I like to keep a list of songs that use just the most common ukulele chords. Arranged by the order people usually learn them in. That way you can find some songs to play no matter how few chords you know.

And here’s the updated list including notable additions like:

Lorde/WIOU – Team
Junior Brown – Better Call Saul
The Pogues – Sally McLennane
Mungo Jerry – In the Summertime

C, F and G

If you prefer, you can use G7 in the place of G or vice versa for any of these songs.

NeverShoutNever! – Your Biggest Fan/Did It Hurt?
Noah and the Whale – Five Years Time
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
Paolo Nutini – High Hopes
SoKo – I Will Never Love You More
The Bobby McGee’s – A Dog At All Things
The Lancashire Hotpots – He’s Turned Emo
Mungo Jerry – In the Summertime
The Tiger Lillies – Start A Fire
Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra/Kings of Leon – The Bucket

Plus Am, Dm and Em

Addams Family Theme Tune
Alton Ellis – Rock Steady
Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend to Dance With You
Blondie/Imelda May – Dreaming
Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Darren Hanlon – All These Things
Electrelane – Cut and Run
Garfunkel and Oates – Me, You and Steve
Florence and the Machine – Dog Days Are Over
GUGUG – California Sun
Israel Kamakawiwoíole/Jason Castro – Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Julien Dore – Cet Air-La
Kate Nash – Foundations
Kate Micucci/The Gooch – Mr Moon
Kelli Rae Powell
Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next to Me
LP – Into the Wild
The Lumineers – Ho Hey
Phosphorescent – Wolves
She & Him – Sentimental Heart

Plus D

Allo Darlin’ – Tallulah
Allo Darlin’ – Space Christmas
Amanda Palmer – In My Mind
Antsy Pants/Bear Creek – Vampire
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy with the Arab Strap
Daniel Johnston – Living Life
Damon Albarn – Mr Tembo
Garfunkel and Oates – The Fade Away (you can use D instead of D7)
Gothic Archies – Shipwrecked
GUGUG/The Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop
Keston Cobblers’ Club – You-Go
Phredd – Elmer’s Electric Tricycle
Skinny Lister – Colours
The Dubliners and The Pogues – The Irish Rover
The Pogues – Fiesta
The Little Ones – Tangerine Visions
Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma
Velvet Underground and Nico – I’ll be Your Mirror
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London

Plus A and E7

Camera Obscura – Cock Up Your Beaver
Florence & the Machine – Kiss With A Fist (don’t panic, you can use E7 instead of E in this song)
The Pogues – Sally McLennane
Joan Jett – Bad Reputation
Junior Brown – Better Call Saul
Kate Micucci & Ted (Scrubs) – Screw You
Paolo Nutini – Pencil Full of Lead
The Pogues – Streams of Whiskey
The Weavers – Pay Me My Money Down

Plus Bb

Beirut – A Candle’s Fire
Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (You can use C instead of C5)
Ingrid Michaelson – Be OK
Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
Lorde/Walk off the Earth – Royals
Lorde/WIOU – Team
Mumford and Sons – The Cave
Nevershoutnever – First Dance
Neutral Milk Hotel – King of Carrot Flowers
Noah and the Whale – Jealous Kind of Love
Sufjan Stevens – Lumberjack Christmas
The Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight

More…

Mastered all those? Tackle more:

Easy ukulele songs
Beginner ukulele lessons

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! As is tradition, here’s a Pogues song. It’s a straightforward three chord romp.

Suggested Strumming

Strumming d u d u with swing will get you through everything but the bridge. But throw in a bit of d – d u for variety.

In the bridge you can do just one down strum for each chord in the first two lines. Or it’s a good chance to follow the drum and pull out a triplet strum for the last chord in the first and second lines. So on that last chord you’d do.

d – ttt d – – –

Which sounds like this:

After those first two lines just go back to the d u d u strum.

Twiddly Bits

Here’s little whistle line that crops up in the intro, outro and other bits:

And here’s how that sounds with the chords backing:

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More Pogues tabs and chords
More Irish tabs and chords

Full Playlist

To celebrate International Women’s Day this Sunday today’s UkeTube is all women ukers.

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On the Radio

– CBC debates ukes vs recorders in school. James Hill argues for ukuleles.
– Phil Jupitus celebrates The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Ukes

– New Fender electric ukuleles.
– Lichty long neck tenor.
– Rebel custom tenor.
– Devine Muse tenor.
– Ironman ukulele.
– Antica Ukuleleria.
– Siren Songs ukulele diorama.

Learning

– Two new books from Fred Sokolow: Jazzing Up the Ukulele and The Beatles for Fingerstyle Ukulele.

New Releases

– annie bacon & her OSHEN – Stranded Songs. (Pay what you like.)
– Matthew Richards – Thinking About You.
– Cammy Enaharo – From the Garage.

Kickstarting

– Craig Chee & Sarah Maisel.

Pictures

– Olive Thomas shakes it off.
– Abandoned Martin 5K.

I had assumed Junior Brown’s Better Call Saul would be the theme tune to the show. But they went with the more unexpected choice of, Nottingham indie rockers, Little Barrie.

But the theme is very in keeping with the feel of the Breaking Bad theme. It’s similarly sparse which makes it a bit tricky to keep time. As you can see in the video, I keep strumming without touching the strings to keep time. But you can do it by tapping your foot or nodding your head.

Links

LittleBarrie.com
Better Call Saul on iTunes
Breaking Bad theme (Tab)
More Breaking Bad related tabs and chords

Today’s post is a guest tutorial by classical guitarist and ukulelist Samantha Muir. She recently won the UOGB’s Valentines contest with a fancy bit of tremolo picking and was kind enough to let me share her technique with you.

You can find out more about Sam and buy her classical ukulele tab ebooks at SamanthaMuir.com.

What Is Tremolo?

Tremolo is a technique which uses rapidly repeated notes to give a shimmering or trembling effect. For string players, such as violinists, this involves the rapid moving back and forth of the bow. Classical guitarists also love tremolo. It’s a great way to woo your audience!

The most well known solo classical guitar piece is Tarrega’s haunting Recuerdos de la Alhambra, or Memories of the Alhambra, which uses tremolo. Throughout the gardens and courtyards of the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain, you can hear sounds of water coming from the many fountains. The tremolo technique captures this idea of flowing water beautifully.

About 5 years ago I was fortunate enough to visit the Alhambra and a friend made a video of me playing Recuerdos de la Alhambra in the palace grounds. You can see it here on YouTube…

How Do You Do That?

Tremolo can be achieved using a pick. This requires a rapid back and forth movement with the pick (and bucket loads of practise!). The other way is to use your right hand fingers and thumb. To grasp the basics it is best to identify the fingers in the following way:

P = thumb and comes from the Spanish word Pulgar
i = index and comes from the Spanish word Indices
m = middle and comes from the Spanish word Medio
a = ring finger and comes from the Spanish word Anular

Note: The p i m a system is used by classical guitarists and is a good way to abbreviate all RH finger style patterns. It would make sense for ukulele players to universally adopt this system as it is a quick and easy system to learn. The left hand fingers are identified numerically so using the p i m a system for RH identification makes it immediately quite clear which hand is being referred to on the score.

OK, down to the nitty gritties…

When playing a tremolo you are basically playing a repeated 4 note pattern with the right hand. The RH fingering is:

p a m i p a m i p a m i p a m i etc

The pattern is repeated over and over. The speed and fluidity of the pattern create the tremolo effect.

Try playing this pattern on one string to get the feel of it. The critical thing is the connection between the thumb and ring, or a, finger. All the notes have to be played as evenly as possible.

Tremolo becomes really interesting when you play the thumb note on a different string, thus creating a bass.

For example:

Now you have a tremolo with 2 parts. The high G on a ukulele creates some interesting possibilities. You can, for example, play the melody note with the thumb and use notes played by the fingers as the accompaniment.

Achieving a fast, smooth and even tremolo takes a lot of time and practise. I mean lots, So don’t despair if you are finding this difficult. It is difficult. Start slowly and gradually increase the tempo. One method to develop your tremolo is to try and accent a particular finger. For example: practise slowly with a heavy accent on the a finger. Then try bringing out the m. And finally the i. Rhythmically this is quite weird but don’t worry. It will help to improve your control and overall RH technique.

If you want to hear some ukulele tremolo in action have a look at this video on YouTube. This was the video I enter for The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s Valentines Day Competition. The challenge was to do a 30 second version of Let Me Call You Sweetheart. Mine was considered “cheesiest”!

Here’s a little Tremolo Study to help you on your way.

Sam has released a number of classical ukulele tab ebooks including The Little Book of Carulli and The Little Book of Sor for Ukulele on Gumroad.

I’m not saying I single handedly launched Meghan Trainor’s career, but she did start to get huge after I gave this song the old Uke Hunt bump. It didn’t make the album but it’s easily my favourite song of hers. It has some classic ukulele chord moves like C – A7 – Dm – G7.

First thing to do: put a capo on the fourth fret.

There are a few chord names you might not be familiar with in this one. But don’t be intimidated, they’re very easy to play. The most difficult chord is Fm played in a different way to the usual 1013. But you can use the 1013 version and it’ll sound just fine.

Suggested Strumming

You can use this as the main strum all the way through:

d – d u d u d u

Verses: Do that once for each chord.

Bridge: Main strum twice for each chord.

Intro and Chorus: Here you have to split the strum into two parts (d – d u and d u d u). You do:

– d – d u on the C then d u d u on the Cmaj7.
– One play through the full main strum for each for C7 – Fadd9 – Fm.
– Half each for C – A7 – Dm – G7. A main strum on C.
– Then d – d u on G7, d u on G7sus4 and d u on G7.

Here’s how that sounds (slow then up to speed):

Intro/chorus strum (MP3)

Links

Meghan Trainor on iTunes

Full Playlist

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My ebooks are available in the EU again thanks to Gumroad getting on top of the VAT situation. Sorry about the delay on that.

Learning

– Two great new ukulele blogs: Jonathan Lewis has a site for tabs of his spectacular campanella arrangements of traditional tunes, and Ukulele Go! covering everything uke related including reviews, lessons, links and general uke miscellany.
– Aaron and Nicole Keim’s A Ukulele Handbook: a beautiful, illustrated beginner’s guide.

New Releases

– I’ve kicked off the Ukulele 2015 playlist on Spotify with Victoria Vox, Kimo Hussey, Seryn, The Vespers and the ubiquitous Meghan Trainor.
– Speaking of Kimo Hussey, he has a new album Low G.
– Not often I come across some ukulele on my trips to DatPiff but my last visit turned up two: a fantastic uke riff on Vee Tha Rula and Kid Ink’s fantastic Out In Pari on the VRSES EP and a much more brief the IZ-sample on Jermone N Da House by Trinidad James.

Ukes

– KoAloha have been busy. They’re relaunching their entry level KoAlana ukes and introducing a the new Opio range of mid-priced ukuleles.
– The Brian May Uke.

Kickstarting

– Animals EP by EdwardAlice.

Videos

– Ukulele controlled quadcopter
– Why make uke videos?
– Musical preview of Portlandia.

New ruling for air travel: U.S. Department of Transportation now say musicians who board planes must be allowed to carry on their instruments provided they fit in the overhead bin.

After last week’s two nightmare difficulty posts something much more straight forward this week.

Like the original, I start my version off with just the melody. It’s a great traditionally inspired melody (written by the guys off of The Lumineers) and is plenty strong enough to hold your attention alone. I’m just picking this with my thumb but you can use fingers if you’re comfortable with that.

Then from bar 17 I introduce a few chords but still keep it very minimal. Again, I’m just using my thumb to play these. Strumming down the strings whenever there’s more than one note.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More movie theme tabs