all the parts down. But it is pretty hard to execute (for me anyway), so now it will just take some time to refine it the best I can. I guess there is no shortage of songs I would like to learn, sometimes the motivation is there, and sometimes there isn't. I'm definitely feeling the urge to learn a few new songs now, so hopefully I'll have something to share soon.

On the UAS front, although I have not felt any urges to get new ukes, there is one on the horizon. That is the Mya Moe I ordered last year. I think it was slated to start in March and be completed by April. Mya Moe appears to be the most "on-time" builder around, so I'm thinking I'll be getting the uke sometime in April. I hope it doesn't trigger another UAS binge, but I guess we'll see about that.

Anyway, all is well. I still love the ukulele very much, although I just don't have as much time or things I could share here right now. Hopefully I will continue to be able to put of semi-useful or halfway entertaining stuff here.

Until next time, I leave you with a quick picture of the myrtle wood set I recently choose for the Mya Moe:

"I Love Hawaii"...

And now for something a little different (yet still have a little bit to do with ukes!)...

So tonight I took my family to a local mall. While there, I went into a store there called "Tomodachi", which sells mainly Japanese toys and collectibles. The Japanese love "candy toys", which are these little boxes containing randomly inserted little models of various subjects and usually a piece of candy or gum. The subject matter of these "candy toys" range from the usual Japanese Animation stuff such as Dragon Ball Z and Gundam, to some really bizarre stuff such as miniature furniture and food models. This store sells a lot of these "candy toys" and this time I decided to check them out while pushing my baby son's stroller through the small store. Since the Japanese love to travel to Hawaii, I guess it wasn't a shock to see this:

You probably didn't have to guess that the ukulele on the front of this box immediately caught my eyes (yes, sad but true...). Knowing what these boxes are, I knew the ukulele was probably one of the random items packaged inside the box. I grabbed it and turned it over, and sure enough, there are 9 different sets of "Hawaii" items that you can get:

As you can see, set 3 contained the mini ukulele I so very much wanted (I guess UAS knows no size limitations or make any distinctions between real and fake). Now, being full of items imported to the USA from Japan, everything in the store carried fairly ridiculous prices. This little box, which measures about 4 inches tall, costs $4.50. So I wasn't going to get a bunch of boxes in hopes of scoring the mini-uke. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, there were only two boxes left. I thought about just letting it go, but as I left the store, I was like "what the heck, I'll just get one and see what I got". I was thinking as long as I didn't get set 8 (golf clubs...that's supposed to remind me of Hawaii???) I'd be OK with it. So I grabbed one box, paid for it, and left (OK, so I also grabbed another box containing an insanely detailed 1/24 Suzuki racing motorcycle).

After getting to my car, I opened the "I Love Hawaii" box to see what I got, not really expecting to get set 3 with the mini-uke. Lo and behold, I did get set 3! (This is when you get to say "what a nerd!")

As you can see, it came with a few other things other than the mini-ukulele. There's a card that tells you what they are:

Besides the ukulele, we have a glass of "Blue Hawaii" cocktail, a pair of Beach Sandals, and a Lei. So I have absolutely no interest in the other 3 items (especially not the pink sandals!), but hey, they are pretty cute. The mini-ukulele probably was modeled after a Martin, but being so small, the headstock actually looks more like a Gibson. Whatever. It's actually looks pretty decent, and it has 4 strings (painted on a piece of clear plastic) and 4 tuning pegs. Pretty accurate representation of the ukulele if you ask me.

So just how small is this little guy? Remember the Pocket uke?

It's the size of the Pocket uke's bridge! (for those of you who have sharp eyes, yes, the Pocket uke developed some seam separation at the soundboard. It works fine, but I'll need to try to do something about it at some point, I think.)

I think this just might be the smallest model of the ukulele ever. I mean, any smaller you might not be able to see it!

So there you have it. Something totally out of the left field. I guess I was pretty lucky to have scored this fake mini-uke. Too bad I don't have such luck with lottery tickets...(like I have a 1 in 9 chance of winning the lottery...) But now that I have this little fake ukulele, what do I do with it??? Hmmm....I think I know just the guy to give it to:



Kamen Rider DECADE!







Yeah baby! He rocks the ukulele and the Lei! Isn't that perfect or what??? (OK, I'll go away now...)

I hope you've enjoyed this little ukulele odyssey. Until next time, keep strumming... (yes, you too, Decade...)

Peace, Love, Ukulele

It's no secret that I'm a big Jake Shimabukuro fan, so when I learned that I could pre-order his upcoming CD, titled Peace, Love, Ukulele, I did just that.

The pre-order indicated that the CD would be released on January 3rd, but I actually received the CD on that date, so it was a pleasant surprise.

I've only listened to the CD a couple of times so far in my car (where I do most of my music listening), but I do like it. There are 2 tracks worth of Bohemian Rhapsody, one recorded in studio and one recorded live. I thought it's a cool arrangement. A few other songs got studio recordings after being released on the Live album from a couple of years ago. There are not a ton of new materials but most are pretty fresh.

Anyway, I'm not much of a reviewer of albums, so I'll just share a few more pictures of it. If you're a Jake Shimabukuro fan, you've probably already bought this in the form of the CD or MP3 from iTunes. If you're just discovering the ukulele and find Jake's music to your liking, this is a good listen.

Back of the CD


Inside of the case


Folded insert. On one side it has a picture of Jake holding a Kamaka soprano (he doesn't play sopranos!) and a couple of chord charts.


Other side of the insert with track listing and thank you's.

Location, Location, Location

No, I'm not into the real estate business. I'm talking about where my ukes are built. Just for fun, I thought perhaps I'd track where all of my current ukes are made.

-Hawaii (6): Kamaka tenor HF-3, Koa Works tenor KW-4, Kanile'a super-soprano, Ko'olau CE-1, KoAloha Pineapple Sunday, Aaron Taylor milo/spruce tenor.

-Texas (3): William King spruce/koa LS-tenor, William King macassar ebony/spruce LS-concert, Collings UC-1.

-China (2): Kala Acacia Pocket uke, Bushman Cedartone baritone.

-Japan (1): Kiwaya KTS-7 soprano.

-Indonesia (1): Lanikai zebrawood concert.

-Indiana (1): Bluegrass cigar box tenor.

-California (1): DaSilva Santos reproduction soprano.

-Maryland (1): Glyph koa Mezzo-soprano.

-Vermont (1): Kepasa Gypsy Rose concert.

It's not very surprising that the greatest percentage of my stash has originated in Hawaii. After all, it is a Hawaiian instrument. But I thought I had more China made ukes. Texas coming in second is a slight surprise, but I guess I'm a William King fanboy, so that explains it. Unlisted is the upcoming Mya-Moe that's going to be made in Washington.

Anyway, I guess this kind of shows that ukes are being made all over the place, not just in Hawaii or China.

Shore Break

Ever since I heard Kalei Gamiao's Kiss by a Rose and Mach 4, I've been interested in his music and bought his self titled CD. The CD contains all ukulele instrumentals and proved to be very enjoyable for me. Most of the songs have accompaniments by other instruments but there are a few ukulele solo arrangements as well. One of them is the 2nd track called Shore Break. It is one of my favorite songs from this CD and I recently decided to try to learn it. I've usually learned ukulele solo arrangements either by finding tabs or watching videos of the song I'm trying to learn to try to figure out how to play them. Since this is very much an unknown song, there is no videos or tabs I could find. So the only way to learn it is by ear. Luckily for me, this is a pretty simple song and I was able to learn it by ear relatively easily. I was pleasantly surprised by this and hopefully I can get better with learning by ear as I continue to play the ukulele.

For making a video of this song, I was thinking about using the William King LS-concert, which I've been reconnecting with recently after a couple of solid months of almost exclusively playing the new Glyph. But when I was ready to do some takes, I decided to try it with the Koa Works tenor as I have not played it in a while and wanted to give it some playing time. I was able to play it on the Koa Works tenor so I figure I'd take a video with this ukulele. This uke is probably the best sounding tenor in my stash o' ukes, so it deserves to be played more often and be featured in more videos.

By the way, I hope you like this song. I probably didn't do it justice, so if you like Kalei Gamiao's music, be sure to check out his CD.

(*It seems Youtube is acting a bit wonky when I uploaded this. If you can't see it on this page, try double clicking it to open it on a separate page)

Pocket Uke craziness

I promised trying crazy stuff on the Kala Pocket Uke, and here is the first attempt. I've become somewhat of a Mach 4 junkie and have been playing it all the time, so I thought I'd try it on the Pocket uke! If you watch the video below, you'll probably agree that it ain't a pretty sight. But hey, I tried. No, the Pocket Uke definitely is not suited to play solo arrangements, but it is fun to try, even if I look and sound bad doing it. :p

Without further ado, here is Mach 4 on the Kala Pocket ukulele. Don't say I didn't warn you...

Mini-Me or Tiny Tim???

Uke-crack arrived yesterday in the form of the Kala Acacia Pocket ukulele. While I have tried to find as many reviews, pictures, and videos of it as I awaited its arrival, I must say that I was still not prepared for just how friggin' small this thing is! No, it doesn't actually fit in your pocket, but it is a really really small ukulele. It is definitely smaller than I expected and I don't think seeing pictures of it next to other ukes would really drive that point home (Although I do present a couple of such pics at the end of this post). You need to see this thing in person to appreciate its smallness.

Aside from the small size, my other first impression upon picking this ukulele up is that it is pretty heavy for its size. It's built like a tank, which isn't necessarily a good thing when talking about ukes. I don't know if it's because the body is so tiny and therefore the wood seems thicker, but it sure feels that way. I held my Collings UC-1 on one hand and this uke on the other, and I can't really tell much difference in weight. Granted, the Collings is really built very light, but it's like 5 times the size (OK, I'm exaggerating) of the Kala. So perhaps this pocket uke is a bit overbuilt, but maybe it needed to be built this way, I'm not sure. It does look well built. Perhaps not the most perfect workmanship (some glue and a little bit of wood shaving is visible on the inside of my copy), but I would rate it as very good. The acacia wood body looks nice, with some very faint curls in the wood. The headstock has an inlaid Kala logo in maple and an overlay of what appears to be clear plastic, which gives it an interesting effect.

The sound is predictably thin and not especially loud. I tried CFAD, DGBE, and GCEA tunings and decided to stick to GCEA for the time being. In CFAD and DGBE, it didn't seem to sound much better than GCEA and most songs I tried didn't sound that great in those tunings despite the strings are all "spaced apart" the same. It does seem to have pretty good intonation, but the Aquila strings are still stretching so much it's hard to tell since the strings seem to go out of tune as I play. Speaking of tuning, I used my brand spanking new Peterson StroboClip to tune this baby and it was surprisingly easy. I thought given the sensitivity of the tuner and the short scale of the ukulele, combined with friction tuners, I was going to be in for a workout to tune it. Turns out I was able to get the strings dialed in fairly quickly using the StroboClip, so I'm definitely happy with the new tuner.

While the sound of the pocket uke is not really all that great (yes, it's super tiny, but even if you consider it good for its size, it's still not that great in absolute terms), it IS fun to play. It is somewhat difficult given how small the scale length is, but there's something inherently fun about playing a tiny ukulele that actually produces all the right notes (unlike cheapo toy ukes you can get at ToysRUs or Hawaiian tourist shops). I've read a few reviews of the pocket uke where the reviewer says it's fun to play, but I didn't really understand what they meant until I played it myself. This ukulele is all about its tiny size. If all else is equal and this is a standard sized soprano, I'd probably return it. But its size makes it a keeper, which is probably difficult for people to understand unless they've handled one of these. Once you've handled it, you would probably either love it or hate it.

So the biggest problem most people will have with the Kala pocket uke is the price. The street price for the mahogany version is $210 while the acacia version is $280. To put the $280 price for the acacia in perspective, you can buy the Kala acacia TENOR for $21 more from most dealers. That uke is like 10 times bigger than the pocket uke!! (ok, exaggerating again. It's only 6 times bigger) It doesn't take a math major to realize that the value quotient for the pocket uke is extremely low. The only reason I went for the acacia version is because I found one for $240 shipped and decided "what the hell" on the $30 premium over the mahogany version because I really wanted the acacia. Now, I don't really have a problem with the pricing on these ukes because I believe that it may actually be more difficult for Kala to make these. Dave Means of Glyph once said that it's most challenging to get good sound out of a small soprano box, and it doesn't get much smaller than these. Also, I think it's more difficult to ensure good intonation on a shorter scaled instrument. I imagine Kala needed tighter quality control to get these to intonate correctly. So personally speaking, I can understand why these ukes carry such relatively high price.

So who will buy these things? I kind of doubt too many are sold over the internet. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't see many people shelling out $210~280 for these pocket ukes just by looking at pictures or even videos of them. Like I said, you can almost get the acacia tenor for this money, and there are a slew of nice imported solid wood ukes of all sizes at this price point. So I think it's a tough sell over the internet. However, I'm willing to bet quite a few gets taken home when people actually handle them. It's just so damn cute you almost can't help it. It's like seeing a puppy in a pet store or something. And if you think the price is too high, there are basically no alternatives. There are several sopraninos out there made by the likes of Ohana and KoAloha, but I assure you the Kala pocket uke is much smaller. So you must pay to play, basically.

I've only had mine for under 24 hours as I type this post, but so far I am happy with this purchase. That's not to say I recommend you jumping online and order away. I think you really needs to handle it to determine if you love it or hate it. Either that or you need some money burning a hole in your pocket to give it a try. I have to admit I basically had some hot cash to blow on it, but right now I fall in the camp of those who love it, so I guess the gamble has paid off.

So that's the first impressions/semi-review from this crack, I mean uke addict. I will be attempting some songs that probably should not be played on this ukulele, so stay tuned for some vids!

Peace, love, and ukulele baby!


Headstock with Kala logo inlaid in maple:


Front of the pocket uke:


Back of the pocket uke:


Next to the Collings UC-1. I swear the pocket uke feels smaller in person:


Side view next to the UC-1:


Next to the DaSilva Santos Repro. The Santos is almost sized like a sopranino:


Side view next to the DaSilva:


The Kala is actually a little thicker than the DaSilva: