beginning ukulele resources

i borrowed an instrument for the summer from Nick

 

sorry for the terrible lighting and picture quality, but i'm enamored with my new Magic SmartPhone right now :D

it's tuned like the ukulele (well, with low-G / low-4th/ linear tuning instead of the standard reentrant C tuning)

and here are some of the resources I've been using to learn ukulele. I have some advantage in that I already know how to read sheet music, play piano so I can play strange rhythms, and also got some tips from Nick introducing me to things like what are picking patterns and hammer on / pull offs. but essentially i'm a complete beginner.

top 100 ukulele sites: http://www.topukulelesites.com/


well-done online tuner: http://www.get-tuned.com/online_ukulele_tuner.php

excellent video course: http://ukuleleunderground.com/courses/beginner/ includes "ukulele minutes", short videos for when I'm feeling scatterbrained

excellent pdf and other resources: http://ukulelehunt.com/2010/02/24/beginner-ukulele-lessons/

more resources, these tend to be videos: http://www.ukuleletricks.com/ukulele-lessons/

This video was excellent ("in 10 minutes"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APYXhN8yUg0

[Edit 12 Jun 2013] Another excellent site: http://www.ezfolk.com/uke/index.html

Then for some tabs:
Excellent stairway to heaven tab: http://ukutabs.com/l/led-zeppelin/stairway-to-heaven/

The only other full tab I found on that site, but I don't recognize the song, is Blackbird: http://ukutabs.com/t/blackbird/

Folk music tabs: http://www.kenmiddleton.co.uk/Pages/FreeTabDownloads.aspx
(from: http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?38750-Folk-music-on-a-ukulele)

Canon in C: http://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/mrpook-canon-in-c-ukulele-easy-tab-s91563t0

and others here: http://www.songsterr.com/a/wa/search?pattern=ukulele

including the crazy while my guitar gently weeps:
http://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/jake-shimabukuro-while-my-guitar-gently-weeps-ukulele-fingerstyle-with-intro-like-in-sungha-jung-2006-version-tab-s381032t0
that is apparently a "rite of passage" for ukulele players

easier but still beyond my current skill level: http://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/mrpook-kiss-the-rain-ukulele-tab-s381443t0

low G tabs: http://pdfminstrel.wordpress.com/2-standard-high-g-ukulele-pdfs/low-g-ukulele-tabs-3/

I don't really get the "tabs" that only have chords. Am I supposed to sing the song and strum the chords? =__= I suspect that's what's expected, but I'm not much of a singer and I don't know many songs well enough to sing their melodies.

Ukulele underground also does play along videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTFRfFKBl2U

And some inspirational videos:
Let's Dance (bukuro) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqaYmQZgrB4
I'm Yours (Sungha Jung) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2OEuyF_2u8
and the classic, While My Guitar Gently Weeps (bukuro again) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k

Hrm, in the meantime, a gazillion projects. More later...


=====
Notes to self
=====
http://www.kenmiddleton.co.uk/Pages/FreeTabDownloads.aspx

Arkansas Traveler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5JP0LsH76Q
wut. in this version this guy is playing the harmonica and strumming the ukulele at the same time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qaK5WishAA
Ashokan Farewell (difficult)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr-ddFZVrtE
Concertina Reel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJL7GFHJpcA
Down by the Salley Gardens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-al5oqt3nyM
Fanny Power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlNx_POdIms
(campanella? http://ukulelehunt.com/2010/03/31/campanella-ukulele/)


On the issue of linear (what I have, low-G) versus reentrant tuning:
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-52942.html?s=08b159867035343637fc184b0323f4d6
" Songs written for ukulele, especially the early classics from the 20s and 30s nearly always sound better on a reentrant uke. So do bluegrass songs when strummed. Songs written for guitar, rock, blues, etc seem to sound best when played with a low G uke."
"Check out Herb Ohta Jr. if you're looking for a specific artist. He's the top dog when it comes to plain, beautiful low-g 'ukulele work. Something like his "Sand Castles" is a brilliant piece."

More tabs:
http://www.chiefnoda.com/ukulele/ has low-G pieces


=====
Bookmarks of what I'm learning next:
=====
http://ukulelehunt.com/2008/10/22/ukulele-strumming/
http://ukuleleunderground.com/lessons/how-to-switch-chords/

fcpx and external hard drives on a mac; or, film editing at MIT: project dx/dt

I'm working on documentary on how sexual violations have affected the MIT community (https://sites.google.com/site/projectdxdt/). More about it someday (edit: you can read my co-producer Chacha Durazo's blog post on it here: http://blog.chachadurazo.com/2013/05/project-dxdt.html). But the screening is in two days and we've just started editing. (Edit: film will be released online within a week. Edit: up at www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIuN7AgpaLAg).

There is a Macathena cluster on campus in building 26 with the video editing software (super fancy) final cut pro X installed. perfect!

Well, some hitches. I had to backup everything off my external hard drive and format it to be some special Mac format, otherwise the hard drive appears as read only on the Mac computers.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25066

http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcpx-bug-best-practices-for-using-external-hard-drives-and-final-cut-pro-x/

Of course, the point of this is to make sure I can back-up my "project" files in fcpx (the native file format, in a sense). I was going to set my scratch disks onto an external hard drive (http://uncw.edu/filmstudies/tutorials/fcpsdhdd.html) but,

According to
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1139827 seems like I shouldn't do all my editing on an external hard drive connected via USB. as of 2011 at least... probably when I bought the drive

Edit your project on a different computer

http://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#verb8e5fcf4

What the heck is with the different import formats?
Looks like for best quality, since I have plenty of hard drive space, I should go with "optimize" checked (but I can also check proxy media at the same time? What does that do? Mostly I want to know the effect on the final output and the effect on how long I have to spend waiting on the spinning cursor...)
http://www.larryjordan.biz/media-in-fcp-x/

Ran into this issue where all the export options were grayed out (and importing had not changed in hours in background tasks list)
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1199680


http://www.larryjordan.biz/fcpx-position-tool/

Editing audio keyframes
http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcp-x-audio-tutorial-part-3-using-final-cut/
(hit "r" for the range, then just drag the audio level bar up and down)

Censor effect under "stylize"
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3165223?start=0&tstart=0

Compressing files .mov to mpeg4
http://askubuntu.com/questions/25514/how-can-i-maximum-compress-video-files
==
Time:
backing up files from external hard drive to local scratch disk - 40 minutes (so all files are local for editing)
importing files into final cut from local scratch disk - 11pm to ?

Export 38 minute video, full size (master, same size as source video) to external hard drive= 1.5 hours
==
Previous blog post about fcpx:
http://orangenarwhals.blogspot.com/2013/02/softwareprocess-for-making-videos-for.html