Thanks to “Carzand” from the Yirmumah forums for linking me to this–
This music is unusual for Japan. The singer and songwriter is Japanese. Her name is Ayano Tsuji. What makes her unusual is the instrument she’s playing. It’s a ukulele. We’d wager that Ayano Tsuji is the first Japanese ukelele player you’ve heard in a while. Let’s listen some more. Here’s Robert Rand and today’s global hit.
Ayano Tsuji says it all began in high school, about ten years ago. She desperately wanted to play the folk guitar but her hands were too small. She couldn’t wrap her fingers around the guitar’s neck. So out of necessity — she downsized: she picked up a ukulele…found that her hands could handle the instrument perfectly…loved the sweet, melancholy sound…and has been playing it ever since.
READ FULL ARTICLE
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So, a little explanation on today’s strip. I sat down to write a comic, and instead, I reached for the uke. I was thinking about the “Drew” character and how I’m not him. And how pieces of him, ARE me. How there’s this fire somewhere in his belly that just drives him, with maybe a dash of paranoia and an ounce fear, though he’d never show it….. and so I wrote a song for Drew…. see below strip for mp3s…. Plus, I wanted to be able to say “punch someone in the face” in a ukulele song. It felt appropriate.
I recorded the song for CLub members, because I was afraid to sing crappily in public. You can hear my version in the club section, because I’m still stage frought. Is frought a word? It would be the present tense of “fright”??? beats me. —- Then our good friend and reader, Eri, decided she’d take a crack at vocals, and I think she did a much better version, and she has fancier recording doodads than me, so the file size is really small too… Listen to it in all it’s glory. Give the girl some props!
- DREW’S SONG MP3 LINK
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I found a batch of these old Ukulele Comics from 1931 on ebay a while back, and have never heard anything about them. I tried researching the cartoonist “Carlton Williams” but nothing comes up. There’s a strong possibility that these are the only ones that were ever published. I also have a hunch that “Carlton Williams” is just a pen name. Many cartoonists of that day and age drew under several pen names in order to sell mulitple features to syndicates or make their “studio” seem like they had a staff of artists. Clever, eh?
Visit our UKE STORE PAGE.
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To anyone out there paying attention and looking for more uke strips…. I’ll be updating this site soon, hopefully, with a better format of some kind, and more information on the ukulele in general. Thanks for the kind e-mails and compliments regarding the uke comic strips.. It’s really appreciated!
I draw a full time daily comic at yirmumah.net, and it takes up most of my time, and ukuele is my hobby. Keep ukeclub.com bookmarked and look for changes REAL soon, as I think I’ve finally figured out CSS stylesheets and all that jazz! hahaha… Now to get with the making of more Uke comics! I know! I know! I’m getting on it!
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I wanted to share this song I play when friends or acquantices of mine pass away. I usually play it in private when no one else is around, because, well, I sing terribly. In light of Sunday being September 11th, and all the tragic losses from Hurricane Katrina, I’ve been playing it a lot lately.
The original version of this song from the 40’s, the lyrics are much different. See here. I discovered the song, only after Ukulele Eck, (Joel Eckhaus), sang it at a radio station and I caught some MP3s online—- The version presented here, is only what I tabbed out myself, who knows, it’s probably not even right, but it plays fine to me and it’s a simplified pattern for just playing along. — To help, I put up a mpg video clip of me playing this, WARNING again, I sing terribly but here you go:
http://yirmumah.net/video/ukulele.html
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This is what we like to see here at Uke-Club HQ!
HAVERFORD, Pa. - When it comes to teaching physics, lab work is certainly important. But don’t forget the ukulele.
That’s a lesson professor Walter Smith has learned over the past few years at Haverford College, where he serenades students with songs about electronics and Einstein, oscillations and Ampere’s Law.
On the first day of class Monday, Smith greeted his sophomore physics students with the “Waves Syllabus Song,” sung to the tune of “Scotland the Brave”:
Fourier Analysis! Complex functions, oh what bliss!
Eigenvalues, diff. e.q., matrix math, and phasors, too!
This is our field of study - Come on, and bring a buddy!
Don’t be a fuddy-duddy - we welcome you!
Katie Baratz, a junior who took a class with Smith as a freshman, said she didn’t quite know how to react when her professor broke into song.
“It really came out of nowhere,” said Baratz, 20. “I knew that he was very well liked but I had never heard anything about this.”
Smith said the admittedly “kooky” tunes, co-written with his wife, help students think more creatively about science. They also make the class less intimidating, he said, because seeing him sing along to a baritone ukulele - imagine a child’s toy guitar - makes him more human and easier to approach for help.
And, of course, the songs are a learning tool. Baratz recalled taking a test and “all of a sudden I would hear this song in my head” that would help her remember pertinent information.
“Physics can be very dry because it’s a lot of memorizing a lot of equations,” she said. “I think music is a very powerful mnemonic device.”
Smith, who has been performing in class since 1999, also sees his compositions as contributing to a well-established, little-known repertoire of physics- and astronomy-related songs dating back several decades.
Catalogued on his Web site, http://www.physicssongs.org , the 185-song database will soon include previously unreleased recordings from “The Physical Revue” by satirist Tom Lehrer.
http://www.physicssongs.org“>Click Here!
Lehrer, who gained fame in the 1950s, is a mathematician and musician whose works include setting the names of the chemical elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Major-General” song.
The site features songs by Smith’s students as well. Baratz and her friend Charles Collett came up with “In My Mind I’ve Got Physics Equations,” sung to the tune of James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind.”
In my mind I’ve got physics equations,
Faraday and Ampere tell you how to be where.
Governing the world we live in: this is why I care, and have
Physics equations in my mind.
Also included in Smith’s database are the works of James Livingston, who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Livingston composed either a poem or song for each chapter of his book, “Electronic Properties of Engineering Materials.”
For Chapter 7 - titled “Elasticity, Springs, and Sonic Waves” - he wrote “The Three Nesses (Stiff-, Hard- and Tough-).” It’s sung to Madonna’s “Material Girl”:
Some boys give me polymers, and want my company
Most of them are not so stiff, but nylon pleases me
Some boys give me ceramics, and most are not so tough
But I like covalent bonds, and diamonds are good stuff
Livingston said although he would hand out the verses with the class syllabus, he wasn’t brave enough to perform them.
“I don’t think I’ve ever sung them in class,” Livingston said. “I just thought they might be kind of fun for the students to play with.”
http://www.physicssongs.org
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