'Ain't She Sweet' - work in progress

I've been working on this a few days now. No vocal on account of fighting bronchitis.

Ukulele is a $26 Mahalo U-30 soprano, on which I've re-cut the nut slots and compensated the saddle (and intonation is dead on to the 5th fret now, and past that it's about 4 cents sharp), and it has Worth Browns LIGHT (BL) fluorocarbon strings.

Recorded on iPad3 with the Apple camera app.

Suggestions, feedback and constructive criticism are most welcome.

Enjoy!


http://youtu.be/oA-x6PVcaiQ

Wow sounds excellent, specially for a dolphin! Nice!

Happy song so the only recommendation is to smile

nongdam said:

Happy song so the only recommendation is to smile

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Thanks! You've confirmed what I was thinking as well and was too lazy to fix...

I was so intently focused on 'trying to get it right' for the camera, and this being the 3rd take, that was in fact the only thing I would have liked to be different, was to have a happy face...hopefully next time I'll another remember to smile or do another take.

Olarte said:

Wow sounds excellent, specially for a dolphin! Nice!

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Thank you for the kind words.

Actually Kala makes the Dolphin via their Makala line, this uke is made by Mahalo, which is regarded almost as a throw-away due to the poor out-of-box chinese factory setup, or lack of setup all together.

I bought it since it was so cheap, and was not sure if I could ever play soprano scale and did not want to spend $100 on a Kala or Luna...

After learning and improving my ability to fix intonation issues at the nut and saddle, primarily by using info from 2 videos provided by fellow UU brother OldePhart (John), I went to work on this uke, and now the intonation is much better, and the BODY resonates an insane amount with these strings on it, but you really can not hear in the video, but in person it is not as bright and has a warmer tone (which I prefer) than with the Aquila Nylguts which were so bright and scratchy that it was like nails on a chalkboard to my ears....now it has a sweet tone, and ringing sustain.

Also these strings have very little tension (which is odd to me because I like my concert and tenor ukes strings to be really stiff), as such it takes the smallest amount of finger pressure to fret the notes, now that the action is 1.2mm at the 1st fret, and 2.2mm at the 12th fret, and due to the improved intonation, I can actually TUNE the thing to itself with the 5th and 4th frets like you would tune a guitar to itself, and the octaves and unisons all line up tight, all the way up to the 9th fret, so I am actually very happy with this $26 cheapie soprano now, and I consider myself lucky to have been so successful on my first try to re-cut the nut slots - but that is mostly because I had such a great teacher (OldePhart)....

lots of goodness has come from being a member here....

Nice! I need to learn this one

Just out of curiosity; does the WIP include lyrics at some point?

igorthebarbarian said:

Nice! I need to learn this one

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If you have Jim & Liz Beloff's 'The Daily Ukulele' (which has 365 songs in it), 'Aint She Sweet' is on page 16.

It's 8 chords, but they are not hard ones.

Phluffy the Destroyer said:

Just out of curiosity; does the WIP include lyrics at some point?

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Hi Phluffy,

Do you want the lyrics, as in the words for the song, or are you looking for a vocal to go along with the uke playing?

The lyrics are freely available online if you search for them, and as far as a vocal from me right now, I am sorry to disappoint, but that's going to have to wait since I am still struggling with a very severe chest cold and singing is simply out of the question due to the terrible coughing fit that occurs...but a full performance will be in order once I recover.

In the meantime, maybe one of the 14,700 videos of this song on youtube might tide you over?

One of the first results is from fellow UU brother Jazzbanjorex, where he is giving a tutorial.

If you really want to watch me try and sing (ha ha), you can check out my previous videos for the UU Seasons contests.

-Booli

There are already lyrics to the song. So far you've chosen not to vocalize those lyrics, and thus they remain lyrics. Should you choose not to vocalize the words of the song in your particular version, then your version, your WIP, would not include lyrics.

Semantics...

Good luck with your cold. I hope you feel better soon.

Hi Booli
Good vid, just starting out on uke and learning this, can't imagine being able to play this at the speed you played it on the vid, but then you said you played it much faster. Still it's something to work up to!!
Graham

gat said:

Hi Booli
Good vid, just starting out on uke and learning this, can't imagine being able to play this at the speed you played it on the vid, but then you said you played it much faster. Still it's something to work up to!!
Graham

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Hi Graham,

Thanks for your comment.

It's not a hard song to play (for me at least) and sounds better on a uke with high-G (re-entrant tuning), which are my soprano and concert scale ukes, but on tenor with low-g it feels like something is missing to me.

This is one of the few songs that I prefer on high-G, and am starting to see why lots of folks prefer high-G.

Eventually I want to work a medley of this song and 'Yes Sir, That's My Baby' (page 278 in 'The Daily Ukulele') as they work well both in subject matter of the lyrics, as well as musically in that they share many of the same chords, and would be an easy transition...

Now I just need to find a third song for that medley...

The third song is Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue...