Welcome to iUke

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the iUke: a tenor-scale ukulele with an integrated USB port. Plug this uke into a Mac and GarageBand will see it as a standard digital audio device, without any additional boxes, adapters or special cables needed. And there's no reason why it wouldn't work with any WIndows-based app that recognizes USB audio.

It's a one-off, one-of-a-kind instrument. A while back, the president of Brian Moore Custom Guitars/iGuitar offered to send me one of their instruments to try out and possibly review in my Sun-TImes column. "Thanks, but no thanks," I replied. "I don't play guitar." "What do you play?" he asked. "Keyboard, very badly," I said. "And the ukulele...slightly less very badly."

"Hell, we can build you a ukulele..." he said, and there the iUke project began.

The goal was to complete it in time for me to demo it during my Macworld Expo keynote, and through generous efforts on their part, they finished it just in time. Prototype electronics were installed inside the instrument on Monday and it was shipped out using FedEx Next service for 8 AM -- not the standard 10 AM, but 8 AM -- delivery. It was certainly the closest I've ever cut things before a major talk. I picked it up at 9:10, walked across the street to the convention center, spent about ten minutes backsyage figuring out how it worked, and then by 9:30, it was hidden beside the podium under a black cloth awaiting my 10 AM keynote.

Steve Jobs ends all of his keynotes with anoffhanded "oh, and one more thing..." followed by a demo of something brand-new, highly-improbable, and exceedingly cool. Well, the iUke wasn't a new gravy-flavored iBook or an iPod that could be operated nasally, but it certainly was a highly-credible One More Thing all the same. Alas, my time was short and I only had time to play a short riff with it at the end, but still, it made a really big impression.

I could have given a much better demo, too. But remember, I had only minutes to set it up before I had to sneak it onstage. Backstage, I'd made an incorrect initial assumption about what sort of device GarageBand would "see" it as and as a result, I couldn't get any audio from it. I could either Try Something Else or I could make sure the iUke was placed next to the podium before people had a chance to see what it was. In the end, well, discretion was the better part of valor.

Oh, well. Maybe that was for the best. This way, the crowd was exposed to only about forty seconds of amateur ukulele-playing, instead of a complete and randomly-competent rendition of "Laundryman's Blues."

I can, however, report that there's nothing like playing a guitar-like object in front of 700 people, pulling your final chord, and then thrusting the instrument up in the air and shouting "Thank you, Boston! Good night!" It's quite a rush; I can only imagine how much more of a rush it is when you cap off the whole experience with three gallons of Chivas and a six-pack of groupies in your trailer after the show.

The iUke plays like a marvel. Because the circuit board was their only prototype, I had to ship it back that same afternoon (I'll get it back for good when they have a proper run of boards on hand). But for those three hours, it never left my hands. The iUke was damned fun to play, as much fun as my Fluke.

I can't wait to get it back...I'm definitely going to need to buy a new hard drive for all of my GarageBand experiments. The iUke is indeed a one-off, but I'll be shocked if iGuitar doesn't receive enough inquiries about the iUke to at least consider building a small batch for sale. I had it with me during my booksigning and during those 90 minutes I encountered more than one uke player who was willing to write a check then and there.

I'll post some audio samples on my blog when I get the iUke back.