Videos this week include Svavar Knutur via Ukulele Languages, Brett Domino bringing sexy and a host of fantastic instruments back, Kate Micucci giving herself a nap after confusing herself with tax terms (watch this video first if you want the set-up to the song), some nasty blues-funk from Manitoba Hal and Primrose with the least […]

I went to Belper Uke Gathering last week. I wasn’t there long, but while I was I got a chance to try out Ohana’s new resonator ukuleles. They’re very nice ukes. Well made, top quality parts, sound great. I don’t understand why they did that. The problem is, they’re in the same price range as […]

Here’s a useful site that’ll help you transfer guitar tabs to ukulele. Obviously, it’ll take a bit of reworking afterwards but it looks very useful. Eleuke USA are on a big publicity drive at the moment and they’ve just announced a new contest that starts in June. It’s the usual video contest affair. The big […]

A few ideas for people who want to start making their own arrangements of tunes. For this post I’ll be using Ode to Joy because the melody is very simple and you can play it against one chord (in this case C). Here’s the snippet: MP3 You’ll have to forgive any sniffles, coughs and hocked […]

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Anarchy in the UK (Chords) I was tempted to bust out some Boyoyo Boys licks, but this was the only choice for the Malcolm McLaren tribute post. Twiddly Bits The chords for this one are pretty simple, but there are plenty of opportunities for showing off as well There’s […]

I’m not quite sure if I’m allowed to post Buke & Gass. The ‘Buke’ part of the name comes from the modified baritone ukulele they use. It might not be a ukulele but I’m willing to overlook the ‘4 strings good, 6 strings bad’ commandment because they make a wonderful racket. Also this week: the […]

The more I hear of Mya-Moe resonator ukes, the more I’m dying to have one. Particularly the lap-steels. There’s this non-lap tenor up on eBay at the moment. Another name that’s been gradually moving up my gimme-list is Gibson. This Gibson Uke 1 is beautiful. At the other end of the condition scale, this beaten […]

Jake plays for Google, chats ukulele and – my favourite part – does a Q&A in this hour long appearance at GoogleTalks. Ukulele April Fool of the year goes to this article from NPR about the discovery of demos from a very young Kurt Cobain including, “”Nixon Must Die (Or Resign)”… “Shazam!”; and the collection’s […]

I thought while I had my baritone out for the Jonsi tab, I’d do a long overdue post of Patrick Wolf’s Gypsy King. The first thing you’ll have to do is retune the uke. The tuning is DGCE – so you need to tune the B-string up a semitone. The time signature of it is […]

The ukulele seems to attract more than its share of bullshit. So here’s a list of stuff – much of which I may have propagated at some point – that whiffs heavily of balls. Some of these are written from a devil’s-advocate perspective and I haven’t made my mind up on some issues. So feel […]