All blog posts
339 posts
Spring ukulele courses 2023
Tamás GállDear (Future) Ukulele Players! The dates of this year's first ukulele courses are now set, and I warmly welcome you: Ukulele Course I – 5 March 2023 (Sunday), 9:00–16:00 Ukulele Course III – 19 March 2023 (Sunday), 9:00–16:00 APPLY If you are interested in the courses and would like to apply, click…
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Spring kickoff course 2023
Tamás GállOn Sunday we held a fantastic, fully booked Course I! I took an enormous number of ukuleles with me because many participants had asked to borrow one for the duration of the course. In that sense I could even call the session historic: never before had so many of my ukuleles been sounding at the sam…
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Spring Course III in 2023
Tamás GállI woke to a beautiful, sunny, although slightly chilly Sunday morning and set off excitedly to meet my ukulele students for another Course III. In a friendly, close-knit atmosphere, nine of us started playing a few minutes after 9:00. The morning focused mainly on music theory: we explored scales an…
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Spring Course II in 2023
Tamás GállThis morning ten of us set off to explore the mysteries of rhythm and chord learning in Course II. During the morning we focused mainly on rhythms and rhythm techniques, gave the strings no mercy while learning the “chuck”, and from time to time tied our fingers—or perhaps our brains—in knots by lea…
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Soprano, Concert or Tenor?
Tamás GállA minor religious war is slowly developing on both Hungarian and international forums over whether a beginner should choose a soprano or a concert ukulele as their first instrument. Or perhaps a tenor. I decided to make a blog post and video about the subject, explaining and showing in detail where…
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Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Tamás GállWhen someone asks what instrument I am carrying and I tell them that it is a ukulele, they immediately smile and say, “Ah, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, right?” The history of the song goes back to 1939, when the world first heard this lovely piece as a song in the classic film The Wizard of Oz under…
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Something Stupid
Tamás GállWhen most of us see the title, perhaps the Robbie Williams–Nicole Kidman version comes to mind. Yet we need to go back to 1967 to talk about the Sinatra version—and even that was not the original. Something Stupid originated with the duo Carson and Gaile, but the pairs mentioned above made it truly…
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Something
Tamás GállAt his concerts over the past decade, Paul McCartney has always performed Something with just a ukulele - or at least he begins it that way. It is his tribute to the memory of the song's writer and his fellow musician George Harrison. Something appeared on the album Abbey Road and is generally regar…
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Size Doesn't Matter II
Tamás GállLast year I already posted a similar article with two videos. Now here is another unmissable recording featuring a mini ukulele about the size of a matchbox and the enormous, roughly concert-to-tenor-sized ukulele accompanying it :). A barre covering all four strings can be held with roughly one to…
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Size Doesn't Matter!
Tamás GállI think I may have to reconsider the idea that a soprano ukulele is not necessarily suitable for a man's hands. I found this unbelievably good video: With some chords the number of left-hand fingertips per square centimetre reaches its absolute maximum. It takes incredible dexterity to make your han…
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Singing and Playing the Ukulele
Tamás GállThe title could just as well be "Singing and Playing an Instrument", because it makes almost no difference which instrument we pick up: we can run into the same difficulty when we try to sing and play at the same time (wind instruments excepted ). This is no magic trick either, and of course it can…
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Silent Night — reloaded
Tamás GállSilent Night was one of the first fingerstyle arrangements I ever learned. Ten years ago around this time I practised it diligently until, on 11 December 2011, I published a blog postabout it. I remember how hard I struggled to work out how the chords and melody should fit together, choose the finge…
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