V A L E R Y - - - S A U V A G E

Valery Sauvage is someone who's posted quite a bit of his interests on the internet. Although some of the information is in French Google has made it quite easy to translate and enjoy. Valery performs ukulele fingerstyle and caught my attention due to his classical performances and his performances of John King's arrangements.

Here's Valery's YouTube page:

http://www.youtube.com/user/UkeVal#p/u/12/32XyAL4uR8k

From there you can obtain this link to his website. He shows his Naive (or Primitive) art as well as his other interests... http://pagesperso-orange.fr/luthval/

Here's Valery performing some of my favorite John King arrangements...

That resonator violele is quite a beautiful instrument!

TABLATURE CHALLENGE

Think of it as SODUKO for your ukulele fingers. So you haven't tried tablature? I have found two songs that will be more familiar to the over 40 reader. Crazy Dawg has posted some very generic looking tablatures and I have chosen two of the simplest and that I found sweet sounding. You'll have to have the melody in your head first. I hope you take the challenge and enjoy these two. Crazy Dawg's TAB's are in the UKULINKIES at the right.

KILLING ME SOFTLY (KMS)
http://home.arcor.de/crazydawg/ukulele/killing_me_softly.txt

AUTUMN LEAVES (Check out the video on the Crazy Dog link)
http://home.arcor.de/crazydawg/ukulele/autumn_leaves.txt

Compare this simple version of KMS to Ledward Ka'apana's a couple of posts ago. I find it amazing that I came across this song again so quickly. I remember being about 10 years old listening to an old white boxy plastic zenith radio and it was raining outside my window. I was cleaning my Lincoln pennies for my collection. At 10, this song was KILLING me, softly. (ca. 1971)

e-mail COMMENT 7-30-09: Good starting place, says my buddy, Larry Martin "but, I think it would help if the names of the chords were written on the sheet. For many I think the words would also be a big help, as you said it would be a good place to start but, it would take some changes to make this a good teaching tool. I also went through several other songs (on Crazy Dawg), and was impressed."

I wanted to keep the beginner's eye's limited in distractions to start - but Larry, as always, is Right.

Jeff's Sidetrack (Tabs for the Violin)

Robert Plant & Allison Krause

***** THIS IS NOT INTENDED FOR UKULELE PLAYERS *****

When I was in 3rd grade I was taking violin lessons and going to John F. Kennedy elementary school in Newark, CA. My father took me on a visit so see relatives in Colorado. We saw my grandfather, Clinton Reed West, who was a painter and a lover of music. He played the violin and had an extra one that he gave to me. It was a Strativarius copy. I brought it over to Gryphon Strings recently and had a quick appraisal: made in Germany in the 1920's, low $.

I was thinking the other day, if there are tabs for the guitar, banjo, ulkulele, dulcimer then why not the violin / fiddle?

http://www.jaybuckey.com/free_tablature.htm

http://fiddleguru.com/Archive/index.html (Link Gives Error)

http://fiddleguru.com/index.html (Link Gives Error)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IifcDg6AR20&feature=PlayList&p=2BCB8372FE72B243&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=30