Jake Rodrigues
When you enter the Cyber World of all things Uke things can get pretty confusing, conflicted and even convoluted and that's just words beginning with the letter 'C'. So with this in mind this page is a personal attempt to help you navigate and get around the Uke on the net.
Half of the problem after a short while can be resolved by identifying what is of interest to you. I am pretty lucky that my students at City Lit and even at schools are always finding things of interest to share. Back to the point though of singling out what your after is a real help with the Uke. For Example:
* Do I just want to sing a dozen songs with easy and if so where do I find them
* Am I wanting to play instrumental music on the uke
* Where can i find out about vintage uke playing and what bands are playing near to me
*Can I get online tips from somewhere and how do I change a string
I'm not going to have all the answers which is brough home to me each week as a uke tutor with students questions ! Familiar questions do re- occur and hey I want to privelege and punt my own favourites and personal preferences too. Happy Ukeing !
OK first off with links here is the Uke Playlist I've set for the City Lit adult college in central London. City Lit runs a whole range of Uke courses now and we are hoping to expand the course to accomodate, beginners, second steps and advanced players. If you have studied at the college before I am hoping a new development in 2015 will be the addition of Martin Wheatley for advanced uke and for maybe setting up a real Ukulele Orchestra playing classical and popular instrumental music.
Strumming Patterns for the Uke : Here are a selection of triplet strums for the Ukulele that I teach at various colleges etc.
Some Useful Uke Sites
Dr Uke is a great site for really clear PDF's and a uke/vocal track of lots of material. It's American and quite old school so there are loads of good jazz, showtunes on there. I use this site all the time . well done Dr Uke
Chordie is a good site as I've already said mainly because you can change the key and the chord grid to suit uke. This is done via a handy little menu bar on the right of the screen. The limitations of this site are that its never going to be fool proof and for me despite its huge amount of song titles in the menu its never seems to have the song I'm looking for. if you want 1960-1990's pop songs this is pretty good
Ukule club PDF's are abound on the internet here are a few. Lorraine Bow's Ukulele Wednesday is great place to start and there are clubs in Brighton , Marlowe , Taunton you name it ! A great website and songbook is the Belfast Uke Jam which has a 1000 song pdf file of songs and also a link page at the end that connects to other songbooks ! Great site guys
I'm a fan of Jim Bottorf's banjo site for the following reasons : It lists old songs and gives you the verses for them which is fantastic if you want to pad out a vintage song like Ain't she Sweet or Sweet Georgia Brown. This site is very modest but really good in my opinion.
Lastly at the moment a bit of high octane fun can be found on the Ukulele Beatles Fun site. This is actually a really good site for improving your playing. Its a shame the sound quality of the backing tracks is so pants otherwise I'd give it 10/10
Chord Chart & The dreaded G chord
Buying Uke's in London & Online
Probably the best way to get a uke you want is by playing a selection and making an informed choice from there. The music shops around Charing Cross and Denmark Street are overflowing in places so it’s a good place to start.
Macari’s : very friendly have a basic range
Hanks: traditionally grumpy but might be improving
Rose Morris: fairly standard
Chappels on Bond Street : they had great deals recently
Ivor Marants & Hobgoblin: 2 shops off Oxford street I think in Rathbone place
The Duke of Uke: http://www.dukeofuke.co.uk ( just off Brick Lane and Jake's recommendation)
Online:
Southern Ukulele Store: An ebay store based in Bournemouth which is the biggest Uke shop in Europe. Very friendly if you ring and good if you know what you want. http://www.southernukulelestore.co.uk
Thomann: Biggest online music shop in Europe again good if you know what you want http://www.thomann.de
Gear4Music: Well priced and a good selection of stuff . Layout very easy to navigate: