Ukulele Fans: This Is What You Get

I said I’d do it, and I done did it.

I recorded two songs on the ukulele, and I even sang along. Let’s listen together and let the embarrassment potential be damned.

The songs can be found here:
https://www.nicehat.org/ukulele/This_Is_What_You_Get/

The first song is a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” which I’ve been known to play occasionally. It’s only 4 chords (with an occasional 5th chord just for fun), so it was actually one of the first songs I taught myself. It’s just me and the ukulele. I’ve since found a few covers of this song including even one on the ukulele by Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls. For those wondering, I do the radio edit because it’s a frakkin’ family show godsdammit. Sorry, I just miss Battlestar Galactica already.

The second song is a cover of Radiohead’s “Karma Police” which I found a decent chord arrangement for, and at Julie‘s suggestion I jazzed it up a little bit. It’s just on the edge of my singing range, so I suggested Julie sing instead, and I dare say she did a much better job than I could. Listen especially for the line “her Hitler hairdo.” It’s positively dripping with überhotness. Interestingly enough Dresden Dolls also covered this song. I was not at all aware of this before recording them. I think it’s interesting that these are the only Radiohead songs they’ve covered, and these are the two I chose to do.

The “album” –I guess it’s more like an extended single or EP–I’m calling “This Is What You Get” after a lyric from “Karma Police” — also Julie’s excellent suggestion.

I did all the recording in Apple’s GarageBand using the microphone from Rock Band (it’s USB, after all) and a Tascam US-122 fancy mixer dealie that I bought for recording a while ago that I’ve done next to nothing with. It has two 1/4″ instrument cable inputs and two XLR microphone inputs and goes out through USB. I do have a proper XLR microphone… somewhere. The ukulele is the “Surf Flea” from Flea Market Music that has a passive pickup built in so I can play amplified or record directly. The chords for Creep and Karma Police are found on ultimate-guitar.com

I’m wondering what songs to do next. This is fun.