I was in the process of updating the Songs with Chords You Know page and became curious about the most used chords on the site. Here are the results (click it for the full size image):

And here’s one showing all chords used four times or more. The first thing that struck me was that it’s a Pareto distribution (near enough) which means if you learn the first few chords you’re going to be able to play most of the songs.

I was curious, so here’s a chart for the chords for ukulele-tabs.com’s most popular songs. The results are similar but there’s a much clearer gap after the top four. So if you want to write a successful ukulele song use the chords C, G, Am, F.

Songs you can play after learning 6 chords

Just learn these six chords:

C, F, G, Am, Dm and Em

And you’ll be able to play 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
The Tiger Lillies – Start A Fire
Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra/Kings of Leon – The Bucket
Addams Family Theme Tune
Alton Ellis – Rock Steady
Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend to Dance With You
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
Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next to Me
Phosphorescent – Wolves
She & Him – Sentimental Heart

If a song doesn’t use the most common chords

If you come across a song that’s all Eb and Bb and you haven’t mastered those chords yet, there is a way to make it easier: change the key.

To do that visit this site. Take your complicated chord chart. Copy and paste it into the box. Go to the ‘New Key (required)’ drop-down menu and select C. Click ‘Click Here’.

Whatever it spews out will sound right and will usually be easier to play (if not to sing).

Favourite Chord?

All of which raises this question: what’s your favourite chord?

I’m going with Caug (1003) or add in the 7 as well (1001). Leave yours in the comments.

While you’re waiting for me to get more Beirut stuff together, here’s one from their recent support act Basia Bulat.

Suggested Strumming

The song is in 3/4 time. You can just use three down strums:

d – d – d –

Twice for each chord (apart from the fancy bits and the end of the verses and first chorus).

But you can fancy it up by playing a touch strum (t) as the first strum:

t – d – d –

For the touch strum you only do a half strum (hitting just the g and C strings). Although I like to do the IZ thing and pluck the g-string with my thumb then do two down strums.

Twiddly Bits

In the chart I’ve written up the verse ends as C6 and C7. But she actually hammers-on the g-string notes like this:

She does an extended version of this at the end of the first verse (don’t play it at the end of the second verse).

More Basia

Before I Knew

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Lots of good stuff this week but my favourite is Lisa Hannigan doing some boat-ukuleling. Also up: U to the izz-9 0 to the izz-0 take on a new cover project, hellogoodbye with Taylor York off of Paramore on uke duties, Aussie songsters The Little Stevies, power-popping electro-uke from Toy Horses and plenty more besides.

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Fender has two new ukuleles out both small and cheaper than their previous tenor-only ukes. The concert size Mino’Aka and the soprano U’Uku. And they’ve taken the admirable step of saying the ukuleles are laminated in their product descriptions.

UkeBag.com has some very fetching handmade ukulele bags.

Kanile’a are mostly known for their finely crafted but hideously expensive ukuleles. But now they’ve brought out a budget range of Islander ukuleles (including the Islander MSS-4). A few interesting things about it: it has bridge pins, it doesn’t have the Kanile’a logo but a hideous ‘Islander’ logo (which is probably a smart decision as they might not want the Kanile’a logo associated with cheaper instruments), and the name is already taken.

This post on Not Playing Guitar about ugly amps got me thinking. Kala’s ukulele amps have had stick for being under-powered and over-priced, but there’s no doubt it’s prettier than the standard ‘black breeze-block’ look. So does having a good looking amp or uke encourage you to play more?

8-string “Erickenbacker” ukulele.

Singapore’s ukulele-playing presidential candidate, Tan Cheng Bock, came within a whisker of winning the election. After a recount he lost by 0.34% of the vote. And he consoled himself and his supporters with a song.

Ukulele shortbread including recipe (via aloha joy!).

The Ukulele Helper is a new chord and scale website that looks very promising.

Jake lists five songs that should covered on the ukulele (via @n0s0ap). He should check here and here.

Charlie McDonnell explains the science of sound with a ukulele.

Bosko and Honey have a new album coming out which you can pre-order on their website and listen to on Soundcloud.

Pictures: Uke House, The 2011 Greater Holy Lashing Tongue Evangelical Church of the Righteous Redeemer Grand Slam Tennis and Ukulele Club.

Adele might be handing my ass to me in the Musical Instruction books chart, but I’m not going to hold it against her. This is too good a song not to do an instrumental version of.

The tab doesn’t include every strum I do, so tackle it in the way that feels best to you – if you’ve got a complaint about that read Christine’s comment.

The trickiest bit comes in bars 12/13. Here I’m doing a fake strum because there isn’t time to do a real strum and get back to play the rest of the bar.

Here’s a slightly simpler way of playing it:

Melody

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Podcast #10 in your face.

The Uke Hunt podcast hits double figures and Bossarocker takes time off from being the saviour of North Manchester FM to bring you a bunch of tracks from familiar acts like Craig Robertson, Uke’s Not Dead and David Leach; and new – to me – names like Jason Johans and Jane Cameron.

You can find links to all the previous episodes here.

Playlist:

1. Uke’s Not Dead – Oi Kid! Don’t Be A Hoody

2. Lila Burns – Barefeet

3. Joseph Asfoury – Dateukevox

4. Watercolor Paintings – Vultures

5. David Leach – Jeremy Kyle

6. Herman Vandecauter – Vilsmayer’s Suite

7. Craig Robertson – It’s Your Fault

8. Ukulele Bartt – Love Burrito

9. The Bijoux Toots – I Want Your Love

10. Jason Johans – Shady Grove

11. Jane Cameron – Superhero

Submit Tracks

You can get in touch and submit tracks for consideration if you follow the rules (particularly the one about file format) via:

Facebook
Soundcloud
Email at podcast@ukulelehunt.com

The new Beirut album is finally out! I got as far into it as the first track before I decided I had to grab my uke and work it out before I moved on. He’s using his 6 string Kamaka and it sounds great.

I’ve written it up as C# tuning or capo on the first fret. But it’s somewhere between C and C# tuning. The chords themselves shouldn’t provide too many problems though.

Suggested Strumming

There are a few passing chords which you can play like this:

If you find that a bit tricky, you can just miss those chords out and play Bb – C – F – Bb with this strum once for each:

d – d u – u d u

Intro

You can transfer the accordion intro to uke like this:

Videos this week include Zee Avi’s new one, a song from Boulder Acoustic Society’s session for 11 O’Clock Rock (watch the whole thing here, probably my favourite version of probably my favourite Burning Hell song, My Brightest Diamond, some Serbian ukulele and more.

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There seems to be a lot of confusion over exactly who holds the record for ‘largest ukulele ensemble’. The attempt at the Strathmore Uke Fest was declared a success with 944 apparently trying to beat the London Uke Fest‘s 841. But that record had already been lost to the 1,000 Canadians who strummed with Lucky Uke in July (via 961 New Zealand school kids). Which itself had been surpassed by 1,547 Swedes a few days before Strathmore’s attempt. Now back to not caring.

Chalkboard Ukulele – your favourite ukulele players scribble on a ukulele (via Humble Uker).

Ukulele comic strip, The Bigfoot and Tiki Show got hacked recently. But it’s now back in business with a new design and an easy way to catch up on old storylines.

Ukes keep spreading around the world. Georgia now has its own ukulele website.

Tally ‘live2tivo‘ Deushane has released her debut album.

MP3s: Chipped Hip has a rather fine MP3 from Jordan Klassen. No Genre have a song from the Stephin Merritt Obscurities album (bottom half of the post).

Pictures: musical expression (warning: cartoon boob), mad dog ukulele, multi string and horn instrument, Steve Allen does Tiny Tim.