Songbooks are a special kind of hell

Unless you can read sheet music or tablature, you'll probably begin your musical journey playing songs from songsheets, or songbooks. They're created with good intentions, but kind of make me want to scream sometimes. Okay, okay. Most of the time. And this is where I sign myself up for loads of work with very little reward...

A song-what?

A songsheet is what you get when you write out the lyrics of a song and notate them with shorthand names (like 'G', or 'B7') for the chords that you play alongside those lyrics. Sometimes songsheets also include the chord diagrams at the top or side of the page, to show where you put your fingers to form those chords. You'll find songsheets online on sites like Ultimate Guitar, or as downloadable PDFs from the personal websites of people passionate about playing ukulele. People like me. (This right here? This is called foreshadowing.)

Put a handful of songsheets together and – presto! – you've got yourself a songbook. You can find full songbooks available from ukulele club websites, and a quick Google search will furnish you with a whole bunch of them in minutes.

NICE!

When you first start, songsheets and songbooks are the best damn thing: they're free downloadable PDFs that will tell you how to play dozens of songs, and list for you the proper 100% correct, bona fide ukulele chords for that song. Right???

Well, maybe. In my experience, songsheets and songbooks are hit and miss when it comes to how 'right' they are, and also in the general song selection of what's available – and for me that makes them limited in their utility.

Pick any song, as long as it's one of these ten

It's common sense for certain songs to be ubiquitous in songbooks: some are classics known to literally everyone, others are just a few chords, so they're easy for beginners to play, or are ideal for uke meets where folk with Different Concepts of Rhythm play together.

Other songs turn up a lot because it seems the ukulele community has decided that they are 'suitable for ukulele' – whatever that means – and this can have little to do with the original instrument the song was performed on. (I say, fuck that. Why shouldn't you play anything on ukulele? You like a song, you go for it!)

These 'approved' songs get pretty boring, pretty fast.

They're writing songs of love, but not for me

Songbooks can also be excluding: some of us just aren't into comedy songs where the lyrics have been changed to reference ukuleles.

How subversive and unexpected. Whoever thought that up must be the coolest guy ever. I don't know what to do with these feelings.

And I'm pretty good with oldies songs knowledge, but dancehall classics from the First World War are often a step too far for me.

DUPLO vs. LEGO

Then there are the meddlers.

Some clubs, and sheet music providers, muck about with chords, simplifying and iterating until every song in their club book is made of the same five basic chords. Agreed that it's a nice idea to provide a variety of tunes for newcomers, but I don't think rendering songs unrecognisable (by essentially hammering them flat) is helpful. Nor is teaching people to stay in a safe space where all they know is five chords.

To each their own, but I hunger for progress and a sense of achievement from my ukulele playing. 

Half the time you can leave out the widdly optional bits between lines, but there are certain chords that make up the core structure of a song. If a tune is notable for a specific chord progression, whittling it down to leave half those changes (or fewer) often just makes it a shadow of the melody it used to be. And where's the fun in that? 

This is Leonard. He's an elephant.

Let's just broach it, shall we? A lot of the time, the chords listed for a song are just...wrong.

Not 'but they're transposed, you big silly', nor 'they're edited with a bit of joie de vivre' – they're often just incorrect. The intervals between the notes don't match those of the original tune, regardless of transposition, so the shape of the music is off.

(As an aside, I do so like me a nice transposition: I'm a woman who has problems with her joints, so I often don't want to be fiddling around with a capo, or heading up the neck where it's all cramped. A nice bit of transposition can take something from the scratchy edge to that mellifluous part of my vocal range where it feels like birds might land on my shoulders as I sing.)

In some cases it's not incorrect, just carelessly transcribed; there's a big difference between an elegant cover and cutting out parts of the song because you can't be bothered with them. Some folk cut out all the interstitial bits between verses and choruses that let the song breathe, others excise the measures for the guitar solo (oi, I would have whistled that), or just write 'CHORUS' like you've somehow instantly memorised the song so far. Flitting around on the sheet isn't always easy, so I prefer to write choruses out again if possible.

Having specific tastes

It's become clear to me that my tastes simply don't align with much of the uke community. (I've come around to calling it a 'uke', but that took me a year.)

I don't like a substantial number of these damned songs that get carted out time and gain. I despise Hallelujah, Riptide, Rawhide and anything by George Formby. If that's your jam, enjoy, but for the rest of everyone who reads this blog (i.e. me) I'll be making my own songsheets and songbooks, and posting them here in the coming months.

Songbooks are a special kind of hell

I should know: I spent days making one last winter when I couldn't find one that included all the songs I wanted, with the correct chords to boot. I laboured for quite some time on it, and though it contains dozens of songs it's still not finished.

Watch this space...

Songsheets for not-popular-but-excellent songs, which may or may not be in the original key (most likely not), and are suited for low-to-moderate talent at strumming and chord formation (or a willingness to learn)...will be popping up here soon.

They won't be 'right' by other people's standards, I'm sure - I'm hardly a virtuoso, just a gal with a goodish ear - but none of them are intended to match the record exactly, because I prefer to transpose to fit my voice and my instrument. They will be tailored to create nice covers that can be sung and played for fun, and which respect the spirit and structure of the original song.

There's bound to be some crossover, but the song selection won't be the same as other ukulele songbooks. Heck, I'm making this for me and for the fun of creation, so it doesn't have to match anyone else's weird rules about what you can and can't play on a ukulele...

I'll warn you now, there's probably going to be a lot of Billy Joel, indie bands, modern country and Disney songs.