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About

Ukeadoodle exists to help Ukulele groups. It's a simple online tool to maintain ukulele songs and playlists for groups. You and anyone can do this by freely adding songs and creating books of songs, for any ukulele event.

Contributing Songs

Principles

Above all else, uke songs sheets must be simple to read, and easy to play. You want to allow anyone and everyone to join in. The audience is the beginner ukulelist playing in a group. When adding a song, follow these principles:

  • Use simpler chords.
  • Use fewer chords.
  • Use less detail.
  • Change the key to suit ukulele chords.
  • Lyrics and vocals drive the songs, so make the chords follow the lyrics.
  • Remove instrumental only sections (exceptions for soloing).
  • Lay out and format the uke song sheets identically. This site uses "ukedown" to automatically format content to help.
  • Have one version of each song. Make existing versions better instead of adding alternative versions.

Finally and most importantly, thank you for your contributions!

Guidelines

  1. General
    1. NO ALL CAPS. Do Capitalise the first letter of words in titles, and use standard english to rules for Nouns and Start of sentences.
    2. Use basic characters and not smart word processing characters. This is essential in song titles to ensure consistent ordering. E.g. use "straight quotes" and not “smart quotes”, use hyphens "-" and not em-dash "—".
    3. Don't use tablature, chords and lyrics only please.
    4. Don't use html, the site rejects any content that contains html.
    5. Use parenthesis to indicate backing or overlapping vocals, e.g. "This indecision's bugging me (Esta indecision me molesta)".
    6. Avoid using barlines "|", instead use chords to indicate new bars.
    7. Indicate a pause between lyrics with 3 dots (aka an ellipsis), e.g. "Wait ... go".
    8. Be aware of using ":", due to legacy reasons this creates a [label]!
  2. Structure
    1. First line must be "Title [key] - Artist". Keep this short so it fits onto the contents page in case ukulele players can't find the number, you're not naming a Borat film. The key is generally the first chord of the song.
    2. Use basic "A-Za-z0-9" characters in title. Do not use accented or special characters as this makes it hard to search for songs, and orders them in unexpected ways.
    3. Songs must fit onto 1 page. When ukulele players have to find the next page they'll stop playing, become disorientated, and play out of time.
    4. Prefer one way scrolling. Ukulele players do not have a built in google map capability and so they get lost and confused when trying to find the next verse after jumping back to an earlier chorus. At this point, they're more likely to start playing a different song than they are to play the right verse.
    5. Only label sections (e.g. [Chorus]) when it is referenced later.
    6. Include instructions in labels instead of in chord names, e.g. "[Intro - single strum]" is better than [C - single strum]. Minimise the instructions.
    7. Only use boxes to indicate sections that will be referenced later or need repeating. E.g. Instead of copy and pasting a Chorus N times and breaking the 1 page rule, put the Chorus in a box and give it a label.
    8. Prefer short lines. Remember all ukulele players are partially blind (and probably going deaf), they're going to zoom in to make the text bigger.
    9. Always separate sections (intro, verse, chorus, etc) by adding an extra line.
    10. Never add extra new lines unless it is to separate a section.
    11. Prefer starting new lines when the bar changes, which is typically aligned with a chord change. Exceptions to starting a new line are when lyrics naturally start ahead of the bar change.
    12. Start new lines with chords, lyrics, or label. Don't add leading spaces
  3. Chords
    1. Chords must be marked using square brackets e.g. "[A]".
    2. Prefer to put chords inline with lyrics, not above the lyrics. They must always be inline on the formatted output.
    3. Prefer one chord per square bracket. Things like "[Am-C-G]" are confusing and unnecessary, so instead use "[Am][C][G]". The former tricks ukulele players into asking their mates how to play the chord "AmCG" creating mass confusion.
    4. Only add chords to indicate a chord change, avoid e.g. "[C] [C] [C]" unless it clearly for a single strum/hit/timing (e.g. Common People).
    5. Use the No Chord "[NC]" to notate when no chords are to be played.
    6. Avoid using slashes "[C] ///" to indicate strumming patterns, or number of chord strums.
    7. Indicate a sudden accented stop or single strum on a chord with an asterisk "*". E.g. "[A]Strumming [A*]Stop".
    8. Insert chords just ahead of words, leave a space between the square bracket and the word.
    9. When the chord changes with the start of a word, do not leave a space between the square bracket and the word.
    10. When a chord changes within a word, insert it just ahead of the syllable change. Do not hyphens or spaces to split the word.
    11. When chord changes across a held lyric, use hyphens to indicate the lyric is held across the chord change. E.g. "[Am]Wo-[Bm]-a-[C]-h".

Feature Wishlist

What things would you like? Please do email me (Mark) with suggestions or special requests at admin@ukejam.online.

  • Chord Cheat Sheet
  • Responsive Word generation - progress bar
  • Faster PDF generation
  • Better landscape split heuristics
  • Custom ordering of songs in books
  • Search
  • Private songs/books
  • User logins
  • Android/iOS App
  • WIP/Preview/Next version publishing (and changes between)
  • Preview the content in Facebook/Whatsapp links
  • Share buttons
https://ukejam.online/info