Adie sent me a link to his new video showing his new baritone ukulele. He writes...
"This is my new handmade Baritone ukulele made by Davide Donato in Italy under the Herrmann Guitars brand. Davide usually makes soprano and tenor ukes but agreed to build me a baritone to my specification, so this one sports a 001 serial number! It has walnut back and sides, abete val di fiemme on the top, and is fitted with a K&K twinspot pickup. In the first section of the video I have it set up in soprano tuning with a specially designed Aquila string set, and the 2nd section is in baritone tuning with D'addairo strings. I have used a micro cube for the 'plugged in' test. You can check out Davide's uke's on the Herrmann website here..."
U Da Mann... Mann electric Baritone Ukulele... WOW.
I have been trying to stay away from the blog for a while because I have been working on some extra projects that have come my way recently requiring me to work evenings & weekends. I hope that my sense of an economic upturn is going your way too. You may not see too many posts over the next few weeks from me but I had to post this unique electric baritone ukulele. I don't know the price but I am guessing it's pricey based on it's beauty and plethura of electronics.
Sometimes I think that I'm going to hear a plinka-plinka style performance and then I am pleasantly surprised. This is one of those moments. I would like to hear some more of this soothing fingerpicking duet.
So I occasionally check the stats for the blog and find that many of you are making use of the very limited selection of songs on the "DGBE Songs" page obtained by clicking the tab above. I am very glad that you are and I want to increase this list. I sent a beautiful vintage Harmony baritone ukulele to my son Joshua W. in Indianapolis, so that he and my grandson Caden can learn and share some music together. I have a second vintage Maxwell baritone ukulele that will be on it's way too.
One of the things that I want to do too is figure out how to store PDF files so that I can share some of the arrangements that I've worked on with you too. Is anyone knowledgeable on a solid site for the storage of pdf's that I can get an WWW link? If so, please leave me a note. Perhaps some of you have an arrangement that you've worked out on the bari buke (big-uke) that you want to share. Who knows?
So this post says "Heartwood Guitar" and I wanted to share it because it looks like another quality site. Take a look at the link below. Notice the guitar chords and how you can understand the chords in a bari sort of way for the most part. Next notice the strum pattern and that there's a link to help with the pattern as well. Lastly the arrangement is pretty detailed.
Yeah for Michelle!!! This is an excellent quality video and it shows well on a full screen. I have been a fan of Michelle for quite a while. I have also have a "The Barried DoGBonE" page for Michelle that compiles several of her songs. What a sweet a capella intro...
I often don't comment on videos. I guess I am more of the hunter-gatherer-type but I am amazed that Mathias works over that Mahalo Buke the way he does. I usually find these Mahalo Ukulele frets sharp on the edges to slide your hand along. Perhaps he's done some magical luthiery on it. I am always so impressed when I watch talented musicians with a mastery of their instruments -- even more so when it's a $60 instrument!
In these Spring Breakup videos we see a casual relation between two musicians and their instruments. Words woven together with deep emotions tucked into those homemade threads of woolly life stories. I am glad to come across several of their videos since none of them are marked: bari, bari-uke, or baritone. (Sometimes you get a lucky inspiration.) The instrument is just the vehicle for the music. The mastery of any instrument results in a mesmerized audience. I enjoy the easy going connection between these musicians and those present to hear -- it seems all are welcomed into this music.
I went to Lil' Rev's workshop at Mike DaSilva's Ukulele Building Workshop yesterday. I never miss a workshop with LR when he comes around for his annual visit. He's an amazing talent, teacher and story teller. The workshop was on Jug Band Songs on the Ukulele. He is constantly teaching player development skills and written several music books for Hal Leonard, including "101 Licks For the Ukulele" which is a great one to have in your library. (NOTE: It is in GCEA tuning but worth studying.)
He borrowed my Favilla baritone ukulele, tuned it DF#AD, and played one song in his mini concert after the workshop. Hopefully a little of his magic has rubbed off on my bari.
Rev. will be heading North towards Sacramento, beautiful seaside Mendocino, and then up to Oregon and Washington before heading to the Reno Ukulele Festival in Nevada on April 1st. Be sure to check out LR's Calendar.
I gotta say this is a very fun duet with solid vocals and sound effects. I hope we hear some more from this duo. Made me smile. What a good vintage rock song choice...
John Prine seems to be a master of verbal imagery and adult humor. My friends Vince Tuzzi and Celina Gutierrez performed a great duet at the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz but it is hard to beat John Prine himself singing with Iris DeMent.
I am not sure what tuning this is from this Canadian player from Toronto. But the clawhammer sound is pretty mesmerizing...
Here's another medley... Sally In The Garden and Rocky Mountain Goat. The uke is tuned (low string to high string) CGCD. (Perhaps it's tuned the same way above.)
The Haunted Windchimes played at The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz last night. I have been planning to see them for about two weeks. The Crepe Place has quite a small performance and audience space and the environment was fairly intimate. As a baritone uukulele player, you know there aren't many chances you get to see a band member performing on bari-uke.
It turned out that THW where scheduled later in the evening than I expected but I had Robbie and Jenna hanging out with me to enjoy the first Bluegrass duo and they were quite talented with guitar, mandolin and banjo. They swapped instruments regularly and my honey voiced friend Robbie was thrilled with the quality of their harmonies.
I am not the greatest at categorizing music but I was thinking it was a combination of Roots, Folk, and Jug Band with great vocals and sweet harmonies from Desirae & Chela. Their website shares,
The Haunted Windchimes sound draws from traditional folk and American roots music. The songs have a vintage quality, as if they might have been written yesterday or 75 years ago. Grounded in honeyed harmonies and spirited pickin’, it lies in a nowhere land between distinct styles: It’s not quite bluegrass or blues or country. Still, there are elements of all those in songs that paint pictures of empty train stations and nights of passing a jug of moonshine around.
So I took a moment to give greetings to Desirae Garcia, who plays the bari in the band. Her bari is a beautiful 50's Vega baritone ukulele that was promoted by Arthur Godfrey on his TV show in the mid to late 1950's. About half way thru their song set her D-string broke. Someone was trying to find another bari D-string but it wasn't to be found.
I had my 1950's Favilla in my trunk just a block away so I got it and brought it over to Desirae to use. Unfortunately she was confused by my Worth Medium Brown strings since they were an all-nylon-unwound set. She got playing again after a couple of songs, perhaps getting a guitar string to place on her bari. Later she told me that she played DGBE and she explained her confusion about the unwound string set. I told her it WAS a DGBE set. (That's the first negative I've found with these strings, sorry Worth.)
This video below gives a bit of a close-up on the band members...
So after reclaiming my Favilla and purchasing THW's new CD called, "Out With the Crow," Sean, the upright bassist in the band came over to check out my baritone ukulele. (Sean is walking behind in Desirae in the video above.) He is a big ukulele fan & player and apparently the band luthier. (He actually responded to my comments to one of their YouTube performance videos saying that the band really liked the big uke.) He had to perform several repairs on Desirae's Vega bari-uke when it had an unfortunate spill. He had a soprano ukulele and soprano-banjo-ukulele at the back of the stage area but were not used in tonight's set.
I let Sean know that there will be a Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz meeting tonight at Bocci's Cellar. He wanted to know the specifics and I hope that he'll get the chance to attend. HU.
The Band
Inaiah Lujan (guitar)
Chela Lujan (banjo)
Desirae Garcia (baritone ukulele)
Mike Clark (harmonica, guitar and mandolin) also fiddle and concertina!
"As many of you know, I absolutely love the baritone ukulele. I wanted to learn a traditional Hawaian song to dedicate to my friends who live in the islands. For those of you that enjoy details... I am playing it with a capo on the 5th fret to tune to a standard ukulele chord structure and a more traditional sound."
This week has something unique, the precise arrangement is being played on the standard GCEA ukulele. Here Roger is using his Tri-TAB arrangement style that works the same for both high-G and low-G tuned ukuleles because the song is played on the CEA-strings. It also works for our DGBE ukuleles since playing it on the baritone ukulele just shifts the key a bit lower and the GBE-strings. This is great for solo playing.
Link to the PDF-Minstrel Tri-TAB. (Tri-TAB is played on 3-strings, GBE)
Link to video of Roger Ruthen's PDF-Minstrel arrangement. It will give you a chance to see hand movements as well as hear the musical timing.
*****
I am including a classical guitar performance for your listening pleasure too.
So I was at one of my local "Candy Stores," Gryphon Strings in Palo Alto and bought myself a present for my 51st birthday 10FEB61. Bruce jam packs information in his books. It is a guitar book but as you know, I am always searching for anything with a sufficient amount of DoGBonE knowledge. (In case that's too obtuse, I mean related to the DGBE strings.) Also his 88 pages of knowledge are selling for $16.50 -- Gee whiz! Is that a deal or what?
So, if you're into developing your Blue riff skills, I would highly recommend taking a good solid 10 minutes at your local music store thumbing through these pages and notice... (to be continued).
I have a feeling this image must be of a baritone ukulele player. I have been trying to reduce the amount of books I have stored in my house. So I was going through some boxes stored in a closet and found this old Yoga Journal from Jan/Feb 1994. I see that it was given to me by my old friend Hans Joachim Franke.
I had heard that the Kingston Trio had regularly used a baritone ukulele. This video shows a 4 string instrument but is it a tenor guitar or a bari-uke? I am leaning towards a TG. Is there anyone that knows any better? The second video shows the instrument on the album cover early in the video.
I recently attended a weekend workshop put on by members of the Silicon Valley Ukulele Club. The club is well attended and has a few events each week. If you are local take a look at their site...
Joy sings her original song during a packed out "Table Top Session" evening performance at the absolutely beautiful and unique Tellus 360 located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Saturday 7 January 2012.
Joy Ike on ukulele and lead vocals.
Peace Ike on djembe and percussion.
It is not easy finding the best baritone ukulele videos but it is real satisfying when you find a treat like the videos below. Often they're hiding on YouTube without "baritone" or "ukulele" tags. Here's some great tunes from a concert at the Island Bazaar in Huntington Beach, California April 3, 2011.
You might have noticed my failure to have a song for last Monday. I have been dealing with an upturn in the economy and had some project meetings to attend in San Francisco. Roger has a variety of songs on his pdf-Minstrel site and thought this song would add some variety. I had a hard time finding a video but found one with a guitar player again.
This traditional Irish arrangement is full of HO's and PO's and is in 6/8 time. It is under the flatpicking heading and so there is a steady down-up-down to up-down-up OR d-u-d-d-u-d / d-u-d-d-u-d. Explore it. This is quite tricky! I wonder if the PO's (or pull-offs) are just released or if they are to be plucked with the fretting finger? Also the video below is not flatpicked but fingerpicked. Was this challenging for you?
Are you also noticing the growing amount of bari-uke players? I know I must many of the baritone videos that don't tag "baritone" and "ukulele" but I am always surprise to find new names almost daily. This Sierra Graham sounds professionally produced to me...
"Raisins played by Nigella (song by the Bare Naked Ladies) on Baritone Ukulele. This was made in about 30 minutes goofing off with a green screen (more like a sheet), National Geographic cut out pictures, a crappy digital camera and iMovie. The Curt Cobain hair was courtesy of forgetting to use shampoo after a swim."
"A great song by the Dutch band Lucifer. It was a hit in the Netherlands in 1975, topping 4th place in the Dutch Top 40. Originally sung by Margriet Eshuijs, it remains a Dutch pop classic."
I have seen a few old Tenor Guitars lately and they were tuned DGBE which is not the common tuning but it can work. You get quite a sharper sound out of those narrow gauge steel strings. This Stella is a beauty.
