Ukulele repertoire: song sheets for amateur music making

Ever since getting introduced to the ukulele on Maui, I have been curiously witnessing and participating the rituals of ukulele groups and clubs in Maui, Boston, London, and Amsterdam. The ukulele allows self-accompaniment for singing without a conductor or leader. What fascinates me is how little (if any) this explosion of amateur music making is mentioned in the academic literature and the amount of time we spend on “repertoire selection” to find suitable song sheets for our jam sessions and gigs, whether we search for them, adapt and transcribe them for our needs, or write them from scratch.

Conceptual map of ukulele musical practice and repertoire

The explosive growth of ukulele sales is a testimony to the growing demand for these instruments, and as such, a thirst for knowledge (courses, workshops, tutorials, etc). Unlike learning other musical instruments, the ukulele is easy to play to accompany yourself singing, thus the growth of jam sessions.

Just recently, I showed a six-year old Dutch boy how to play the one-finger chord of C while camping in a state park in Connecticut. Sitting around the fire at sunset, the boy frantically strummed the uke not in the manner I’d normally like but like a rock star. Before long, we were singing Frere Jacques, with him strumming on the C-chord on my XS Soprano while I plucking the melody on my Tiny Tenor ukulele. It was a sight to watch, for he was experiencing what it’s like to be a singer with a musical instrument. His mother posted her video of us on her Facebook page to share with their relatives and friends in the Netherlands.

I read somewhere that the rockstars in the sixties toyed with the ukulele, as their first instrument in the fifties. Is it any wonder that Joan Baez’s first instrument was the ukulele? The Beatles loved the ukulele.

Since starting up a ukulele club in a part of Boston that’s not seen ukulele jam sessions before, I’ve been spending most of my free time searching for songs and song sheets for our weekly meet-ups. Rather than choosing a well-used songbook like that from London’s Ukulele Wednesday and simply having the participants choose at each jam session, I choose a theme and then find song titles to fit the theme beforehand. Often, I get too many song titles and the process of narrowing them down depends on finding suitable song sheets. If I can’t find suitable ones that are already freely available on the Web, I transcribe and arrange them to suit my needs.

Does every ukulele group leader spend as much time as I on this repertoire selection activity? Am I doing something wrong? Why can’t I simply use the websites and songbooks compiled by more established ukulele clubs rather than reinvent the wheel?

There is a pipeline of how music travels to whet the appetite of ukulele players. It can be bi-directional or iterative with feedback. You can begin with a song book and choose from it. You can begin with song titles and look for them in song books and websites. You can compile new song books, the way I do, according to a theme or to skill level.

I’ve observed the following characteristics about the written material for ukulele playing, also known as song sheets.

1. No standardised naming conventions
   1. Song sheets are also referred to as chord charts or song charts
   2. The word “tab” or “tablature” doesn’t necessarily refer to tabs; can be chord names above lyrics
2. No standardised format
   1. chord names:
      1. above the lyrics
      2. embedded in the lyrics
         1. in parentheses
         2. in brackets
         3. different colour from lyrics
         4. different font from lyrics
         5. different font style (bold) from lyrics
   2. chord diagrams
      1. absent
      2. on top of the page
      3. on the side of the page
      4. at the bottom of the page or song (if more than one-page)
      5. above the lyrics
   3. lyrics
      1. not spaced out
      2. spaced out and divided by vertical lines to represent beats
   4. riffs (in introduction, instrumental section, ending, outro, etc)
      1. completely absent
      2. represented as
         1. tablature
         2. Western notation
         3. letter of the string and number of fret
   5. strum patterns
      1. completely absent
      2. represented as
         1. d = down, u = up, D & U = accented or with emphasis
         2. down and up arrows
         3. air stroke, chnk, wham stroke, etc.
   6. lead sheet or some manifestation of fake book format
      1. chord names above melody line, lyrics underneath
      2. above plus tablature representation
3. No indication of skill level
   1. Richard’s Ukulele Songbook indicates skill level by name of the key and number of chords
   2. Jim’s Ukulele Songbook lets you search and filter by number of chords, among other parameters
   3. Dr Uke indicates beginner’s level with an asterisk, BAR for baritone ukulele
   4. Ukulele Hunt groups song titles with links to their URLS by four levels of difficulty
      1. easy
      2. moderate
      3. tricky
      4. nightmare
   5. Ukulele-Tabs website groups them in three categories
      1. beginner
      2. intermediate
      3. confirmed
   6. UkuTabs.com website groups them in five difficult levels 1 to 5
   7. Live Ukulele website colour codes its tabs for three levels
      1. easy
      2. intermediate
      3. hard
4. No guarantee of consistency, accuracy or authenticity (thus uncertainty)
   1. Wrong or different chords from the original, published sheet music with piano accompaniment, chords, lyrics, melody, etc. Different versions – which is the correct one? Example: Obladi Oblada.
   2. Typing, spelling, punctuation errors making you feel a bit uneasy about accuracy and reliability of the song sheet
   3. Mistakes in lyrics or just different versions (even artists do different versions)
   4. Printing & online viewing (turning pages):
      1. There’s an unwritten, unspoken rule of keeping it within one-sheet or two sheets but not an extra line or two beyond (for printing and turning pages)
      2. Different sized sheets due to conventions of US letter size vs A4 (Europe & Australia, New Zealand)
5. Many different versions of the same song: how to decide?
   1. Different artists singing the same song have their own renditions & intricacies
   2. Different keys thus different chords
   3. Composers edit their versions to suit occasions or against piracy and plagiarism. Chopin was known to deliberately make different versions so he could keep track.
   4. Different skill levels

There are several approaches to getting written music for the ukulele. One is to choose songs from songbooks of more established ukulele clubs like Bytown Ukulele Group in Ontario, Canada or Ukulele Wednesdays in London. Another is to trawl through their individual songs on their websites (see table below). Unfortunately not all songs have song sheets available for the ukulele in these locations or elsewhere on the Web, so I end up looking for piano sheet music or listening to them on Spotify or Youtube and transcribing them for the ukulele.

Best resources (websites) to find individual songs (in order of my preference)

Songbooks (compilation of songsheets)

• Ukulele Wednesdays (version 3, 2017) (277 pages; 10 years in London!)
• Ukulele Society of Great Britain (USGB): 1,640 pages of songs!
• Bytown Ukulele Group (Canada): plus songbooks of other groups and clubs
• Hawaiian songs from 808 Uke Jams (Maui):  in various songbooks

Note @ 25th July 2018

If you have read this entire blog post, you are very likely a candidate for my 50-question survey to help me understand how leaders of ukulele groups select songs and/or create song sheets for their members to use in jam sessions, workshops, or gigs. Without a doubt, song sheets are a necessary ingredient of ukulele jam sessions (group play and sing alongs). The current atmosphere of freely sharing and distributing song sheets on the Web helps foster the spirit of amateur music making. For most, it’s a labour of love, for you do it without expecting any remuneration.

What will you get out of completing the Google Form survey? It’s entirely voluntary. However, the more responses I get, the more reliable my results will be. You will be the first to learn the results of my research and new song sheets that I produce or critique.