Schoenhut Ukulele Winner!

We had a lot of fun with the "why do you love the ukulele" contest. Congrats to Cecile from Utah! He loves the ukulele because "it is cheaper than therapy". We couldn't agree more! Thanks everyone for playing. We'll do another giveaway soon so stay tuned.

Schoenhut Ukulele Giveaway!!!

You've got a shot to win this toy Schoenhut Ukulele! Actually, you've got a lot of shots to win it with the "Why I love the ukulele" contest.

Here's how it works. Fill out the form below and tell us in 5 words or less why you love the ukulele. We'll pick our favorite each day for the next 20 days and each daily favorite will be entered into the drawing to win this lovely little uke.

The best part is that you can play every single day!

We'll post the daily favorite on our Facebook and Twitter so make sure to like and/or follow us there to see if your entry was the daily favorite!

We'll do it every day through May 6th! Daily entries end each day at Midnight (central time).

Here's the form. Good luck!

"A place to hang my uke" winners!

Congrats to our contest winners! Mervin Keith is our first place winner with his "Couch Uke" picture with 43% of the vote. Runner up Jake Tolbert also earned himself a nice new wall hanger with "Uke in the Corner" taking 30% of the vote. Nice work guys! Enjoy your new ukulele wall hangers.

Special thanks to Etsy sellers Jon Woodworking and Toucan Mango. Make sure to stop by their shops and take a look at their work!

Here's the winning pictures....

"A Place to Hang my Uke" finalists! Vote for your favorite!

These 5 ukuleles need to find a new home with a new wall hanger! Look through the pictures and vote using the form below to tell us which is your favorite! Just one vote per person please. Voting ends April 8th at 10pm (Central time). The winner and runner up will each get a new ukulele wall hanger! Here's the finalists....

Shower Uke by Brenda Cook

"A place to hang my uke" contest

Storing your ukuleles on the couch? Maybe on the coffee table, kitchen counter, or in the corner of the room?

All the more reason for you to enter our "A place to hang my uke" contest!

Two lucky ukulele enthusiasts will finally have a place to hang their ukes!

The deadline for entries is Midnight (central time) on March 31st.

Here's what we need ya to do....

1. Take a picture of where you store your ukulele that best displays why you need a wall hanger. It can be the actual place that you keep it or you can get creative with it and photograph your ukulele some place that no one in their right mind would put their ukulele. Hey, it's up to you!

2. Post your pic somewhere, ANYWHERE online.

3. Fill out the form below and include the url that we can see your picture at. One entry per person.

That's all there is to it! After the deadline, we'll pick out 5 finalists and let everyone vote and tell us which one they like the best.

Now for the good part! We'll give away two ukulele wall hangers - one for 1st place and one for the runner up.

1st place gets this beauty from Jon Woodworking

Runner up will get this sweet wall hanger from Toucan Mango

So what are you waiting for? Take a picture and fill out this entry form!

Lanikai TunaUke Winner!!!

And the winner is......

Lanikai TunaUke giveaway!

This beautiful new Lanikai concert size TunaUke (complete with a very nice hard case) can be yours!  Yeah, that's right!  Just fill out the entry form below by Midnight on February 14th for your chance to win.  We'll select a random name and contact the winner on February 15th.  Also, I know it's tempting not to share and to better your odds, but you would be super cool if you told some fellow ukers about it.  :)

Good luck!

Where did the time go?

Wow!  It's been awhile since I had a chance to sit down and blog.  For anyone that might be wondering what happened to me, don't worry!  I'm still here.  Life has been chaotic lately.  Most of it having to do with my job.  I recently got promoted to a very demanding position.  It's definitely a blessing, but doesn't allow me a lot of time to blog or work on new new ukulele ideas.

But seeing as I had a few free minutes this morning, I thought I'd give you a heads up on a couple of ukulele related things that I've got going on right now.

I recently had the pleasure of contributing to this article - 5 Ukulele bloggers explaining their recording setups for both video and audio.  Definitely worth a read if you're not satisfied with the quality of your recordings.

And secondly, I asked my blogging buddy to build me a mini ukulele (with an 11" scale).  It is fnished!  And it looks and sounds absolutely amazing (video below)!  The body and neck are solid cherry with a Tru-Oil finish. The rosewood bridge has a bone saddle and the rosewood fretboard has abalone inlays. It has Grover 3W tuners strung with Worth Clear Light strings.  Many thanks to Daniel Hulbert of Circuits and Strings for creating this little beauty for me!  Make sure to check out his site for some awesome builds.

So that's my unofficial update for the moment.  Hoping to getting back to blogging some new ideas on a more regular basis, so please don't change the channel. :)

4 Uke bloggers - 4 sweet arrangements!

Wow!  It's been awhile since I've blogged.  Let's just say between my job and my family, life has been a little bit crazy. 

Recently, I had the privelage to contribute a video complete with the chords for a play along for "You've Got a Friend in me" from Toy Story.  Check out the full post here...

http://theukaholic.blogspot.com/2013/07/five-uke-bloggers-on-creating-original.html

Three of my fellow uke bloggers chimed in with some of their favorite tunes as well.  Go there!  Check it out!  Pick up your ukulele and get to playing!

George Formby documentary

The other day as I was perusing YouTube videos, I stumbled across this documentary of ukulele great George Formby.  For those of you that don't know much about Formby, he was a British comedy actor and performer.  He is often credited with inventing the highly syncopated banjo ukulele style of playing known by most as "Formby style".  Hope you enjoy watching this as much as I did!

Making Music Magazine - Ukulele issue

Making Music has recently released released a ukulele issue featuring a nice write up and interview with Jake Shimabukuro.  You do have to order the full issue, which you can do here.  But you can also read a portion of the interview here.

I've gotta share this Jake quote with you - when asked about what makes the ukulele so appealing here's what he had to say....

"“I used to joke around and tell people that ukulele is the Facebook of instruments. When you play it, you want to find ukulele friends, and have jam sessions. It’s a very social instrument. People don’t have egos with the ukulele —it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been playing; we are all just ukulele players.”

 Made me chuckle a bit, but have to say that he hit the nail on the head.

Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings - watch it here!

This past Friday night this documentary premiered nationally on PBS.  It is a must watch not only for Jake Shimabukuro fans, but for ukulele lovers everywhere!  I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did!

Note: this will only play the first 20 minutes of the documentary.  You can keep watching it by clicking "continue watching" when it stops.

Watch Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings on PBS. See more from Jake Shimabukuro: Life On Four Strings.

My Dog Has Fleas - the origin...or lack thereof

My Dog Has Fleas - perhaps you've heard someone sing this phrase when describing the re-entrant tuning that a ukulele is commonly played in.  The notes that correspond with it in our modern day uke circles are GCEA.  But where did that silly little phrase come from?

It seems to be one of those questions that yields more questions than it does answers.  The truth of the matter is that no one really knows the origin of "My Dog Has Fleas".  While it's probably not related in any way, it's interesting to note that the Hawaiian word "ukulele" literally means "jumping flea". 

All throughout it's history, music has been filled with mnemonic devices to aid us in remembering.  For instance, my elementary music teacher used a series of acronyms to help us remember the notes on the lines of the staff - "Every Good Boy Does Fine" and "Good Boys Do Fine Always".  I think that these two phrases are quite common in musical teaching curriculum. 

At least the above examples make some kind of sense, whereas "My Dog Has Fleas" doesn't seem to.  But hey, whatever works, right? 

Lanakai Tuna Uke Technology

Why am I always the last to know?  Well, it certainly seems that way sometimes.  I just found out about a new initiative from Lanikai that claims to solve "90% of poor intonation problems".  You can read about their new TunaUke Technology here on their blog.

It's a two fold process that combines a compensated saddle with one that is moveable...for each individual string!  Wow!  Now that's a cool idea!  Gotta tip the hat to the creative minds at Lanikai for coming up with one heck on an idea.  In the video below you can see this TunaUke Technology in action.  Well done, Lanikai!

Jake Shimabukuro interview on the Jim Bohannon Show

Jake Shimabukuro (whose name I still fail to pronounce correctly) is a ukulele virtuoso who has sort of taken the musical world by storm.  His beautiful and intricate ukulele arrangements have helped change the perception of the ukulele from "just a toy" to a serious musical instrument.

This past week, I was very surprised to hear one of his arrangements come over the airwaves on the AM radio station that I work for.  That interlude was followed by the announcement that he was one of the guests that evening.  Listening to him chat with host Jim Bohannon about the ukulele for over half an hour was definitely one of the highlights of my week.

I was able to find the podcast of the show he was featured on.  Here's the link to it.  Hope you enjoy listening to it....just a heads up, his interview doesn't start until 1 hour and 20 minutes into it.

Apparently, he also has a PBS special coming up on May 10th entitled "Life On 4 Strings", which they talk about a little bit.  Can't wait to see that special!

The History of Kamaka Ukulele

Was reading through a few of the blogs that I follow the other day and stumbled upon this video of the history of Kamaka Ukulele.  I found it on the Gospel of Uke blog.  Not sure how I missed this post back in February, but I'm glad that I went back to look through!  Very interesting stuff here.  Enjoy!

What is UAS? Ukulele terminology

You might have seen the acronym UAS posted on ukulele forums, blogs, websites, etc.  Maybe you're wondering what it means.  It stands for "Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome".  It happens to be the leading cause of not being able to pay your rent amongst ukulele players!

Ok, but seriously, this disease affects all ukulele players.  There's just something about these little guys that makes us all want to have another one...and another one....and another one. 

While it's a lot of fun to build your collection of ukuleles, maybe we should all consider putting the brakes on a little bit.  Do I really need

2013 Ukulele Festivals

Boy, there's a lot of ukulele festivals out there!  Barry Maz of www.gotaukulele.com has a fantastic resource on his site for finding one near you this year!  Click here to check out his calendar of 2013 Ukulele Festivals.  You can also submit one if it's not on the list.

Ukulele Sale on Etsy!

We are very excited to announce a big ukulele sale on Etsy!  We're very happy to be a part of this 5 shop Etsy collaboration which features some sweet uke accessories - tshirts, stickers, felt picks, uke wall hangers, uke stands, and ukulele carrying cases.  Check out all the shops involved and see some of their items here.  You can also go directly to each shop by following these links...

https://www.etsy.com/shop/cherijame
https://www.etsy.com/shop/JonWoodworking

https://www.etsy.com/shop/UKEonomics
https://www.etsy.com/shop/KokopelliStands
https://www.etsy.com/shop/UkuleleThreads

The sale starts at midnight tonight (April 13th, 2013) and goes through April 21st, 2013.  Use the coupon code SPRINGBREAK2013 when you check out and you'll get 10% off all items from all the shops involved.

Pre-order the Outdoor Ukulele!

 

I figured it was time for another post about the new Outdoor Ukulele, formerly known as the plastic ukulele on Kickstarter.  

As it turns out, these are going for a base price of $100 and you can order now!  Go to their website to pre-order.  These will be shipping out in just a couple weeks to those who get in on the pre-order.  Ship date is scheduled for April 22nd.  

You can even upgrade to Grover tuners and Aquila Strings if you wish for a little extra cash. 

As I've said in past posts, I'm really glad that this project has come to fruition.  Very interested in hearing more sound samples.  That first batch should provide us many clips on Youtube.