We just held our February drawing for the Hal Leonard Ukulele Chord Finder book.  I'm happy to announce that ukulele student Andrew Harris is the lucky winner!

If you entered the drawing (all you had to do was sign up for a lesson or send me an email asking to enter), you can check to see how the drawing was conducted:

This drawing was held in a fair and unbiased manner using RANDOM.ORG's Third-Party Draw Service. For details, please see the drawing's record.

The March give-away will be a set of Aquila ukulele strings.  So keep coming by for lessons, or just let me know if you want to be entered in the contest!

I played with Book 'em Danno this past weekend (August 16) at the New West Fest.  The music was sponsored by the Bohemian Foundation, and they did an outstanding job.  Props go out to Courtney and Carson and the sound guys at the Old Town Square stage.

The day was perfect: sunny skies, temperature in the mid-70's, a covered stage (it's the little things that count), and very cool artist passes.  Everyone made us feel like we were special.  The sound crew worked hard to make us sound great, and there was even a green room catered with very ono grinds.

We've started recording our next, still untitled CD.  I'll be blogging as we make progress, and even post a few snippets of songs we're working on.  The first one you see above is a Hawaiian language tune called "Papalina Lahilahi."  We perform it pretty traditional Old School style, but we add in a nice swing backbeat inspired by a version by Peter Moon.  I've shamelessly stolen some of his licks, too.

We've laid down the backing tracks (scratch track, rhythm ukulele and guitar, bass), and we've got a pretty good steel guitar recorded, too.  I'm sure it'll be a few more takes until we're happy with the leads, and then it'll be time to records the vocals.

Let me know if you have questions about the recording process, and I'll share my experiences with you.

Here's where I try to make the hard-core Peterson Strobe Tuner fans jealous.  The picture on the right shows me tuning my ukulele with the iStroboSoft app on an iPhone 3G.  I have the Peterson TP-2 clip on contact mic and the Peterson audio jack adapter for the iPhone.  I ordered the adapter on the Peterson website ($17.94 with shipping), the Peterson TP-2 Tuning Pickup on Amazon ($12.63 with shipping), and got the iStroboSoft app ($9.99) on iTunes.  Total cost for a genuine Peterson tuner: $40.56.  The iPhone app works fine without the adapter and clip-on mic, so you could just get the app for $9.99 and have a super-killer deal on a Strobe Tuner.  Nice!

Book 'em Danno played a fun gig this past weekend at the Lundeen House (famous bronze sculture artists and foundry owners in Loveland, Colorado).  What a gorgeous property right off the Big Thompson river!  It was a benefit for the Boys and Girls Club of Larimer County.  Kathi Wright, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club, welcomed us with the Aloha Spirit. Good food, too, from the Outback Steak House.  They really treated us right. Sometimes it pays to be a musician :-)

Well, my first attempt at recording student lessons had limited success, to say the least.  I think I successfully recorded only one "full" session with a student.  The other times I tried recording the lesson I would only get about half of it before the recording program went south.  Grrrr.

So this time, for sure!  Riiiiiight.

Seriously, this new App I got really seems promising.  Since I'm still working out the kinks, I'll be recording the lessons as complimentary learning material for my students.  Let me know what you think.  I'm open to suggestions.

This isn't an Apple commercial, but if you don't own an iPhone you might want to skip this article.  There's something coming that I think is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we'll see in the future.