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339 posts
Don't Be Cruel
Tamás Gáll...in other words, “Ne légy kegyetlen!” in Hungarian. This is a great rock-and-roll song by Elvis, recorded in a New York studio in 1956 together with another excellent song, Hound Dog. The latter immediately shot to the top of the charts, but after a while Don't Be Cruel overtook Hound Dog. In fact…
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DIY Electric Mahalo
Tamás GállIn the [klub], a very interesting series of photographs caught my eye. It documented the "electrification" of a Mahalo soprano ukulele. I asked the author of the post, Béla Csongrádi, whether he would like to describe the installation process, because I would be happy to publish it on ukulele.hu . A…
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Cort BWT
Tamás GállI am always excited to pick up a ukulele from a brand I have never tried before. I examine how its appearance, decoration and body construction differ from the instruments I already know, and I am curious what kind of sounds I can coax out of it. That was exactly how I felt about a Cort BWT tenor uk…
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Community ukulele production II
Tamás GállUpdate:thank you for the videos — they turned out really well . Over the next few days I will edit and cut the recordings, and I will be back soon with the finished production. It is always a great pleasure to announce another community play-along project. I hope you will take part in creating the n…
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Cigar Box Ukulele
Tamás GállWhen I wrote the post called *(l)ele a few years ago, I never thought I would soon have the chance to hold a ukulele made from a cigar box in my own hands. A few weeks ago I received a nice message from Dávid, asking whether I would like to try a ukulele made from a cigar box - one that he had built…
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Cifra Palota
Tamás GállFrom time to time, a kind acquaintance of mine, Orsi, posts pictures on Facebook of stones she has painted. The pictures on the stones are inspired by Hungarian folk songs or children's songs, and the game is to guess which song each picture represents. I really enjoy this game — not because I know…
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Christmas + Downloads — Reloaded
Tamás GállChristmas 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 prac…
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Chords 22: B7
Tamás GállIf you happened to miss the blog post about B majorplease read it. At the beginning I summarize the basic things you need to know about barre chords, which I will not repeat here. The barre version of B7 differs from B major in that you do not need to place your ring finger on the fourth fret of the…
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Chords 21: B Minor
Tamás GállIf you happened to skip the blog post about B major, please read it. At the beginning of that post I summarize the basic things you need to know about barre chords, so I will not repeat them here. B minor differs from B major in that you do not need to place your middle finger on the third fret of t…
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Chords 20: B Major
Tamás GállAfter many chord-learning videos, we have reached a real milestone: this is the first barre chord we learn. A barre chord means using one finger — usually the index finger — to fret all four strings at once (or two or three strings in the case of a partial barre), while the remaining strings are fre…
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Chords 19: F7
Tamás GállF7 can be derived from two other chords in two different ways. The most logical starting point is probably F major, because we add only one note: place the ring finger on the third fret of the third string, giving us an Eb. If we want to find a relative in terms of the fingering shape, think of G mi…
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Chords 18: E7
Tamás GállE7 is a genuinely beautiful chord. It sounds excellent on the ukulele, and although the fingering may look strange the first time, the second attempt will already feel much easier. Compared with our usual hand position, we need to rotate the hand slightly. Turn the back of the hand a little toward t…
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