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339 posts
Early-autumn Ukulele Course II — report
Tamás GállAs a continuation of last week's late-summer Ukulele Course I, I held Course II yesterday. During the morning we learned new chords, and in the afternoon we moved on to the foundations of music theory and barre chords. We covered a dense and substantial amount of material. It looked as though I mana…
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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…
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Late-summer Ukulele Course I — report
Tamás GállAfter the June courses I received a steady stream of emails and Facebook messages asking about new course dates, so I did not waste any time: I organised Course I and Course II for 29 August and 5 September respectively courses. Yesterday, 29 August 2021, greeted us with a cooler-than-usual but stil…
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Baton Rouge V2-T8 Sun
Tamás GállI am always happy when I get an unusual ukulele in my hands, and I definitely put eight-string ukuleles in that category because I get to try them relatively rarely. This one is made of laminated mahogany, and its appearance features the familiar Baton Rouge design elements, including the sunburst-s…
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CCR — Bad Moon Rising
Tamás GállI have arranged another song by one of the most popular American bands of the 1960s, Creedence Clearwater Revival: Bad Moon Rising. Alongside Proud Mary and Have You Ever Seen the Rain , it is one of their best-known songs. Those who attend ukulele meetupsare used to us playing a CCR song at almost…
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Ukulele Meetup 2021
Tamás GállDear Ukulele Players! I am delighted to announce the first ukulele meetup of the year . Exactly one year ago today we held the 2020 ukulele meetup at Fonó. I warmly recommend the report I wrote about it . I very much hope the pandemic will not interfere and that as many of us as possible can get tog…
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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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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…
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Lanikai MA-P
Tamás GállThe Lanikai MA-P is the third pineapple-shaped ukulele I have had the chance to try over the past few years. The body shape and size were almost identical on all three; the differences were in the materials and level of construction, as two were entry-level instruments and one was a premium model. T…
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Late-summer ukulele courses
Tamás GállDear (Future) Ukulele Players! Some of you could not attend the courses at the beginning of the summer, and several people also emailed to say they would like to come to the next one. I am delighted to announce two more ukulele courses at the very end of summer and the beginning of autumn: Ukulele C…
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The “Eszperente” Ukulele
Tamás GállI felt like writing down a little piece and sharing it with you. Keep this in mind: with this musical contraption you can pluck pleasant sounds and surprise people with something made with love. (The Hungarian original is written in “eszperente”, a word game in which only the vowel e is used.) You c…
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Baton Rouge V1-SL nat
Tamás GállI had the chance to try a simple soprano ukulele from Baton Rouge. It is made from laminated mahogany, and one interesting detail is the dark decorative strip running around the headstock, although perhaps "binding" is not technically the correct name for it. In any case, I think the narrow dark lin…
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