I keep a spreadsheet of the all of the similarly formatted Ukulele Play Along videos created by myself and a number of other users. The Ukulele Play Along videos are slightly skewed towards ukulele-friendly keys, as many of the videos are made for educational settings. That said, I know that I and other creators occasionally make videos that are of interest to ourselves and our own playing—and the longer you keep creating content, the more you need to do this for yourself. At any rate, as we make more play alongs for our own interests—when we’re making play alongs at all—the list of chords sho ..read more

While I offer a huge collection of public-domain Christmas and holiday songs for purchase ($10!) at buymeacoffee.com/ukestuff (look in “Extras”), I cannot offer songs that are under copyright in that collection. Copyright allows creators to be paid for their work, though in the music industry, only a small percentage of the sale of a work (printed or audio recording) ever makes it to the composer, lyricist, or performer. But still, for items under copyright, this is the right way to do things. As a result, I do have some arrangements for chord melody that are of existing works under copyright ..read more

The front cover of the arrangements I have just released my final collection of Christmas Intermediate Chord Melody arrangements for GCEA and DGBE Ukulele. This has been a three year project, first with 11 songs in 2021, then 20 in 2022, and now a final collection of 52 arrangements (53 songs with the two versions of “Away in a Manger.” You can purchase the collection in “Extras” at www.buymeacoffee.com/ukestuff. The price is $10 for the collection and access to the linked videos. All the songs are in the Public Domain (e.g. no “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “Frosty the Snowman”) All so ..read more

I have just added a separate page for my recorder resources. I realize this is a “UkeStuff” website, and that there has been some past negativity between recorder and ukulele in music education (I think most of that conflict has been resolved, but the opinions are certainly still out there). While I use ukulele as a teacher with ALL my classes (K-5), I only teach it to 5th grade. And while there are teachers who teach ukulele (in some way) down to Kinder (usually with open tuning), I find 5th grade students (and older) to be most prepared for the challenges of ukulele as well as solving a lot ..read more

The spreadsheets are available on the Video Play Alongs Page on this blog/website. Confession time: I have not updated the Ukulele Video Play Along Spreadsheets for a long time. There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest factors were: I have made a lot of play alongs (the list shows 674 as of today, September 3, 2023, and that doesn’t include the videos I have ready to release) and just haven’t kept up with the index. It takes time to maintain the index, particularly as I track which chords are used (this takes the longest amount of time in the process). My attention in this space has been s ..read more

I just wanted to write a short note following my participation at the 2023 Silver Creek International Ukulele Carnival which was held this past weekend (August 17-20, 2023). Two Harbors is located on Lake Superior roughly a half hour North of Duluth, Minnesota. The SCIUC is hosted by the Two Harbors Ukulele Group (THUG), and over 300 people participated this past weekend. This year, for the first time, the event was held at the Lake County Fairgrounds, right in Two Harbors, where in past years it was held in the Silver Creek Township (a bit more of a drive, turning left after reaching Betty’s ..read more

I have been thinking about three questions for the last week, and I while I have answers, they are not fully formed yet—and I am not sure they will ever be! Here are three ukulele questions—what would your answers be? Here on the blog, send me an e-mail. I’ll make a video about this at some point on the UkeStuff channel (I’ll keep identities private). I will also post this on my UkePlayAlongs and UkeStuff community pages on YouTube. 1) If you were to recommend any ukulele, to a new player, what make/model would it/they be? Why would you choose that ukulele? 2) If you were going to buy ukuleles ..read more

In ukulele circles, Kala has been both applauded and criticized for their Waterman series of ukulele; ABS ukuleles modeled after the Maccaferri Ukuleles of the 1950s and 1960s. The Maccaferri ukuleles were wonderful instruments made of styrene, and I have been lucky enough to have been gifted one by a friend, Ukester Brown (You can see his website at: https://www.ukesterbrown.com/index.html.). Kala was applauded for the acknowledged design tribute to Maccaferri ukuleles (the moulds were destroyed, so no one could make them as they once were made), but criticized for their playability more than ..read more

Yesterday I noticed that one of the companies that I really like (or, I should say, whose ukuleles I really like) was selling ukuleles at a discount. This company previously held auctions for each of their builds, and if you were selected, you could buy one at full price. I did enter auctions, and finally won a concert “second,” which saved me something like $100 on the cost of the ukulele. Without naming the brand, it is one of my favorite ukuleles. But, as I mentioned, that company now has stock on hand, and while there may still be auctions, if you want one of those ukuleles, you can buy on ..read more

Hello! Thanks for taking a moment to stop by the blog/website. As usual, many thanks to WordPress for making this resource free, though I do pay for the custom URL of ukestuff.info. I haven’t posted a lot of videos or content in the past months, mainly because I have been working on my health. Over the last year, I lost over 140 pounds, and with the freedom from that weight, I now spend a lot of time being active and getting out and doing things, which keeps me from making new content. However, in truth, I have RECORDED a lot of content…months worth at this point…but have not found the time to ..read more