Category: ukulele stories

  • 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…