ClassicalCode

As part of the “Backyard Sessions” which I posted about earlier, we also recorded this take of my solo ukulele version of Never on Sunday.

I take my ukulele with me everywhere I go. One day when I was sitting in the back of a bus on Height street I struck up a conversation with a guy who apparently also played. I let him take my instrument for a spin and he played this tune (which I new from the Chordettes recording). I loved the way it sounded on ukulele so I went home and figured it out for myself.

Video credit: Beau Lambert

Chelsea’s videographer friend Beau Lambert was recently staying with us and graciously offered to record a few songs. Beau set up his camera in our backyard and Chelsea and I thought up a few songs that we could record. We only did one or two takes of each one, so the whole ordeal was really just informal and fun. Hopefully you will enjoy. Oh, make sure to pay attention to Chelsea’s hand-drawn title cards!

Chelsea’s parents, Tom and Grace, wrote the “Nammies Song” to help their kids go to sleep at night.

“The Diaper Changing Blues” was written by Chelsea’s mom Grace, for Chelsea’s little brother Thomas who was not fond of having his diaper changed.

“The Beard Song” was one of the first ukulele songs I fell in love with on Youtube. It was written by Rocky and Balls. Check out the original.

As I have been exploring what can be done on the ukulele, I have become more and more enamored with the sound of jazz chords on the ukulele. Listening to Lyle Ritz’ remarkable recordings with just ukulele and bass have inspired me. This is an arrangement of my own devising of a song that I have loved for a very long time.

Please excuse the synthesized drum and bass, they are the best I can do. For now…

Here is an audio only mp3 for you to listen to or download:

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To raise money for her graduate school audition tour, my girlfriend Chelsea and the amazing pianist Stephen Damonte, put on a fundraiser recital. I joined her for the Fly Duet from Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers in which Jupiter disguised as a fly (myself) seduces the innocent Eurydice (Chelsea). If you want to help her achieve her goal of going to graduate school, you can donate at her website.

Fly Duet from Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers:

I head an old NPR interview with Lyle Ritz about his album “No Frills” where he recorded several jazz standards in Garage Band over synthesized bass lines he entered himself. It was so clean, approachable, and free of pretension that it inspired me to fire up Garage Band and record this song I have been playing with for a while now.

“Love Is a Song” from: Walt Disney’s Bambi:

Words by: Larry Morey
Music by: Frank Churchill
Ukulele: Kala Curly Mango Soprano (Christmas present)
Drum loop: Garage Band
Bass: Recorded in Garage Band using a midi keyboard

Audio only mp3:

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On New Years Day my brother, Nate, and I spent the day relaxing with my girlfriend, Chelsea, and her room mate Joel. It was a lovely day and in the evening we decided to record a song. We decided to record (and film) The Beach Boys’ song “In My Room” by Brian Wilson and Gary Usher. We were quite lucky to find a transcription of the voice parts here.

The results:

Also available as a free mp3:

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Cast:

• Ukulele – Jordan Eldredge
• “Fat Congas” Cajón – Chelsea Hollow
• Tenor – Chelsea Hollow
• Tenor II – Joel Klein
• Baritone – Jordan Eldredge
• Electric Bass Guitar – Nate Eldredge
• Videographer – Nate Eldredge
• Millinery Supplier – Alison Sheehan

While I was home for Christmas, I was watching lots of ukulele videos on Youtube. Somewhere in my wanderings I came across the Risa Uke Solid and my mind was blown. It’s a small electric ukulele made out of a single solid piece of wood and some hardware. The simplicity of the design made me think: “Hey, I could do that” and so I began thinking about how I could make a simple electric ukulele myself. Two days later, with lots of help from my dad and his tools, I have a working electric ukulele made from stuff I found around my parent’s house and a set of $4 ukulele strings. It’s currently fret-less and the pickup leaves a lot to be desired but my goal was really to create a mock-up so that I would know what I was doing when I built the actual thing.

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Inspired on my previous experimentation with parallel fifth harmonies, and my new ukulele (more on that soon), my dad and I recorded this version of Mary Had a Little Lamb where I sang and played the same song a fifth above. He was playing his guitar and singing in the key of C, and I was playing my ukulele and and singing in the key of G.

I know I am stretching this backwards-alphabet-songs thing, but I am at home in Petaluma and had time to kill.

Here I sing the alphabet song with the melody backwards, the words backwards while showing solfegge hand signs and conducting.

Inspired to further acts of nerdome by the encouraging comments on my last post, I decided to learn to do something I have been thinking of doing ever since I saw Paul Kim do it at a party. Sing the alphabet song backwards. Not just sing the letters backwards, but the notes as well. So last night I sat down, figured out how it would go, and started memorizing it. This morning, to nerd it up just a little bit more, I leaned to sing it while showing the solfege using hand signs. I then took my new camcorder into Golden Gate Park and recorded myself doing it. The park has the advantage of having actual sunlight while still having some privacy and quiet. Also, it’s pretty. Here are the results:

Due to a bug in iMovieHD I was unable to reverse the video so you could here the original melody, but here is the audio reversed:

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