Category: Musicology

  • Must-share flotsam: Dylan and the Band live

    For your listening pleasure, this Bob Dylan and The Band 1969-1970 Compilation DVD:

  • Ukepalooza remixed

    At long last, the entire Cheeses & Tequila set from Web Directions in ’10 is available, now with multi-camera intercutting and rockstar-like fretboard closeups!

  • Tomorrow’s the day my bride’s a-gonna come

    I’ve been messing around with the Bob Dylan song “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” which was popularized by the Byrds, among others. Six years ago I posted some vocal and baritone uke musings to this blog and promptly forgot about it. Then the Reuben Kincaid started jamming together and we broke this song out once or…

  • Probably time to break out the Edirol

    I love the spontaneity of recording the band on the phone, and the quality is really not bad, but I’ve got a nice compact digital recorder and I should be using it.

  • I must admit I felt a little uneasy

    Sometime last year I was messing with the changes to “Tangled Up in Blue” by Bob Dylan and worked out a somewhat comfortable way to play it on the ukulele. I put down a basic rhythm track with a little bit of fingerpicking on it, doubled it (there are, like, nine verses) and then sang…

  • I kind of wanna, wanna drown…

    I kind of wanna, wanna drown…

  • I like to watch things on TV

    Recently Cecil aka Dan aka Cecil suggested that the Kincaid cover a Lou Reed song I’ve loved for quite some time, “Satellite of Love.” I’ve been working out a ukulele part and the other night in my hotel when I couldn’t sleep I spent some time putting together a quickie solo version of it: Satellite…

  • Genghis Khan and his brother Don…

    The fourth and final song from our Ukepalooza set was the oft-recorded Dylan classic, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” a tune close observers of this blog and my ukulele adventures would know I’ve been working on for years (it’s really easy to play!): http://www.youtube.com/v/o_iB4BEGv9w

  • Another day come and gone, oh well

    The third song in our Cheeses & Tequila set was a semi-obscure number by the Replacements called “If Only You Were Lonely.” For equal time I’ll post the Vimeo version here (but then I’ll go and “like” the YouTube version so it shows up on Facebook where people actually notice when I post something):

  • Finest girl in the world

    My partner in Cheese and Tequila, Bill DeRouchey, has been busy putting us up all over the interwebs, so as a followup to that vimeo embed from yesterday of Bill singing the punk classic Anarchy in the UK, here’s a youtube video of the second song from our Ukepalooza set, Big Star’s “I’m in Love…

  • My life, cheeses and tequila

    Samantha Soma, the lovely the talented bride of my partner in ukulele crime, Bill DeRouchey, shot some footage of our Ukepalooza act at WebVisions, where we debuted our duo act known as Cheeses and Tequila. Bill has now chopped it up into four video segments (one for each song) and posted them to Vimeo, so…

  • A full schedule at WebVisions

    Arrived in Portland yesterday and did some prep for one of my gigs at WebVisions, the Ukepalooza set I’m playing with Bill DeRouchey as the duo “Cheeses & Tequila.” This morning Erin and I are teaching our Designing Social Interfaces workshop. Tomorrow is Ukepalooza, and then immediately afterward I’ll be doing my aptly named Designing…

  • (Here Comes) The Reuben Kincaid!

    So sometime back in the previous millennium a bunch of us technical-publishing bohemians were sitting around wasting time as we were wont to do, coming up with band names, which reminds me of xian’s law: “There are more good band names than there are good bands.” One of the ones that I suggested that our…

  • Four-alarm pentatonic ukulele chili

    My #uke4geeks talk at South By was so hot it set off a false alarm. We persevered, and prevailed, a small band of die-hards, many of whom brought their own axes (next time we set it up as a hootenanny?), and here are the slides I spoke to. I’m already revising them based on flow…

  • Coming this Friday to SXSW: "Ukulele for Geeks: Secrets of the Pentatonic Scales"

    “At first glance the fretboard of a ukulele (or guitar) looks incomprehensible, but with the magic of pentatonic scales – ancient, nearly universal 5-note patterns, you can “crack the code” and hack the fretboard and start jamming along with your favorite tunes or musician friends in no time. “You don’t need to know the names…

  • A book for those who got in the bus in the '80s

    … As we know, it couldn’t last. It was a bubble of sorts, but its surface tension held for a crucial stretch of years, long enough to sustain this pocket of the counterculture until reinforcements could arrive, tune up, plug in, and rock out….

  • Video of Uke for Geeks talk at Ignite Sydney

    A month or so ago I posted my slides and some photos from my Ignite Sydney talk. Today I just noticed that the video was up on YouTube (yays). Unfortunately, there’s a person’s head obscuring the view of the ukulele for most of my talk, and I kind of start ignoring the slides after a…

  • Ukulele for Geeks, live in Tokyo

    (A few snaps of my talk from the Tokyo 2.0 PechaKucha night the other evening.)

  • Ukulele for geeks: secrets of the pentatonic scales

    My Ignite Sydney talk last night was fun (for me, at least). Here are my slides: Ukulele For Geeks: Secrets of the Pentatonic ScalesView more presentations from Christian Crumlish. Here are a few audience shots. The first is from a warmup: This one is from the actual talk: Dag, my chrome dome has almost completely…

  • Space blues redux

    You Don’t Love Me (Live 1971) by The Allman Brothers Band Big Day At The Bay by The Mermen Mannish Boy by Jimi Hendrix

  • Still with that spacey blues theme apparently

    Celebration by Courtney Wing Seasonal by Brian Deer White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane I’m So Glad by Eric Clapton Gold And Silver [Instrumental] by Quicksilver Messenger Service