I recently saw a very cool music documentary on PBS (WMHT – Albany, NY) about ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro from Hawaii. He not only plays traditional Hawaiian music, but he plays many different styles of music on the uke, from classical to rock, etc.
The film “Life On Four Strings” was shown on WMHT on March 11th, 2013 (PBS debut). The “national” debut on other PBS stations is on May 10th, 2013 (don’t miss it).
As a supporter of WMHT I was inspired to donate for this particular “pledge drive”, since it provided a CD and two tickets to see Jake Shimabukuro live in concert at the “Troy Savings Bank” Music Hall in Troy, NY on April 27, 2013 @ 8 PM. I very much look forward to this show.
Here is a video of interview with Jake Shimabukuro, by Jeffery Brown of the PBS NewsHour.
Jake also provides chord charts for the Ukulele on his website! When I looked these over, the fingerings are similar to guitar chords on bottom 4 strings. The main difference is the chord names. For example, the C Major chord on the ukulele has similar fingering to the 4-string version of G Major chord on guitar. The same goes for most of the other chords (hmm … I’ve seen those chord fingerings somewhere before). That entices me to look into learning more about the ukulele!