I got myself a ukulele just two days ago and have been experimenting with it. It’s a pleasant diversion from my usual weekend classical guitar practices (my teacher did not, or forgot, to assign me new pieces this week). Why a ukulele? Well, I know that Ayano Tsuji used a ukulele in the theme song “Kaze Ni Naru” for the anime “Neko no Ongaeshi” (The Cat Returns) and I wanted to get that particular sound. I bought a $40 Samick UK-60 from Davis Guitars (best place to buy guitar strings in Singapore). Not bad sounding for the price, and it’s a beauty, with natural wood grains showing on the unvarnished surface (the picture on Samick’s website does not do the real instrument justice). I hope the strings settle down soon; two strings keep going out of tune.
The ukulele is tuned a fourth higher than the 4 highest-pitched strings of a guitar, except that the 4th string is tuned one more octave higher, giving the ukulele an interesting quality of having the two lowest open strings in the middle. The strings are therefore G, C, E and A. This is the “C” tuning. The shop owner gave me the “D” tuning, which is a second higher, but I think I’ll stick with the “C” tuning as most literature on the Web seems to be using this as the basis. And yes, the uke in “Kaze Ni Naru” uses this tuning. Now I can strum along with the song. ^_^
I spent quite some time today looking for songs with suitable ukulele chords online, and also for Hawaiian songs.
There were also other musical diversions. I bought Natsukawa Rimi’s “Tida” recently which was being advertised on TV lately. It’s an album of Okinawan folk songs. Local singers Cai Chunjia and Fish Leong (Liang Jingru) recorded “Nada Sousou” and “Shimauta” in Mandarin respectively. I think I prefer the original Japanese versions.
I already knew that Final Fantasy X actually had quite a bit of Okinawan influence in the character costume designs as well as the music, and FFX’s singer Rikki also sang a couple of other FF-inspired songs in the Okinawan dialect, so the curiosity is there. (Yeah, there’s that anime/video game connection again, heh.)
While browsing on the Web for Okinawan songs, I was surprised to discover that Emil Chou’s ever-popular “Hua Xin” is actually an Okinawan folk song! Cool. ^_^
Ok, I’m going back to strumming my uke, and oh yes, Merry X’mas and Happy New Year!
hi, thats interesting to know…I love the son Kaze Ni Naru~ haha, but i cant find sheet music for the song(dont know the chords =( ) woud u HAVE to tune your guitar the way you mentioned? ^^ if you have the time you can e-mail me at: choielizabeth@hotmail.com !! thank you =D
Here is the sheet music for it. It is for the mandolin but pretty close.
http://ichigos.com/music/TheCatReturns/BecomeTheWind.pdf
I’m looking for the music to this… perhaps you can send to me as well.
imobejoas at gmail.com
Hmm, I didn’t know there were requests for chords here. I only recently turned on the feature to notify me of new comments.
Well, these are the ones I used. Play them on the ukelele if you have one to match the recording. The chord progression is actually a pretty standard one, I find them in lots of songs.
Intro:
F C F G C
Verse:
C Am F G
Em Am F G
C Am F G
Em Am F G C
F F C Am
Dm Dm G G
(I think it might be D7 instead of Dm. I’m too lazy to check right now. Please use your ears. ^_^)
Chorus:
C G Am Em
F C Dm G
C G Am Em
F C F G C
much thanks for the song tab. I have been searching for some time for this.
Wow!! Thank you so much! I found this via the ultimately wonderful Google. I’ve been wanting this so much. ^______^