Top 10 Free Ukulele Software Downloads
May 30, 2007
Tell your enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our free stuff.
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.
8. 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.
Premium Downloads
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?
This is the best top ten ever! There is a lot of useful things on this list. I can’t wait to try some!
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
@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).
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.
Thank you! I didn’t know about the uke icons. 8)
Thanks, artifus. I’ll download the demo and give it a go.
@ukulele-coolia: Glad you liked them, Julia :D
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…
The ugly Uke 4 U (starter) is growing up. Version 9 is an interesting program. (Available on E Bay)
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)
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
Thanks, Andy. I was going to say exactly that. Except I was going to point to Amazon because it’s cheaper on there.
Hi zym & Woodshed, thanks for your help on the strumming.
Might need you again one day
Take care Paul from NZ
Anybody come up with a good transposer chart or wheel etc.
Paul nz
Paul: This site works pretty well for transposing chords.
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.