SHEEP ENTERTAINMENT : UKULELE CHORDFINDER

SHEEP ENTERTAINMENT : UKULELE CHORDFINDER

In a display of unwarranted generosity, Brother Gene presented each of his fellow Elderly Brothers with a ukulele for Christmas. I can't speak for the other guys, but I've been having a great time with mine. While searching out ukulele resources online I stumbled onto this one, from Sheep Entertainment, which is, as near as I can tell, a record label located in the Netherlands. The other pages on the site aren't in English, so I'm guessing.

The Ukulele Chordfinder site features chords for D- and C-tuned soprano ukes, and for tenor and baritone models. But rather than list a bunch of chords on one chart, the site uses an interactive display of a uke and a series of buttons in a kind of typewriter keyboard arrangement. To see, for example, a C7 chord laid out on the uke's neck, you click the C key, then the 7 key. Dots then appear on the uke's fingerboard to indicate the fingering. In this manner a broad spectrum of chords can be displayed.

The site also features a pitchpipe for each tuning and uke model. Select a tuning/model, then click one of the four pipes to hear the tuning tone.

An ingenius song section uses MP3 quality recordings of an unidentifed acoustic band playing a selection of standard folk songs. As the song plays, the chords and lyrics scroll across the screen, and the fingerings appear on the uke image at the top of the page. Fast-forward and reverse buttons allow you to go back over trickier sections.

Thinning the herd

Apparently one of the various chapters of the Elderly Brothers has decided to abandon the name in favor of Prairie Underground. We wish them a lot of luck.

OK, This is Scary

Tribute: A Rockumentary

I caught the last 20 or 30 minutes of this film last night on the Independent Film Channel. My feelings about the idea of tribute bands range from annoyed to amused, and they were certainly reinforced by what I saw in this film. The effect is similar to that of watching a particularly juicy COPS episode, one with lots of slurring, stumbling drunk guys and the women who alternately love them and hit them with jack handles.

It's bad enough that someone would want to play in a tribute band, but why, why, why would anyone pay to see one? This phenomenon should be struck solidly on the back of the head and left in a ditch to die.