I regularly get asked to recommend a beginner’s baritone book and I’ve never had a good answer. But I do now: Lil Rev’s Baritone Ukulele Method. The videos that accompany the iPad enhanced version of Ukulele for Dummies are now available to download online. Scroll down to the bottom of this page and you’ll find […]

John Barry – You Only Live Twice (Tab) There’s a new Bond film on the way so time to write up my second favourite Bond theme (after this one). I’ve kept it reasonably simple for this one. All the melody notes are playing with the thumb and all the supporting strums (shown in brackets) are […]

I’m always keen to check out what musicians are doing on their instruments to see what I can incorporate into my uke playing. It’s easiest to integrate techniques used on instruments similar to the ukulele such as the ukulele’s Madeiran forebears and, the subject of this post, the Venezuelan cuatro. Full Playlist The Venezuelan cuatro […]

Pops Bayless and Mysterious John – I’m A Bear In a Lady’s Boudoir (Chords) I finally recovered enough from the Asylum Street Spankers split to post this. It was made famous by Ukulele Ike and covered by the Spankers on their Dirty Ditties EP. But the version I’ve written up is the uke-only performance by […]

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 […]