Title: A Flying Leap
Artist: James Hill
Label: Borealis Records
Year: 2006
Click the image above to visit the product page on Amazon.com
Tracks:
1. Uke Talk (2:11)
2. Song for Cheri (4:23)
3. Down Rideau Canal (3:36)
4. Little Wing (3:09)
One Small Suite for ‘Ukulele:
5. I. Allegro con brio (3:30)
6. II. Largo cantabile (3:54)
7. III. Vivace giocoso (5:09)
8. Fleas My Dog Has (2:32)
9. Skipping Stone (3:16)
10. Never On Sunday (3:15)
To celebrate the holidays and the opening of the Ukulele Review website, I’ve decided to hold a little contest. All you have to do is to write a comment to this post, listing the ukuleles in your collection and which one is your current favorite and why. Then on Friday 12/28/07, I’ll pick one random winner from everyone that has posted to win the prize pack listed below…
My buddy Mr. UPS man dropped a box on my porch this afternoon. The ‘fragile’ stickers all over it told me it was my new uke! I didn’t waste anytime opening the box. By the way, who else hates styrofoam peanuts as much as I do? 
After digging around in the packing material, I pulled out a Black canvas case. Darn, I was hoping for a hard shell case. I’m not a fan of these zippered cloth cases… mostly because I have a cat and it seems that these cases are like a magnet for dust and cat fluff. I think this is a might be a good excuse to buy one of those cool tweed style cases from Bushman! Anyway, enough about the silly case, here’s my new concert sized KoAloha ukulele.
I’ll admit that before buying it, I wasn’t really a fan of the look of this ukulele. I’ve seen it in different YouTube videos and in pictures on the web and it didn’t really do anything for me. I’m happy to say that seeing it in the flesh is totally different. This is a very nice looking solid Koa wood instrument. Even the fret board is Koa.
Ok, that’s all you get from me about this instrument until my full review. Look for it in a few weeks. I need to break it in first 
Ok, maybe I shouldn’t call this posting an actual review as I only had this instrument in my hands for about an hour before I boxed it back up and shipped it back to ukulele4u. I ordered it because I wanted to find out if a soprano sized ukulele felt ‘better’ to me than a concert sized ukulele. My first uke was/is a concert sized Pono. Ever since I bought it, I kept wondering if I had chosen the wrong size to learn on. I tested a tenor and found that it wasn’t to my liking, so the Kiwaya KTS-7 caught my eye and I decided to give it a shot too.
In my YouTube ukulele video travels, I kept running across banjo ukulele videos that had me very intrigued about this hybrid instrument. Most banjos have 5 strings and are not tuned like a ukulele (GCEA). Since I have always wanted to learn to play banjo, and am now also learning to play the ukulele, I figured it would be a no-brainer to get a banjo uke too.
A quick search on google yielded a company called The Bean Sprout Banjo Ukulele Company. Their instruments look wonderful, but are a bit over my budget right now, since I have two regular ukuleles on order. So I decided to wait awhile… But that didn’t last long before I spied the Woodstock Banjo-Tam on eBay one day. With a price tag of only $24.95, I was pretty sure it would not be high quality instrument, but hey, people buy Mahalo ukes for about the same price and I see people playing them on YouTube all the time. So I clicked the Buy-it-now button and waited for it to arrive in my mailbox.
For those of you that are not familiar with the acronym UAS, it stands for Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome. It’s a horrible malady that strikes a large percentage of ukulele players. It’s unavoidable really, so if you think you’ll never catch it, you’re just kidding yourself
Presently, I only have one uke in my possession (two if you count the Banjo-Tam that I received yesterday… so yeah, one uke…). It’s a concert sized Koa Pono (PKC 1-E). I also have a concert sized KoAloha on order, that should arrive in the next week or so. Those are both production made instruments though… I’ve since ordered a custom made concert sized Boat Paddle uke from Jerry Hoffman. I’m excited about the non-standard shape of his instruments, and the fact that I’m getting to pick every detail. Since I will already have two koa wood ukes, I have opted for a Boat Paddle that is constructed with a Mahogany top and back, with Maple sides and fretboard. It’s going to be unique, just like me
The only hard part about ordering a custom made instrument, is waiting for it to be born… According to Jerry, mine won’t hatch until sometime early next Spring.
Anyone else out there already have a Boat Paddle uke? If so, please share your opinions.
Opening the mailbox when I come home from work each night, is always my favorite part of the day. When I opened it today, I found a very oddly shaped package. It took me a few moments to figure out what it might be and then I remembered a recent eBay spree and immediately knew what it was… A Woodstock Banjo-Tam. I couldn’t resist the cute looking little instrument and the price tag of $24.95 allowed it to be a spontaneous purchase.
What is a Woodstock Banjo-Tam you ask? Well, it’s a 4 stringed banjo, it’s a tambourine, it’s a Banjo-Tam! Isn’t it obvious?
It’s cute, but how well does it actually play? Was it worth the $34.95 that I paid for it ($10 for shipping)? Find out this weekend when I post a full review of this little guy. Until then, has anyone else purchased one of these instruments?
Do you need some inspiration to practice your ukulele? If so, spend a few minutes watching some YouTube videos of some great artists. If these people don’t get you to open that case or gigbag, then you’re doomed…
Back in the stone age when I was learning to play guitar, there were only two ways to tune an instrument. By pitch pipe, or by ear. I wasn’t good at either method and was always frustrated that my guitar sounded ‘funky’ when I would play it. Years later, when the first electronic tuners were introduced, I was over joyed. Finally an easy way to keep my instrument in tune. They only problems with those tuners were the fact that they were somewhat bulky and required either a quiet room or a patch cable to connect to the instrument’s pickup. Things have changed since those days. Now we have nifty strobe type tuners like the Waves Strobe-On-String tuner that I reviewed not long ago and the Intelli IMT-500 Digital Chromatic Tuner that I’m going to show you today.
When I first became interested in the Ukulele and bought an instrument, I was concerned that I would have a hard time learning to play it on my own. I knew my small town would not have any teachers, and I was pretty sure that books and instructional materials were hard to come by for what I thought was an obscure instrument. I’ve since learned just how wrong I was about the availability of self-instructional materials on the market. There are DVDs, Books, websites with free tablature and YouTube tutorials just to name a few. Today I want to tell you about yet another category of media that can help an aspiring uke player to learn their craft… eBooks. eBooks (otherwise known as electronic books), are the digital counterpart to regular printed books. One such book is the How To Play Christmas Ukulele compiled by Al Woodshed of Uke Hunt and How To Play Ukulele websites.
