Top 10 Free Ukulele Software Downloads

Tell your enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our free stuff.

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10. Ukulele Icons – A batch of cute little ukulele icons in .ico and .gif formats.

9. Uke-4-U – it’s exceptionally ugly, but it teaches beginners their first few chords and lets you strum along with a few simple songs.

ukefonts.jpg8. Uke Fonts – tap away on your keyboard and be greeted by a string of ukuleles of various levels of obscurity. The package includes every uke shape you can think of (or every uke shape I can think of) – including all the distinctive RISA shapes – and many shapes that seem downright fanciful.

7. Winchord – Another good program let down on the visual front. You can set the number of strings and tuning to anything you chose and it’ll spew out any chord you ask it to. Useful if you play other string instruments or you need to transpose tricky chords onto the uke.

6. Chordette – A collection of fonts with ukulele chord positions allowing you to insert chord diagrams into Word documents etc. It includes a handy doodad which allows you to search the chords easily and insert them. Brought to you by the good people at Uke Farm.

5. Ukulele Chordfinder – Chord charts have never been so much fun. Even though it is a lot less flexible than Winchord, I much prefer it because the interface is more enjoyable. You can use it online or download it.

4. Functional Ear Trainer – My former school music teacher (Mr Barnes – tall, lengthy face, insane hair) always used to say, “You don’t play music with your hands, you play it with your ears.” To which the idiotic, friendless, class moron would respond my bashing the side of his head against the keyboard (yes, it was me). Anyhoo, Mr Barnes spoke the truth. How can you know what notes to play if you don’t know what they sound like?

3. AP Tuner – Although it was obviously made with the guitar in mind, it works equally well for ukulele – or any other instrument for that matter. Twang your string and it’ll tell you the note and how far out you are. Be warned: if you’re as obsessive as I am, you may end up frantically trying to make every string exactly on pitch just for the satisfaction of seeing 00.0

2. Power Tab – Allows you to create tabs of favorite tunes and to download tab from sites such Dominator Tabs.

1. Audacity – I still have a hard time believing you can get this for free. Offers multi-track recording, editing and all sorts of effects (noise reduction, delay etc.). Once you’re finished recording, you can knock out an mp3.

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Sadly, not all the best things in life are free. If you want an outstanding piece of software, you usually have to pay for it. If you want more than these can offer, here are a couple of programs I recommend.

Guitar Pro – The program I use to make my tabs. It makes transposing keys or transposing to uke from other instruments a breeze. It opens PowerTab, TablEdit and a number of other files. I wouldn’t be without it.

Cubase SX – the best home recording software there is.

What’s your experience of these programs? Do you know of any great free or paid for ukulele software that I haven’t mentioned and deserves to be on the list?

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28 Comments

  1. Jennyflame May 30th, 2007 5:37 am

    This is the best top ten ever! There is a lot of useful things on this list. I can’t wait to try some!

  2. Nipper May 30th, 2007 6:53 am

    Hi Uke Hunt,

    Excellent blog!

    The best ‘paid for’ recording software is Cubase sx. It has an intuitive interface, full vst integration and allows for professional level recordings. Mac users also have the choice of using Logic, which is also an excellent choice.

    Acid is best suited to sampling and looping and not really the best for multitrack recording.

    BSY
    Nipper

  3. Woodshed May 30th, 2007 8:09 am

    @Jenny: Enjoy!

    @Nipper: Thanks for the recommendation. I don’t use Acid Pro, I took it on the word of someone else (who obviously has no idea what he’s on about). I’ll take your word over his (rather than shell out a grand to try out both).

  4. artifus May 30th, 2007 2:49 pm

    thanks for a great site! just thought i’d mention reaper – if you haven’t checked it out yet then do so : http://www.cockos.com/reaper/ amazing program with fantastic support (check out the forum). cubase? pah! mac version due this autumn putting my love of logic in great jeopardy.

  5. ukulele-coolia May 30th, 2007 6:20 pm

    Thank you! I didn’t know about the uke icons. 8)

  6. Woodshed May 30th, 2007 11:54 pm

    Thanks, artifus. I’ll download the demo and give it a go.

    @ukulele-coolia: Glad you liked them, Julia :D

  7. artifus May 31st, 2007 3:51 am

    there is no demo, that’s the full program you have there… part of of what i’m lovin’ about reaper is the whole ethos behind it, ie not charging 500 quid for a bug ridden beta version but giving away a fully functional piece of funky software updated with user requests (via forum) and asking for money if you you like it. wicked. this is all due to change come version 2 so i’ve heard (it’s up to 1.8 something at the mo) so best grab a copy now i reckon. if you’re familiar with cubase/logic/sonar/etc it should be pretty easy to figure out. if there’s something you wanna do and you’re not quite sure how to do it just right click over where you think it may happen and what you’re looking for will usually appear as an option. pdf manual and plenty of online support from fellow users via the forum. the big boys should be quaking in their boots… this is how it should be done…

  8. Valentine June 3rd, 2007 11:37 pm

    The ugly Uke 4 U (starter) is growing up. Version 9 is an interesting program. (Available on E Bay)

  9. Paul winspear September 25th, 2008 2:39 am

    Could some body recommend a good dvd, to learn basic and differant type of strumming.
    I seem to have come to a dead end and need to expand my limited strumming.
    I live in the country in New zealand. Not many uke teachers out here. Take care Paul Winspear (potter)

  10. zym September 25th, 2008 5:17 pm

    Paul,

    ive no idea if its any good – but Ralph Shaw has a DVD of Essential Strums – http://www.ralphshaw.ca/Essential_Strums_for_the_Ukulele_learning_DVD

  11. Woodshed September 25th, 2008 8:11 pm

    Thanks, Andy. I was going to say exactly that. Except I was going to point to Amazon because it’s cheaper on there.

  12. Paul winspear September 27th, 2008 6:56 am

    Hi zym & Woodshed, thanks for your help on the strumming.
    Might need you again one day

    Take care Paul from NZ

  13. Paul winspear September 27th, 2008 7:04 am

    Anybody come up with a good transposer chart or wheel etc.

    Paul nz

  14. Woodshed September 29th, 2008 7:00 pm

    Paul: This site works pretty well for transposing chords.

  15. Paul winspear December 24th, 2008 9:22 am

    Paul from N Z. Does anybody know where I can purchase a reasonable priced Banjo Ukulele. New or second hand, good quality. Bit of a desert over here.

    Take care everybody, and have a great Christmas.

  16. paul February 11th, 2010 9:31 am

    Just tried that Guitar Pro, it’s awesome. Going to make my life so much easier.

  17. Woodshed February 11th, 2010 8:53 pm

    paul: Glad you like it. I use it all the time and couldn’t get by without it.

    But a word of warning to Mac users thinking of getting it. Don’t! It’s really terrible on the Mac – completely different to the PC and forever crashing.

  18. Peter McMeel September 15th, 2012 11:46 pm

    Is there a great ukulele chord generator for Mac? I want to insert chord diagrams into Word docs please.

  19. Woodshed September 16th, 2012 12:04 pm

    Peter: Chordette works on Mac. Or if you need something more in depth there’s GuitarPro.

  20. Peter McMeel September 18th, 2012 2:07 am

    Thanks for that. I’ll try Guitar Pro. It looks like a whole lotta fun. What about the comment that it crashes a lot on Macs?

  21. Woodshed September 18th, 2012 10:59 am

    Peter McMeel: That’s referring to the old version. I use Guitar Pro on Mac all the time and it works great now.

  22. Peter McMeel September 18th, 2012 11:51 am

    Thanks for the heads up Woodshed. I’ve managed to spend too much dough on software that hasn’t delivered. I figure I’m due for a run of luck.

  23. Bob December 27th, 2013 5:58 pm

    Sure, Cubase SX is a good piece of software, in that it does what all the others out there do. I have tried many computer-based multitrack recorders, and I have found that the best, most powerful, and easiest to use is Reaper.

  24. Woodshed December 27th, 2013 8:50 pm

    Bob: Thanks for the recommendation. I wrote this a long time ago and I’m out of touch with Windows software these days.

  25. Ron September 15th, 2014 4:35 pm

    I am looking at doing some of my own arrangements. Is this possible with the free version of Guitar Pro?

  26. Woodshed September 15th, 2014 4:46 pm

    Ron: As far as I remember the free version is fully featured but only for a certain amount of time. So you should be able to use it for that before the trial runs out.

  27. Kyle February 1st, 2016 1:27 pm

    Cool list, but it’s old now, Instead of winchord and ukulele chordfinder I’d use http://www.ukulelehelper.com, it’s the most clear and intuitive chord finder there is! It also shows every inversion and has a number of different scales provided from different regions and right down the fretboard

  28. Woodshed February 1st, 2016 2:13 pm

    Kyle: Yeah, it’s definitely out of date now. But I find chord apps to be much better than anything I’ve found on the web.

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