My name is Jonas. Here is how a website like this ends up existing.
How I got here
I have been studying music since I was six years old and started playing piano at the academy a while after that. Once I had the piano under my fingers I taught myself acoustic guitar, mostly fingerstyle, with the occasional pop song thrown in.
Then came a very impulsive moment. I walked into a local music shop that was somehow still open at ten in the evening and walked out with my first ukulele: the cheapest Makala they had, plain laminated mahogany. It did the job of making me fall for the instrument, and it also taught me quickly that I wanted a better one. Something that stays in tune, has more volume, better intonation and some actual sustain.
Finding that better one was harder than it should have been, because decent ukulele information was scarce back then. After a lot of digging I ended up with a limited edition tenor Kala from TheUkuleleSite, back when it was still called Hawaii Music Supply. Solid cedar top, solid golden acacia back and sides. I absolutely love that thing and I still play it today, kept in a vintage tweed case from the lovely people at TheUkuleleMovement.
Somewhere in all that, the ukulele quietly became my main instrument.
Why this website exists
UkuTabs did not start as a website for anyone else. I was building myself an online songbook, so the songs I played were reachable from anywhere: my computer, someone else’s computer, my phone, wherever I happened to be sitting with a ukulele.
I had a background in freelance web development and had founded a webhosting company at one point, so building it was the fun part. I put the first version online in March 2012.
The scarcity of good ukulele information that had frustrated me while shopping for my second uke turned out to be the real reason to keep going. If it was that hard for me, it was that hard for everyone. So the personal songbook became a public one, and then it kept growing.
What UkuTabs is today
- More than 20,000 songs with chords and tabs, each with chord diagrams, a transposer and auto-scroll
- A page for every ukulele chord, all 324 of them, with alternative shapes, audio and the songs that use them
- More than 40 free guides, from tuning your first ukulele to strumming, fingerpicking, theory and instrument care
- Free tools: the ukulele tuner, chord diagrams, the chord namer, scales, a metronome, a tab converter and the keys tool
- Two free apps, a ukulele tuner and the full songbook, on both iPhone and Android
- Eleven languages: English plus Spanish, German, Indonesian, Portuguese, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Polish and Czech
Who actually makes it
It is just me. I write the guides, curate and check the songs, build the tools, run the servers and answer the email. There is no team and no office, which is the honest explanation for why some things take a while and why the site sounds like a person rather than a brand.
Plenty of it is shaped by the people using it, though. Song requests, corrections in the comments and messages pointing out something broken are where a good chunk of the work comes from.
How UkuTabs stays free
UkuTabs is, and always will be, free for everyone. Keeping it running costs real money before a single hour of work is counted, so there are ads on the site to cover the hosting, the bandwidth and the database behind several million visits.
If you would rather support it directly and skip the ads, you can become a supporter on Patreon. That removes ads across the site while you are logged in, and the higher tiers include UkuTabs+ in the app. It is a way to help, never a requirement. The songs, the guides and the tools stay free either way.
Napiš mi
If something is wrong, missing or confusing, I would genuinely like to know. Napiš mi zprávu, or request a song if the one you want is not here yet. If you would like the occasional update instead, there is a monthly newsletter you can sign up for at the bottom of any page.
Thanks for using the site. Fourteen years in, it still surprises me that so many people do.