Good Hymn Book for Ukulele?

Not a book but I like a site called classic country song lyrics .com and one of the choices is country gospel with lots of very playable songs.
 
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Hymn Favorites is a nice, relatively small collection (32 vs several hundred vs 1000). The fake book looks like a great value, especially in the light of ELW's price tag.
 
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Hymn Favorites is a nice, small collection. The fake book looks like a great value, especially in the light of ELW's price tag.

a bad thing about the hymn fake book is that it uses the more traditional key signatures. That means there's quite a few hymns in Bb, Eb, E, etc. In some cases I just wrote in transpose chord names myself.
 
Thanks for all of the suggestions. The ELW book is more expensive than I would like (I would have to admit that I looked to see if a PDF of it was floating on the web), and as bnolsen just mentioned, the keys of the Hynn Fakebook are not really conducive to ukulele. I have a PhD in Music Education, so I could transpose keys--but this is "fun time" for me where I want to be able to just sit and play.

At $6.95 via the iBook Store, I picked up the Hymn Favorites for Ukulele. There are only 26 hymns there, and it took all of 20 minutes to play through them--but that is definitely in the right direction, and fairly priced.

Incidentally, only one surprise E major chord along the way--and I actually managed to pull that off today.

Thanks again for all the suggestions!
 
a bad thing about the hymn fake book is that it uses the more traditional key signatures. That means there's quite a few hymns in Bb, Eb, E, etc. In some cases I just wrote in transpose chord names myself.
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Same deal with ELW. Some of the hymns that are not in "guitar friendly" keys include alternate chords with capo positioning recommendations. Of course some guitar friendly keys (i.e., E major) are at enmity with the ukulele.
Incidentally, hymns are surprisingly fun to play on the uke. Most are written in four parts which correspond well to the four strings. They offer great introductions to chords solos, passing notes, and other musical concepts.
 
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I take a uku to church at lest 3 times a week, and just play along. Even when I visit to preach at another church they welcome (the lil guitar ), and most are amazed when risa lp is brought. Most times I just carry my tk1. Anyway I found my best tool is a capo.
 
Bill1,

I totally agree with you. I'm looking for ukulele friendly keys right now so that I can sing by myself or play at a campfire (we have a rather large family with Christian heritage).

From a more practical standpoint...when you see guitar chords with a bass note indicated in the chord, such as Ab/C or Bb/D, how do you play that on the ukulele? In both these cases, the "bass" note is part of the chord itself (so not a add9 or such). And that is just from looking at the first 2 songs that come with the "sample" on the iBook Store version of the Hymn Fakebook.

I will be grateful for any insight you can add to this!
 
From a more practical standpoint...when you see guitar chords with a bass note indicated in the chord, such as Ab/C or Bb/D, how do you play that on the ukulele? In both these cases, the "bass" note is part of the chord itself (so not a add9 or such). And that is just from looking at the first 2 songs that come with the "sample" on the iBook Store version of the Hymn Fakebook.

I will be grateful for any insight you can add to this!

I normally play the bass note an octave (or two) high on whichever string is most convenient, often the 1st or 4th. The sound complements reentrant tuning nicely. I suppose that technically the resultant chord is an "add 9th or such."
 
A couple of good online resources:

  • The Indelible Grace project has a pretty large encyclopedia of hymn charts for free download. I often look there if I can't find a particular hymn in my library already. You can either get a lead sheet (my preference) or a guitar chord chard that has capo suggestions.
  • Page CXVI has a lot of good reinterpretations of hymns that are great to listen to. They also offer charts of their arrangements, which are really fun to play.

As for the inversions and root notes, I typically don't worry about them -- especially if they're just a 3rd or 5th of the chord. It's already there, so the sound is complete. I'm more concerned about making the transitions easy for vocal accompaniment.
 
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