the wonder and majesty of the ukulele

[jrtom]

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain performs Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" [Google Video]. The vocalist isn't great, but it's otherwise quite interesting as a performance.

Jake Shimabukuro plays George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" [Google Video]. V. impressive.

Comments

Tags

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

My friend, you have a tag for uku...uka...ukulele.

That disturbs me.

Re: Tags

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I created that tag for this post. Basically I mostly use tags in case I want to find things later, and it's always nice to have a tag that will allow me to track down the item if I can remember _anything_ about the original post.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Well, it's certainly better than the Tori Amos version...

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Actually, I rather like the Tori Amos version; it's haunting. True, if you're a grunge purist (!) it's, well, not grungy, but on the other hand the lyrics are comprehensible. :>

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

True, it's good as far as Tori Amos songs go (I'm not a fan), but I wouldn't call it the same song. It's not just a cover, it's an entirely new interpretation/arrangement/whatever.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I like some of Tori Amos' stuff, at least.

Distinguishing between a "cover" and an "arrangement" is a tricky business for pop music, where there's often no published sheet music or orchestrations. I guess perhaps the distinction might be intent: do you intend your rendition to be a reproduction of the original (cover), or are you taking the original melody as a framework and adding your own variations (arrangement)? To complicate matters further, I think that the two words are largely used to refer to performances in different genres, i.e., "cover" in pop/rock/whatever's currently hot and "arrangement" in classical and jazz, which makes resolving a definition more problematic.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I guess perhaps the distinction might be intent

Yes, that was my point.