Christmas + Downloads — Reloaded
Christmas is slowly approaching, which is good news for us ukulele players in several ways. For me, the most joyful moment is when I get to perform Mennyből az angyal, Kiskarácsony, nagykarácsony or Silent Night for the family for the fifty-seventh time (because naturally they occasionally need practising during the year as well). So, without causing any particular surprise, we can play it safe and create a Christmas atmosphere by strumming these songs. I list these three because they are the Christmas songs I arranged for ukulele in previous years; unfortunately there was no new one this year — maybe next year. It is still not too late to read the posts below, watch the videos and learn a few songs to play before, during, after or instead of opening presents:
Mennyből az angyal — Hungarian Christmas Carol
Mennyből az angyal — How to Play It
Let us look at the other reasons Christmas is good for ukulele players. After listening all year to us talking about which ukulele we want to buy next, the family conspires with Baby Jesus to finally bring the wretched ukulele. If it works, they kill two birds with one stone: the Christmas present is sorted and we finally shut up, because they have been thoroughly fed up with hearing us yearn for that ukulele all year. If I were being wicked, I might even suggest that the latter was the stronger motivation. What the family does not realise, of course, is that it has entered an infinite loopand around March the “which ukulele would be good?” project starts all over again.
The third possibility is that we have become firmly convinced that the entire extended family must be infected with ukulele worship, so with no concern for our wallet we invest in half a shipping container of soprano ukuleles. That way even the most distant relative is forced to grin under the Christmas tree while unwrapping a ukulele and privately thinking that a pair of socks would have been quite enough.
As you can see, Christmas offers almost inexhaustible gift opportunities when there is a ukulele player in the family. Let us admit it: the same thing would not work with pianos.
At first glance this looks like nothing more than a pile of ugly boxes. But once I tell you that EVERY ONE OF THEM contains a ukulele, the situation changes immediately. This shipment arrived yesterday at Kala's UK headquarters and will make many, many people happy at Christmas. I am also convinced that the Ark of the Covenant is in there somewhere.
That is enough about Christmas. I would also like to add a few lines to what I wrote in the post entitled Downloads . Since the menu item launched, we have uploaded chords for quite a few new songs. We have also added a feature whereby, if you move the mouse over specially formatted chords embedded in the lyrics — for example [C] — the chord diagram appears, showing the familiar line-and-dot fingering. This can be particularly useful for beginners. The diagrams do not appear in every lyric sheet, only where the chord is written in square or round brackets. In future we will try to upload every new lyric sheet in this format and gradually update the existing ones as well.
