Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass - the real chords

It's funny how things can get changed in translation, one of which has got to be the various versions of Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass.  Where she belts out the song in YouTube vids and she has no ukulele it could be anyones best guess as to what chords the song is in. But, and it is a small but, you can actually see for yourself by watching another video of Meghan sing this with her own ukulele, and let me say this, 90% of the YouTube videos teaching how to play this song have got it wrong. 
It is a matter of checking out Meghan for yourself, freezing the frames and looking at how she is holding the chords.  Let me categorically state, there is no A chord in the song. So those who think there is, go and get on your bike and take a long ride of a short pier, then watch the video for yourself while drying off with a big fluffy towel. For you will need the towel.

So here are the screen captures of Meghan Trainor's hands as she forms the chords, the first one is clearly a G chord. However the placement of her thumb on the G String, suggests she alternates between using a good old G major and a G add 9.  It is difficult to tell but as a first chord this looks absolutely nothing like the predicted A chord on so many YouTube videos.  I checked out this configuration on a chord finder web site and took the assumption Meghan is playing in the normal G, C, E, A uke tuning.  What however is an even bigger puzzle is the second chord Meghan uses.

Here it is:

For some reason this chord does not come up on the chord finder, it actually is not a defined chord. Saying this, I guess if you know how to play music and it sounds good the music you play does not have to be dictated by text books.  Maybe it's what makes Meghan's song sound great. I blew up this picture just to show what I mean.

The last chord picture is here on the left.  After watching the video a few times I come to the conclusion this is a D7. Megan is using her thumb to seal of the second fret of the G string. I noticed as Megan played there were moments when she flicked her wrist down after holding chords as though they were uncomfortable and she was giving her wrist a momentary break. I might be wrong in this, it could be she is adding theatrical emphasis on the beat, but in my opinion it's a wrist break because of minor discomfort.

YouTube videos are interpretations by those who post the videos of what are the true chords and beats of a song.  I've got to understand this a lot more as I've checked more and more tutorials.  There would be a favourite youtuber for me who seems to get it right but then they will do a version of a song and it just doesn't hit the spot. In which case I choose to move onto another person or even try a variation on the their interpretation so as to bring the chords or strum pattern closer to what I think the song sounds like.

When it comes down to it there is no right or wrong, there is only the method which gives you the most fun.  Because it's all about the Bass, the Bass no Treble.

Rice the gassious of carbohydrates - the fart food for short

It is normal for me to take lunch at a Chinese, but a couple of weeks ago I realised more than usual I had a whiff about me.  A kind of pong was going on. I'm sure it was related to the ingredients in the chicken and black bean sauce on steamed rice.  There is also garlic and chilli in this dish, but the pong was probably generated by the rice.  I believe rice is the food of farts. Or it is for certain western people, or maybe as said earlier it's the combination of ingredients.  So this week I began an experiment, but it was not just centred on this major culprit, I did my very best to hit every white carbohydrate which normally passed my lips. To try and find an alternative, which ultimately came down to brown bread sandwiches or rather my favourite of brown breads being malted granary. It's got grains in it and has a nice slightly nutty chewy texture. Every breakfast would be some kind of toast from this bread.  Lunchtimes were also brown bread sandwiches, I must admit though I personally don't like eating sandwiches all the time, but this experiment meant I had no alternative. I had to keep to it as closely as possible.  Figuring it would take maybe two to three days for the old food and effects to go through the digestive process.  Fortunately it was closer to one to two days.

The results were amazing, I mean absolutely amazing. A significant decrease in the number of farts. My breath didn't have a garlic like whiff to it after lunch, because I wasn't eating garlic any more. At night time I am prone to a few blistering explosions in the bed. These had nearly stopped, I was changing, no longer the epitome advert of a middle aged man with the farts, grumpy, moaning and always best to keep a few yards from. Yet at the same time I am fighting an addiction and love of carbohydrates.  I love pastries, the occasional white bread bit of toast, cakes and biscuits (which I just about keep at bay) and many other carb foods. Yet being in love with these foods is not socially acceptable, particularly if ever enclosed in a small space and feeling the urge to flatulent behaviour; it's the old lift (elevator) scenario I'm thinking about - where we have all been.  Farting means those people who are the closest to you suffer.  Unless they have some kind of sinus problem. It also means if you spend a lot of time undisturbed in a room then walk out of it and return you notice an invisible pong sits there.  Effectively you have been stewing in your own farty smell and not just breathing it, it has seeped into your clothes.  Your odour is no longer a high class EDT product nice to smell and attractant to others or so the adverts say, but rather one fat old and loyal dogs have near the end of their life, or cats. I remember Tiggy, he was a beautiful affection cat, but if you squeezed him to hard or he just sat around you purring for too long soon you'd realise his silent farts were as bad as your own.  Hetty's dog Barney was another example, he'd just lay on the floor nearby, occasionally wag his tail and occasionally drop a stink bomb.  I loved them both very much, more than anything in the world yet sometimes loving a pet can mean having to put up with a lot.  So the evaporation or greatly reduced smell around me was noticeable, certainly to me so I expect it may have been of notice to others as well.

There is only one solution and it is one which I don't like to ponder on too much. I have to give up on the high carbs.  Closely examine the glycemic index and fight my own addiction to food I have been brought up on.  Which at times is like trying to fight a sneeze. It's not easy, definitely not easy. I'm sure it is to do with the conversion of sugars during digestion and blood sugar levels, with this is the need to diet and exercise. Words which are like garlic and holly water to a vampire. I truly think controlling food intake and living a healthy life is probably the most difficult thing to do in the modern day.  Just looking at the bulletin boards of people affected by this phenomenon leads me to know I am not alone, if only I had a buddy I could talk to whenever the urge grabbed me, like an emergency service number.  But it seems with the number of fat farty people about these are rare individuals. The thing is you need someone who has been through the same experiences as you have, not one of those hypocritical skinny people who has never felt the cravings of a carb addition, not someone who has never experienced stuffing their face and still wanting more.  I need to stop this rant and get out for my Sunday walk, which is late now. At least outside I know there is a lot of fresh air. This room is starting to get a little stuffy.

Meghan Trainor and the ukulele

Ever since I began my love affair with the ukulele, I've kept an eye out for hit music where the ukulele plays a part and the most recent song which has a ukulele version is none other than Meghan Trainor's All About The Bass. She plays the ukulele and sings the song and it sounds bloody brilliant, but she does have a very good voice and this is without voice synthesisers.  She just has a very good voice. Although the version below is sung in a studio, Meghan has a number of versions on Youtube, one of which you will find is the first time she sang it in public, in Nashville which was on the 16.07.14. (UK date format).

 

It is great to see the continuing rise of the ukulele, going from strength to strength, this is a versatile and portable instrument which deserves a place in the heart of everyone interested in music.  Here is a list of other popular songs where the ukulele plays a part.

Hey Soul Sister - Train

You and I - Ingrid Michaelson

Somewhere over the Rainbow -Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole

Five years time - Noah and the Whale

Rise - Eddie Vedder

You belong to me - Stevie Martin (Film The Jerk) written also by Eddie Vedder

The above songs actually have the ukulele in them, but nearly every song which is out can be played with the ukulele and I would say some are certainly disposed to doing a pretty good rendition on the ukulele, for example: I'm Yours by Jason Mraz, Ho Hey by the Lumineers, I Will Wait by Mumford and Sons and lastly Hey there Delilah by the Plain White Ts.  (Nearly forgot Amanda Palmer who sings a lot of songs on the uke). All these are very hip songs, quite contemporary and not too difficult to learn. Even if the mixing of singing and ukulele playing can be difficult to begin with, it's fun to try and one thing I have enjoyed is laughing at my self when I do try.

When I discover new pop music it has now become a habit to check and see if there is a version of someone doing the song on a ukulele and most of the time there is one. There are some great, easy to follow tutorials as well. A number of Youtube teachers break songs down into the simplest versions and in getting started these are definitely the place to start.

So without a doubt this BLOG is an advertisement for the most beautiful and easiest of instruments to learn music and song on (in my opinion) the ukulele.  Mine is called Harvey, and I have another called Bertha, but not yet a third.  In the evenings you will find me, strumming away, watching youtube vids and even trying to sing along. A lone man and a uke, fun, funny and very satisfying.

Holding a fist up to the clouds and rain

Sometimes you can do the right things and it's still not possible to get sleep. This happened last night. Sunday I did the usual walk, this was three hours long, then it rained.  Wonderful. I got wet and carried on, fortunately not drenched but nearly drenched. It was the intermittent kind of rain, the kind which wasn't sure in the first place whether it would come down because it felt so comfortable up there in it's soft fluffy but rather grey looking cloud. Yet it had to rain just to show it was real and the cloud cover was not the kind which just wanted to have a joke, it needed to prove a point. An endearing point, fortunately not too enduring for me. My coat is not of the expensive type which repels all known germs or rain but rather an off the peg and temporarily does the job but doesn't like to be overworked, in short it is an indolent coat when it comes to rain and will give in after a period of time. Consequently there seemed to be a wet patch on my back, even though I had a ruck sack.  I could of easily held my fist up to the sky and damned it to high hell and back, just like a character from Forest Gump, however this act might of looked a little over dramatic. Well certainly to anyone who saw the crazy man with a ruck sack on his back shaking a fist to the sky. "Come on give it to me, give me all you got, you bastard little rain drops. I'm a man, I can take, damn you wet droplets to hell where you may become steam and evaporate, damn, damn and treble damn you." Well, perhaps a little over the to and possibly worthy of an ambulance and being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. All for the sake of a decent rain resistant coat.

Well never mind, it's a new day. Off to work I go, hi ho, hi ho followed by achoo. The revenge of the rain a never ending cold which has so far lasted about 4 weeks.