Ukulele Songbook

You've found Stewart Greenhill's ukulele songbook. I have been running monthly ukulele workshops in Fremantle since 2009, and these are some of the songs I have arranged for the sessions. Most of the songs are here because I like them, or because they illustrate a particular technique or chord pattern.

Requirements

To use this site, you will need modern web browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome). Internet Explorer versions 9 and above should work. Otherwise, consider downloading Google Chrome or Firefox - both are very good and secure browsers.

Instructions

Start with the song index. Songs can be listed by:

  • Song title (the default)
  • Subtitle, usually the composer
  • Country of origin, or language
  • Year composed, or first released
  • Key
  • Number of different chords (abbreviated #C). Lower numbers = easier.
  • Number of chord transitions (abbreviated #T). Lower numbers = easier.
  • Number of video examples (abbreviated #V)
  • Number of play-along examples (lyrics synced to video, abbreviated #S)

Click the column titles to change sort order. Click on the song names to bring up the interactive songsheet with chord diagrams and video. If you see this icon () by the video title, you can play along with the video on your uke. The lyrics and chords should highlight karaoke-style, and if you want to repeat a section, just click on the lyrics and the video will jump to that point. You can also transpose the song to different keys, which might be useful if you have trouble singing it as arranged.

For each video I've listed the performer, and the key in which the song is played. Often this will be different to the key of the arrangement. Click the Transpose button next to the video to transpose the arrangement to the key of the video. If the two are not in the same key, transpose button will be visible. If the key is different it will usually be more difficult to play. Tab sections are not transposed, only chords.

Note that:

  • I am not responsible for the videos. These can often be removed by the owner, or by Youtube as the result of a copyright claim. If you notice something wrong, please let me know and I'll try to fix it.
  • Some copyright owners (eg. Vevo) display advertisements over the videos. There's nothing much I can do about this. Its just the price of a free service.
  • The arrangements aren't intended to exactly match the videos. For example, I will often omit instrumental breaks, or key changes unless they are easy to play.
  • To save time I sometimes download the lyrics from the internet, but these can often contain errors. If you notice something wrong, please let me know.
  • I sometimes change the ending slightly if a song ends with a "fade out". Its hard to do this when playing live. You need a definitive ending.

Enjoy!

This is a work in progress, and there are still many things unfinished. Some things I plan to add:

  • Lots more songs. This is about half of the songs I have arranged, and many of the earlier songs are not in this version
  • Support for other instruments (eg. guitar, mandolin) and tunings
  • Chord theory resources