Some superstar guest appearances this week: Jontom is joined by Hawaiian guitar slinger Jeff Peterson, Ashton Kutcher provides bass for Snorri Helgason and Amanda Shires is backed by House. Full Playlist

Aquila have got a new set of strings the red series. These are low-G but the G string is unwound (i.e. they don’t have the metal wrapped round) so it’s just like the other strings (other than being red). I’m going to have to get a set of these. I’m not a fan of the […]

No shortage of ukulele book releases at the moment. Here are some of the more promising ones: Mark Nelson (who you might know as the writer of the essential Fingerstyle Solos for Ukulele) has a tab book of his latest album featuring blues, ragtime and hokum tunes. There’s a tab from it and a video […]

I wasn’t as impressed with The xx’s debut album as most of the internet seems to have been, but there was enough interesting stuff on it to make me eager to hear the follow up that’s arriving in September. The most interesting being Crystalised with it’s interlocking guitar lines. I’ve wangled the intro onto ukulele […]

I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on The ‘Ukulele: A History by Jim Tranquada and John King for a long time. John King’s Nalu Music has always been the most authoritative site on the subject. When John died in 2009 it did look like it might not be finished. But Jim continued work […]

The Lumineers – Ho Hey (Chords) I’m slightly worried about the influence all this indie folk is having on my mental wellbeing. First it was the ukulele, then the flat caps, then the beard. Now those braces are looking very snazzy. This can’t be right. Nevertheless, indie folk provides a lot of ukulele-friendly songs (and […]

For a band that has a career’s worth of songs about lazing on Californian beaches, there’s not a lot of ukulele in their songs. But their latest album has a ukulele-heavy song and the uke slides neatly into the Beach Boys sound. Also up this week is a blistering version of Classical Gas by sanfordandsong, […]

One of my favourite ukulele tunesters, Nicholas Abersold has released his album Porridge free on Bandcamp. It’s packed with top songs so grab it while there are still free downloads available. Matt Kresling has made a travelogue about his trip to Madagascar with his ukulele and you can watch part one of The Madagascar Journals […]

Mills, Godfrey and Scott – Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty (Tab) Following on from The Queen is Dead on Tuesday, here’s an arrangement of the song that kicks off the track, Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty. It was written during World War I and has a bunch of music hall features. […]

As promised in the Hip Hop Riffs for Ukulele post, here’s an updated list of the riff posts on the blog. The idea with these riffs isn’t to play the whole song or that the suit the ukulele particularly well. It’s to throw them in to your playing for a bit of light relief and […]