The Tanglewood Cove Creek - I Finally Succumb to its Wiles!

Back in March - the 21st March, actually - I wrote how I'd been wowed by a Tanglewood ukulele in one of the local music shops. It was the Tanglewood TU7 XM Lacewood concert.

Well... more than two months later... it is mine.

I hadn't gone in the shop to buy it - on the contrary, I went in to buy the little Ashton union flag soprano uke as a gift for a friend. But the action at the nut of the little union jack uke was a bit high, and Mike the guitar techy who served me obligingly offered to file the slots down a bit.

That's when it got me. The Tanglewood. I wasn't even playing it.... after all, I'd decided to save for a nice solid wood tenor, most likely an Ashbury solid rose cherry... anyway, I was playing around while I waited on a very pretty solid koa Luna tenor with a pickup - £350 - more than I would, spend anyway... when I heard a lovely sound that jerked my head right up - and it was the Tanglewood Cove Creek I'd been so impressed with before. Bright but liquid, bell-like... and it has the long neck, 14 frets up to the body.

Then came the coup-de-grace - the offer of the sort of deal that's hard to refuse.... but I didn't give in without a fight. "Will you throw a gig-bag in with that?" Done.

So that's how I came to return home with my lovely Tanglewood Cove Creek "exotic" wood long neck concert uke. For a laminate ukulele, it really is lovely.


As for LSH...well, he really doesn't understand. Non-players don't; simple as that. But I'm happy with my little collection of ukuleles; I've put a low G on my original Greg Bennett so I can experiment with jazzy chords, as recommended by Glen Rose, as well as start trying to tackle John Moen's tab of the Bach Prelude for Cello piece - one bar at a time. My little blue Mahalo soprano is handy to leave lying around just anywhere, and hand over to interested friends... and as for my lovely 1920's Slingerland Maybelle banjo-uke - well.... she's going with me to Blackpool this weekend... to play with the George Formby fans at the meeting of the GFS!

If someone had told me six months ago that I'd be doing that, I'd have said they were mad...for my generation, for whom the Beatles and the Stones were nothing short of gods, George Formby was the antithesis of Cool... but watch this space, I'm going for it!

A new Ukulele Hero, with Jazzy Ukulele - Glen Rose

Busy day, quickie post - you'll see I've joined the Top 100 Ukulele Sites; did it a few days ago - have been staggered to see us climbing up to number 28 today - amazing! I think it's down to the great videos of my ukulele heroes! But going down the list of websites there, I came across Jazzy Ukulele, by Glen Rose. A new hero for me.

He's a jazz man. You know, all my life, jazz has been one of the few genres of music that I declared I didn't like - but I do love those jazz chords... the quirks inside the chord that take them out of the normal triad.... and the way a progression of jazz chords creates tension and then resolves it. Music is such a weird thing, the way it affects you...

Glen has a couple of fantastic free videos on his homepage. I watched them both and would recommend... I learned a lot. He uses a low G string - go on, read his page!