All blog posts
339 posts
Grease – Summer Nights
Tamás GállOne of my favourite musical films when I was young was Grease (released in Hungary under the title Pomádé). Unfortunately I have not seen it for a long time, but I still know the songs by heart, and I suspect many people who love 1950s rock and roll are the same. The story of the film is extremely s…
Read more
Happy 10th Birthday, Hungarian Ukulele Blog!
Tamás GállDear Ukulele Players! Fasten your seat belts — this is going to be a long blog post! December 30, 2010 was an important date in my life. It is one of the relatively few dates I can actually remember without looking it up . That was the day I published the first blog poston the blog.hu platform. Exac…
Read more
Happy Birthday!
Tamás GállToday the Hungaria Ukulele Blog celebrates its second birthday. When I started the blog I had no idea I would inspire so many readers to learn music and take up the ukulele. I would like to thank you for all the kind enquiries and reports you have sent about buying and learning the ukulele. I hope y…
Read more
Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
Tamás GállIn another video we are going to work through Creedence Clearwater Revival's Have You Ever Seen The Rain. The band's name may not mean much to everyone, but I am certain almost everybody has heard some of their songs. The group was at its peak in the late 1960s and the 1970s. One musician stands out…
Read more
Házasodik a tücsök — accompaniment tutorial
Tamás GállRecently we learned the melody of the song beginning “Hol jártál, báránykám?”. This time I would like to show you the accompaniment to “Házasodik a tücsök”. It is a lovely folk song from western Hungary, and I am sure very many people — probably everyone — know it. We need three chords for this song…
Read more
Heavy Metal Jones
Tamás GállI know I recently made a post about the Indiana Jones soundtrack, but while testing the electro-acoustic ukulele and strumming whatever came into my head, I suddenly started playing the Indy theme. It sounded surprisingly heavy, so I thought I would share it with you: This recording is what is known…
Read more
Hol jártál, báránykám? — melody tutorial
Tamás GállI would like to teach you the melody of this lovely Hungarian children's song. In “Hol jártál, báránykám?” the focus is not on chord accompaniment, so naturally that is not what I concentrate on in the video below. The song uses a pentatonic scale, meaning five different pitches (the C an octave hig…
Read more
How I reacted to the chords...
Tamás GállWith the end of the year approaching, inspiration struck and I made a video intended to be funny. I hope many of you know the Obama parody in which a comedian playing the former US president greets the people he passes after a speech with varying degrees of enthusiasm. I translated that idea into en…
Read more
How to Put a Lion to Sleep
Tamás GállArmed with a ukulele, we can bravely head out onto the savannah - provided we first learn The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Nothing beats an afternoon nap This charming and simple song - according to Wikipedia - was originally written in Zulu in the 1920s, but it only spread around the world a few decades la…
Read more
How to Restring a Ukulele
Tamás GállThis restringing video arrived very late compared with the launch of the blog — you only had to wait about nine and a half years for it. One reason is that, slightly embarrassingly, I do not have a huge amount of experience restringing ukuleles. The other is that I am one of those people who do not…
Read more
Let's Get in Tune! — How to Tune a Ukulele
Tamás GállThis post is about the practical details of tuning a ukulele. Because many people asked me to explain tuning in greater detail — and because tuning really can be difficult for beginners — I decided to devote the first tutorial video to tuning. UPDATE (10 May 2019): The video above was made more than…
Read more
Hull a Pelyhes Fehér Hó
Tamás GállI often say and write that a particular song is worth learning because many people know it, which makes it useful "ammunition" in company — if someone says, "Come on, play something!", you can confidently perform it. Hull a Pelyhes is like that too, although it has the disadvantage of being seasonal…
Read more