 Okay, this is Eucalyle for Dummies. I'm Peter Thorley. You might ask why Captain Proton? Okay, Captain Proton is a character in the much underrated Voyager series, a holodeck character. But mainly it's because you use a bit of schoolboy physics. A proton is always positive. Look at the atomic nucleus there. Okay, and I come from a sort of science-y background, so dealing with a 140-year-old piece of technology and mastering a musical instrument are going to have to have as much positive thinking as I can muster. Okay, Origins. It was invented by a bloke called Manuel Nunez in around about 1880. He was a bloke from Madeira, the island of Madeira, but he went to Hawaii because they had problems on the island. And the thing is about islands is they've got a good source of hardwood, but in small quantities, so there was never going to be lots of guitar makers. He was a master craftsman, and he's the first to give it a Hawaiian name, Eucalyle. They said it meant jumping flea or something similar, whether that was true or not, I don't know. It started off sounding a bit like this, something like that. But if you move forward to the 1920s and 30s, jazz was a big thing in America. Musical was a big thing in England, and Eucalyle is not as a portable instrument. It's easier to play than a guitar or something similar. It become very popular. Shown there is George Formby and his wife and manager, Beryl. He portrayed himself, he was quite a clever man and good musician, but he portrayed himself as being a klutz that always got the girl, and he did get the girl in this case, but I think she busted him around quite a bit. And in any case, the sound varied a little bit, and jazz has got a lot more chords in it, and it would be something more like this. So that's like a George Formby style solo bit. But then if you were actually going to sing along to it, you wouldn't do any of that. You'd play it a lot softer, and then try and sing over the top. Famous Eucalyle players, you might recognise some of these. So, top row, Elvis Presley, got George Harrison, and Marilyn Monroe. Got Peter Sellers. Does anyone recognise the last one on there? No, it's in the dark. Steve Martin. I'm not sure what film it was in there, but he does actually play Eucalyle. So, following in there, footsteps, but anyone can be a Eucalyle genius. He's got the deliberate error in there. Albert Einstein was not a Eucalyle player. He actually is really good at playing violin. But I'd just like to imagine him sitting on a beach drumming away. So, a bit of a Eucalyle anatomy, and see we've got a couple of Eucalyle players in there. We've never seen these things before. So, if you come from a techy sort of background, as I do, then all this stuff's completely odd to you. It's a hardwood instrument, but it has strings that used to be made out of gut, and they're now sort of nylon or plastic. You have a nut, and you have a bridge with a saddle on the end. The bridge has the end of the strings attached. The saddle sits on the top of it. It goes over the nut to these things, which are tuners on there that are used to have adjusted. The tune is a bit odd with the Eucalyle, compared to a lot of instruments, because the low note is this one here, which is the second one down. And that top one there is actually a G. So, it's a little bit different from a guitar, and that gives it a sort of unique, sort of bright sound. It's a jolly sort of sound. It's not desired. Eucalyle is a folk instrument, in my opinion. It's not designed to be taken too seriously, and I pox on everyone that does take it too seriously, because it basically puts people off trying to play the thing. Okay, if any of you are into maths, you'll see that the frets are in an odd position on there. There is a logical reason for it. I don't know if any of you are mathematicians, but if you look at that equation, you'll see the north fret is actually this nut that's at the top. And then the twelfth fret, which is usually all you've got on Eucalyle, is actually going to be half the length of the string, and that goes round about there. So you've got an A there, and you've got a high A in this thing. So it's got a very, quite a small sort of range to it. Okay, so you're interested in buying Eucalyles. This is what I would recommend. I've made a homemade one, and I'm really, really proud of it, but I'd recommend for a start-off, you don't do that. You buy a good quality hardwood Eucalyle. I'm not sponsored by Kala, but if they want to give me a free one, that's absolutely great. They're not that expensive. Clip-on-tune is the other thing. This is a piece of technology they didn't have when the Eucalyle was invented. It means that you don't have to be, you have perfect pitch to be able to tune the thing. It's very, very easy to use. The other advantage with it is you can have a lot of noise going on and have this clipped onto your Eucalyle, and you can tune it. So if you're actually thinking about doing it for a performance, you might be coming on literally after somebody else is talking or trying to tune it up while someone else is talking or playing something because you don't want anything that's going to be disrupted by sound. These are really good. Don't go for a tune-up for that same reason because if there's a lot of noise around it, it won't work. Cheap Eucalyle, great for playing around with, but don't try and learn on one in my opinion. It's better off spending a little bit more money on a good Eucalyle. You see that one's been quite well-worn. It's got scuff marks on there. Useful, you definitely need a chord chart. You need to learn where the chords are because that is the advantage of the thing, as well as being able to play individual notes. Dead easy to form a chord, much easier than the guitar because you've only got four strings. You've got four fingers, four strings. Dead easy. You can download all this from the internet. Holding soft case is really good. I mean, you're going to need to move it around from one place to the other. I've come here on a motorbike, so strap it on a motorbike and off you go. The case can even go on your back and you can go backpacking with the thing if you want. A mandolin strap and pin. If you are standing up to play and a lot of people will want to, it's sometimes difficult to pin the thing in this position. If you get a guitar-style pin on the end and then you tie the thing around underneath the string there, you can support it. It makes a hell of a lot easier to play if you want to do it standing up. Sound recorder or recorder app. That's very important. I tell you why, because you might want to sing along with your ukulele playing. And there's no way of you telling how good your singing is unless you record it and then play it back. It's completely impossible. Music stand is really good. You never know what you're going to get if you want to go and play somewhere or other. If you're indoors, a school music stand, one of the little flimsy ones is absolutely fine. If you're outdoors, it's completely useless because of the puffer wind and the thing just gets blown away effectively. I would also recommend a bit of old technology, a book. Now this is a bit where I plug my book but like the square root of minus one for all you mathematicians amongst you, it's imaginary. So I'm going to recommend somebody else's. This is Pretel, Pinney's and Hodgkinson's, the ukulele handbook. It has everything in there you might want to know. When it comes to songs, my recommendation is you pick songs that you actually know and like. The internet is something that didn't exist when the ukulele was invented. Use it, go online and get all the stuff you want. Check out Githard, George, he knows all the chords. You're not going to know all the chords because there's an infinite number of chords you can pick but the more you can remember, the better. So you've got major, seventh and minor chords. You can learn these ones. It's not too difficult to do. So there's four chords. Quite often they're marked showing where the finger positions are on the thing. But everyone's fingers are different lengths. So it wouldn't take too much as gospel. If you find it's easier to do a C using your second finger, then do so. It's up to you to discover which one you want to do. If you're left-handed, then you've got two options. You can just play it the other way around the chords upside down, so to speak. But it's a symmetrical instrument so you can take the thing apart and then rebuild it with the strings around the other way. So you can effectively make it a rotated ukulele or a mirror image ukulele. So this is how you do it. I wouldn't recommend any other way of learning the things to start with. You don't really want the chords in the text. It's much easier to write it above. You can write it by hand. You can read your own writing, stick it on the music stand. You can do any of the songs you really want to do. You can download from the internet. So you start off going Now you might have spotted problems with that. I know what the problem is. The problem is I'm standing on the stage in front of you lot. So I'm nervous. I need some sort of relaxation exercise. Now for you it might be yoga. It might be meditation or it might be sex. But for me that's my relaxation technique. So a little bit of that and then go back and try again. Now you notice I'm letting the back of my hand hit the ukulele and I'm skipping bits and making some sort of backbeat but it's still a bit fast. Relaxation technique again. So I'll try this again and I'll try and sing a bit as well. Here's a little song I wrote you might want to sing it. No, no, don't worry. Be happy. That's a world better isn't it? So done relaxation technique. How good a singer are you? I'm not sure if I can actually master this one but you try the Star Trek test. I think I might have failed that one. If you've got perfect pitch you'll succeed with it. And the false and prison test. Train of common rolling round the bends in the sunshine since I don't know when I'm stuck in false and prison time keeps dragging on down the sand and tone. You must agree that sounds a lot better because I actually picked something that fits my voice. Now using your sound recorder you can then record that and then play it back. There's something else I want to mention that I'm on stage playing this as an individual. It's far better if you're with a band. Preferably with a band with someone who's a really good singer. And also the other thing I'd recommend is if you've got a band, you have someone that plays a bass. Ukulele is a very high-pitched instrument. I know you might think it's cheating but if you've got someone who plays a decent bass then it's going to make all the difference, trust me. Providing you're doing quite you think you're doing quite well. You might want to do an open mic. Now the best open mic I've come across is in Salford. It's called the Old Pipe Pot in Salford. But if you want to play and it's quite popular you're going to need to book advance. If it's online then contact them and say you have a slot on there. They will tell you how long you're on for. You might do three numbers or something. Use the equipment the organiser gives you and don't complain. I can make myself very unpopular here saying everything has to be done the way I want it to be. But that's no good. You've got to work with the equipment they've got. And the other thing is three. Match the performance to your audience. For example I've done playing in a church hall and you wouldn't go something like why don't you respect you play little bits and bobs of heavier stuff but you don't do heavy metal and bash a thing to death. Match it to your audience. Now imagine there's some geeks in here so I've got a number from the master of this thing. It's quite tricky that would go down quite well with your techie guys. It's a tribute if you like to an earlier Russian invasion of Morby 911 in the 1980s by a bloke called Alexei Perziknov. I might not have heard of him. You might know of his work. A friend of mine sent a friend up on me from up above they come down and I spin them around then they fit in the ground like hand in glove they come down I spin them around they fit in the ground like hand in glove sometimes I think two arranged blocks is fine now I see that I have misjudged it I should not have judged it after all still I am the man who arranges the blocks that descend upon me from up above and I spin them around then they fit in the ground like okay there's lots of different types of ukuleles I'm gonna go through gonna go through all the different types variants and give you the Captain Thorley seal of approval number one is the GPU ukulele okay GPU ukuleles quite often very glossy I put stickers all on this one they're great for hanging on walls okay but they're not all that good to learn how to play on if you can already play a ukulele they're absolutely great they go out of tune extremely quickly and the glossy paint on it and varnish it actually dulls the sound so I wouldn't recommend that so that's second one the plastic ukulele the advantage of this it's waterproof other than that the third one is a solid bodied electric ukulele which if you want to play rock and roll music that's really really good I mean it's no good for doing sort of like 20s and 30s stuff but for rock that's absolutely great and it sounds a bit like an electric guitar so that gets my seal of approval fourth one is a travel ukulele now travel ukuleles are smaller than the standard ukulele and they're a little bit more expensive but they're just as loud and play exactly the same so if you're backpacking or you want to travel across the world and it sits nicely in your case without getting damaged then that's great so that gets my seal of approval next one on the bottom row is a eight string ukulele a bit louder a bit more complex I think unnecessarily complex so that definitely I would go for that one next one is a pineapple ukulele well you can see I like them because this is my homemade one and they're a little bit bulkier okay and a little bit of a lower tone but they pretty much play the same as a standard one so that definitely gets my seal of approval the next one is a concert ukulele which is a bit longer and you've got, it would be a bit louder but there's lots of shiny stuff on it which actually didn't sound as well that costs about four times as much as a standard ukulele so I would not give that my seal of approval okay next one is a banjo ukulele as popularised by George Formby and people like that if you want a sort of like a 19-20s jazz entertainer thing or you are busking out of doors then that is absolutely great I mean I could probably play to this number of people without any sort of amplification you know it might hurt your ear drums but it's not a very melodic sound I mean you wouldn't want to serenade somebody or send a baby to sleep with it but other than that great seal of approval and the deliberate mistake is a balalaika on the end there not a ukulele at all but if you get a chance to play around with one great okay so I am going to try another little song if I can get this right a bit of ukulele physics I would like to imagine what different people would play ukulele like if they could play music so this is Brian Cox so fucking effect a Lancashire accent this is a song about the paradigm shifts in understanding brought about by the study of the gravitational force that holds the universe together in 1666 an apple fell on Newton's head when he was sitting out upon the lawn when he walked from his kip he gave him a pip and thus the law of gravity was born he said this law is true I am telling you it applies to pairs of bodies everywhere the attraction you can state is proportional to their weight in accordance with my little rule of inverse square but now we know that his celestial equations are really on occasions but they daft I am impressed I would never have guessed when an object moves it's heavier than the end of the dress the laws of perihelion motion have changed our cosmic notions now can be compared one night in my observatory we'd reached an impasse now tell me what's the matter said the lovely young lass I said it's latent energy condensed into mass because E equals MC squared it never varies equals MC squared not on your nelly equals MC squared equals MC squared turned out nice again hasn't it ok and the other thing the other thing I would mention about you Kaleilis a little bit of time left is the old line make him laugh, make him laugh don't you know everyone wants to laugh use some humour in it you say we're not trying to be plainly Albert Hall and impress people people are going to be lucky to get a pint of beer for plainly you Kaleilis from my experience ok so enjoy it you know use humour if you can't get people to laugh doing something that's mildly funny then broaden your humour up so I'll try this one see what I think of this one this is a cowboy tune an Essex chicken farm went out one dark windy day by the coop he rested as he went out on his way went all at once some chicken shit flew into his eye it was the sight he dreaded most ghost chickens in the sky chickens in the sky while he'd been raising chickens since he was 24 he'd worked for Colonel Sanders for 30 years or more yeah raising all those chickens and sending them to fry but now the chickens want revenge ghost chickens in the sky ghost chickens in the sky so sound to be reminder if you want to turn old peace don't raise up harmless chickens and cook them up in grease a chicken that you may someday kill for a chicken might want vengeance a potato never will in the sky their beaks are black and shiny and their eyes are burning red they had no flesh or feathers cos these chickens were all dead they carried off the farmer he died by the claw they cooked him extra crispy and they ate him with coarse law the sky in the sky ghost chickens in the sky ok so that's pretty much the end of my little talk if you want to know where that was that is the Junction Highway 1 and 8 in Mississippi which is where Robert Johnson is supposed to have sold his soul to the devil in return for playing a good player I've played a ukulele on that that poster whether it's worked or not it's up to you I'm going to play an old favourite to finish you off and then I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening there's some music there I will be going to the Geiger counter workshop so it's one thing I like more than ukulele is that sources of iron eyes and radiation and then going into pubs so if you'd like to have a look at this thing I'll talk to you about it then I will be around in the woods among the evergreens stood an old cabbie made of earth and wood lived a country boy named Johnny B. Good who never ever learned to read or write so well but he complies you couldn't be good he used to take his ukulele in a gun inside sitting beneath a tree by the railroad track old engineers see him sitting in the shade strumming to the rhythm that the driver made people passing by would stop and say oh my, but that little country boy could play down in Louisiana close to New Orleans in the woods among the evergreens stood an old cabbie made of earth and wood lived a country boy named Johnny B. Good who never ever learned to read or write so well but he complies you couldn't be good he used to take his ukulele in a gun inside sitting beneath a tree by the railroad track old engineer Johnny B. Good Johnny B. Good you're a really wonderful audience you really have