Live ‘Ukulele

Hippie Guy says:

Herb Ohta Jr. is one talented guy, and his new album ‘Ukulele Journey proves it over and over. This album is more low key than his last, but I think that out of all of his projects this one represents Uncle Herb the best. I also think that he plays with more feeling on this CD than any of the others.

Uncle Herb starts sucking you in with the first song, easy going “Sandcastles”. Every time I hear this song I flash back to the Kahumoku ‘Ohana workshop and all of the fun I had being around Herb and the other artists for 9 days (I miss you guys!). “Together” was written for the fans in Japan and is one of the albums fastest songs. If this one doesn’t make you happy nothing will. Ohta’s rendition of Bob Marley’s classic “Waiting in Vain” is a nice change of pace. “Holo Wa’a Pa” is played with slack key guitar wizard Uncle Led Kaapana. He and herb trade licks throughout out the song. Uncle Led’s third solo is great. Only he can slow down time like that. This album is awesome, a must-have for all ‘ukulele players.

5 stars

Best songs:

• Sandcastles
• Together
• Holo Wa’a Pa

I have had this song sitting in the hard drive for a while and just today I remembered it was there and posted it.

Ain’t No Way is one of the standards of contemporary Hawaiian music. It is played on all of the local radio stations. There is a short MP3 at Mistah Records.

The intro is very simple. Be sure to use your 3rd finger for the first slide. For the bass line at the end of the song I like to use a little bit of a palm mute and pick with my index finger.

• Ain’t No Way

~Hippie Guy

Merry Christmas!

Here is a simple arrangement of the beautiful song Ho’onani I Ka Makua Mau. I created it using a piece of sheet music that I received from Aunty Darci for choir class at the Kahumoku ‘Ohana workshop.

Tune ‘ukulele: low-GCEA

Ho’onani I Ka Makua Mau tab

The sheet shows mostly four note chords arranged for the four choir groups: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Since the ‘ukulele is so limited as far as bass notes go, I could only tab some of the tenor notes.

I decided to follow the timing on the sheet music even though some of the measures have too few notes. The notes with fermatas in the 3,5,7,and9 measures should be counted as about a whole note.

If you haven’t heard the song before, there is a video on Youtube that has the music and words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uec-x1OSAc0

~Hippie Guy

We are changing the layout of our front page, so the first thing you see now is our latest blog post. Here we will put posts about new content and tips for learning and playing new tabs.

I just put a new tab - “Together” by Herb Ohta Jr. - up on the Tabs page. The song is off of his new album ‘Ukulele Journey. I got an e-mail back from Uncle Herb okaying the tab a few hours ago. Thanks Uncle Herb!

• Together Tab

You need to play this song with a low-G string to reach some of the low notes that are in the verse and bridge. A high-G can be used but the notes will sound an octave higher than they are suppose to. I also feel that a low-G adds more dimension to a chord. Uncle Herb does not use any out of the ordinary techniques or speed, he mainly just uses his skill of playing with lots of feeling in this song (as in any other).

If you can’t figure out some of the tab symbols, check out the tab legend

~Hippie Guy