Where to find chords for ukulele? Finally enjoy uninterrupted, error-free playing
Playing the ukulele is simple, but you can’t do without chords, unless you want to rely on your improvisation skills. But finding a really good songbook with chords seems to be a big problem lately. Where can you find a chord songbook and what should you choose? Let’s take a look.
There’s no songbook like a songbook
To be able to play any song, you will first need to know its chords. Without them, the most you can do is guess how you can theoretically play it. Most people at that point pick up their phone, type the name of the song into a search engine, and click on the first chord website that comes up.
Unfortunately, most chord sites and servers are not as good as one would expect. The biggest problems are those where virtually everyone has free access and it is not certain what sources the contributor is drawing from or what experience they have. Often on such sites you will encounter errors in the chords or the lyrics themselves.
Rely on quality and verified sources
If you want to learn how to play songs by heart, you should rely on quality, and most importantly, verified sources. What we haven’t mentioned yet is that you don’t need special songbooks to play the ukulele, but you can get by with guitar ones – because the same chords are played when playing the ukulele.
In the bookstore, you can reach for the classic guitar songbooks you were used to in music class, for example. Their greatest advantage is their accuracy, which is taken care of either by an experienced author or by the publishing house itself, which cannot afford to publish a songbook with errors.
Good news for online lovers, where you can also find quality songbooks to draw from when playing the ukulele. Among them is the website ukulelko.com, where you can find not only interesting articles but also a songbook with chords. The songs are prepared by experienced musicians who both create and check the songbook – so quality is guaranteed.
Take the time to create your own songbook
If you always want to have your favourite songs on hand to play when you’re with friends or in your spare time, you can create your own songbook. A large number of people approach the creation of a classic paper songbook by copying chords and lyrics from existing songbooks.
You can easily create a customized songbook that avoids the tedium of searching for songs online. However, there are drawbacks to a paper songbook that you’ll have to take into account. A really good songbook can soon grow to the size of a larger novel, and therefore take up more storage space when you travel.
Most musicians, however, face a completely different problem, namely that they forget their songbook at home. Fortunately, there is an effective solution in the form of an online songbook, which you can build to your heart’s content. You can access it on any phone, tablet or computer.
This service is offered, for example, by the MangoZpěvník.cz application, which has a database of more than 50,000 songs. From these you can create your own songbook at your discretion, which you will always have with you on your tablet or mobile phone.
Whatever you decide, always try to draw from proven sources that will help you learn to play songs exactly as they should be. Otherwise, you may learn bad habits that will be hard to break in the future.