When I got my first ukulele, I was completely clueless. This was in those dark, long forgotten days before the internet had been discovered. I didn’t even realise that the strings weren’t supposed to go thickest to thinest and restrung it. So, to save you from the social disgrace I experienced, I’ve put together a […]

Merry Christmas, folks! That’s all from me this year. I’ll be taking a blogcation and I’ll be back on the 16th January. (Except for a post tomorrow to capture people who get a uke for Christmas and make sure they’re turned into hardcore ukers). To make sure my mum doesn’t get phone calls asking when […]

You’re A Mean One, Mr Grinch (Chords)(PDF) I always use this song as the soundtrack to my pre-Christmas chores: stealing presents, setting light to trees and punching reindeer. So I’ve written up the chords for Jonathan K Miller’s excellent ukulele version.

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (Chords)(PDF) The first and most famous version of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree was by Brenda Lee, but these chords are taken from the version by Roses Polenzani and Cousins. All the chords are pretty simple. And I’ve substituted the E chord in the intro for an E7 to make […]

Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (Chords)(PDF) The secret is out; I’m a massive Mariah fan. Or not. I decided to write up the song after watching the ukulele version by Mariel a la Mode and Uni and her Ukelele. But I ended up missing the jazzier chords in it and […]

Some great instrumental ukulele videos this week – including versions of Apache, Maunaloa Slack Key and Allemande – as well as plenty of singing (but no Christmas songs). For those of you who do want Christmas songs and have been eagerly anticipating Ballard C Boyd Christmas record this year, you can download it free here.

Someone’s going to be lucky this Christmas. There’s a whole bunch of lovely looking vintage Martin ukuleles on eBay this week. At the top of the range, there’s and this Martin Taropatch, this Martin Style 3 and this 1K on eBay UK. If vintage isn’t the way you want to go, there’s also a brand […]

Thanks to everyone who has bought How to Play Ukuleles for Peace already (six days left to get the ebook at the cheaper price). And an ever bigger thanks to everyone who promoted it including Valerie who made a video for Project 4 Awesome promoting UfP. I’m going to keep going on about this until […]

Jason Castro – White Christmas (Easy Chords)(PDF) Jason ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow on American Idol‘ Castro has just released a ukulele version of White Christmas and you can get it free on Amazon (or on ReverbNation if you’re outside the US). I don’t want to be mean at Christmas time, but I’m guessing that isn’t […]

I’ve written a mini-ebook as a bit of an introduction to the ukulele aimed at people who got a new ukulele for Christmas. It’s free and released under a Creative Commons License. So you can email it people, let people download it on your site, print it out and hand it round to people – […]