It's amazing how the world has changed for ukulele players in the 35 years I've been playing. Back in my formative years in the late '70s and early '80s, there wasn't any YouTube or iTunes or Ukulele Underground. There was no way to find ukulele music (if it was in fact being recorded) and I had never met anyone who played anything on the uke except 1920s songs.
So, in the early 1980s, armed only with a 1920s Martin M-2 soprano, I was trying to create my own repertoire for ukulele. That was my only uke for my first 10 years of playing, and my primary uke for my first 20 years. I wrote lots of music on it.
"Pilgrimage" was written around 1981. I noticed that lots of New Wave songs had a bass or rhythm guitar repeating a single note in eighth notes, so it was acting as a drone in addition to supplying a rhythm. I wrote several ukulele songs in the early 1980s where I purposely left the G string open, throwing other chords against that G note to create and relieve tension. A couple of the other songs where I did this that are on YouTube are "Ukephoria" and the intro and bridge of "Dog Head".
Ukephoria: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kliIGzW6d5I
Dog Head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HucBmVIrjJI
There's two full run-throughs of "Pilgrimage" on the video. If you prefer tenor uke, watch the first half -- I play it on my Kawika. If you prefer soprano, jump ahead to the 3:45 mark and I play it on the Martin M-2.
