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339 posts
A ukulele for Christmas
Tamás GállFor me at least, choosing gifts for the people we love is difficult. We want the present to be useful, interesting, new and genuinely pleasing to the recipient. There are probably very few gifts that satisfy every one of those requirements, so most of the time we compromise somewhere. I am sure many…
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Why use a capo?
Tamás GállThe main purpose of a capo is to change the ukulele's effective tuning in a single movement. Clip it onto the neck and every string immediately sounds higher. This is useful because if we have learned a particular chord progression or song accompaniment – perhaps one involving complicated finger mov…
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Chords 03: F major
Tamás GállIn this part of our beginner series – followingC major and A minor – we learn F major. This is the first chord that requires more than one finger – two, to be exact. If C major and A minor already feel secure, it is time to put the middle and index fingers to work at the same time. It is not a diffi…
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Caro Emerald – Back It Up
Tamás GállEarlier this year I already sang Caro Emerald's praises, and her work is difficult to praise highly enough. In this new “play-the-chords-along-with-me” video, I would like to show you the accompaniment to one of Caro Emerald's first hits, Back It Up: Believe it or not, this song consists of only TWO…
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Koki'o tenor electro-acoustic
Tamás GállI normally put the exact model name of the ukulele in the title, but this time I spared you because this instrument has been given the longest, most meaningless and least imaginative model code I have encountered: U-SSPLFM-CE-T. I understand the final three letters: CE probably indicates cutaway and…
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The Beatles – In My Life
Tamás GállLong-time readers of the blog may know that I am a Beatles fan, and quite a few posts have dealt with their songs – more precisely, ukulele “arrangements” that were often really chord accompaniments. Those are excellent exercises for anyone getting acquainted with chords. My Beatles posts are fairly…
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Koki'o transparent ukulele
Tamás GállI am generally wary of plastic instruments. In my mind I always imagine beautifully crafted instruments made from wood and metal, so I was curious what it would feel like to hold one of these. Thinking about it, even when visiting music shops I had never really tried plastic ukuleles before. The tra…
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Koki'o Mini
Tamás GállI too have been caught by “mini mania”. More precisely, I have always wondered how tiny a ukulele can become while still producing a genuinely usable sound. We can dispose of the opposite end of the scale fairly quickly, because the baritone is really closer to being a small four-string guitar. But…
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Watch Out, We're Mad! – Dune Buggy
Tamás GállOver the past two or three years I have arranged several songs – not all of which have yet become blog posts – from the films of the outstanding Italian duo, films whose atmosphere is fundamentally shaped by their music. Whether they are handing out punches in the Wild West or in modern times, the a…
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Chords 02: A minor
Tamás GállIn this part of our series for beginners we learn A minor. LikeC major, A minor is not a difficult chord; it is easy both to play and to remember. Like every chord, A minor can be fingered in several different ways. We will learn the simplest version, written as 2 0 0 0. This means pressing the seco…
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Lambada
Tamás GállWho could forget Lambada from the early 1990s? Everybody and their neighbour was shaking to this great little song. It differs from today's supposed “era-defining hits” in one important respect: this was actually music, unlike some of the modern creations that are difficult even to call music – Gang…
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Baton Rouge V2-G Sun guitalele
Tamás GállThis is the first guitalele review on ukulele.hu, so I am not even sure where to begin. Perhaps an honest confession belongs at the start: I cannot really play guitar. I can fret and play a few things on one, but for now I still prefer four-stringed instruments such as ukulele and bass guitar. I was…
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