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\u201cThere are basically three different melodic themes that are going on throughout the song, and what I love about them is that all three of those melodic themes can all be stacked upon each other, and they work so well (together),\u201d he explained. \u201cI take all three parts and I just layer them and stack them on top of each other. I play each part separately, of course, throughout the song, but then at the end, I just stack them and layer them up upon each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking in broader terms, Shimabukuro describes the decision to record another artist\u2019s hit as the musical equivalent of a sports fan wearing the jersey of a favorite athlete.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a celebration of your admiration and respect for that artist. So when I get to do a lot of these songs, I get to put on my Taylor Swift jersey, I get to put on my Ariana Grande jersey, and just kind of celebrate their music and their artistry and their incredible talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shimabukuro also enjoys the challenge of recreating in concert the multitrack arrangements he creates in the recording studio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a device called a looper, which allows me to play something and record it in real time, and then I can stop the recording, and then have whatever I just played play back, and it\u2019ll just keep repeating itself,\u201d Shimabukuro said. \u201cThen I can add another layer, and then I can add another layer, and another layer, and it\u2019ll just keep stacking these layers over each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat gives a really cool effect, but it\u2019s basically like multitracking, like what we do in the studio, but it allows me to multitrack in real time. The looper allows me to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shimabukuro\u2019s skill at reworking the hits of other artists was the thing that launched him internationally \u2014 outside of Hawaii and Japan \u2014 in 2006. A recording of him playing George Harrison\u2019s 1968 Beatles hit, \u201cWhile My Guitar Gently Weeps,\u201d originally filmed for a New York television show, became one of the first viral videos on YouTube.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorge Harrison was a big fan of the ukulele, so I think there\u2019s some kind of magic behind interpreting one of his songs on an instrument that he appreciated. I never got a chance to ask him, but I always wondered if he got the ideas for some of those songs, like \u2018Here Comes the Sun\u2019 or \u2018Something\u2019 or even \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps,\u2019 tinkering on the ukulele because they work so well on ukulele; the chord voicings are so natural (and) they just progress so naturally on that instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrison, who lived for many years in Nahiku, Maui, died in 2001, and Shimabukuro never had the opportunity to talk music with him, but he has a good working relationship with Harrison\u2019s widow, Olivia Harrison, and son, Dhani.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on a project together right now where they selected about 15 of George\u2019s songs and asked me to interpret them on ukulele. We actually flew up to Abbey Road Studios and recorded about 12 of the songs, so we\u2019re almost done with the record. They\u2019re producing it, and they\u2019re allowing me to take the creative liberties and reinterpret these tunes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond those two projects, this is a big year for Shimabukuro personally. He\u2019ll celebrate his 50th birthday in December and says he doesn\u2019t feel \u201cold.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe I\u2019m turning 50 \u2014 that\u2019s crazy to me,\u201d he said. \u201cI still feel like I\u2019m in my 20s or 30s, but the time just flew by so quickly. I was just talking with Jon (Yamasato) and Lopaka (Colon) about that. The three of us got together back in 1996 (as Pure Heart). That was 30 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
That reminiscence sets up the perennial question: Could there be a Pure Heart reunion or new Pure Heart music down the line?<\/p>\n
The trio \u2014 Shimabukuro, Yamasato and Colon \u2014 were impressively tight and clearly concert-ready when they played at the CrimeStoppers Honolulu 16th Annual Gala of Guardians at Waialae Country Club last year. Could they coordinate their busy solo schedules for later this year or maybe in 2027?<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to do that,\u201d Shimabukuro said. \u201cBack then there was a certain magic and energy. We were all young, and it was a very special time in our lives where everything musically that we experienced together for the first time \u2014 being in the studio for the first time, releasing an album for the first time, hearing one of our songs on a radio for the first time \u2014 it was all together, all those first-time moments that you can only have once.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says he\u2019s open to doing it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so special when we get to do things together today and reflect back, and we can talk about, \u2018Remember when this happened, or remember when we did that?\u2019 Now we\u2019re all older, and we\u2019re all dads, but when we get to come back and play these songs that we used to play when we were teenagers, it takes me back to my youth,\u201d Shimabukuro said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes me feel young again. To think that that was 30 years ago, that just blows my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.staradvertiser.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro got the idea while watching \u201cKPop Demon Hunters,\u201d the wildly popular Netflix animated movie about a K-pop girl group whose members have secret lives hunting demons. \u201cMy kids said I should learn one of the songs from the movie and play it on the ukulele, so I started messing around with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2479288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[353530],"class_list":["post-2479287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-editors"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/New-album-from-Jake-Shimabukuro-celebrates-pop-music-hitmakers.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2479287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2479289,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479287\/revisions\/2479289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2479288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2479287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2479287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2479287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}