Category Archives: Uncategorized

Recently I arranged Beautiful Dreamer, a song that is over 150 years old, for ukulele. Stephen Foster wrote it – the sheet music was published posthumously and sold as the last song he ever wrote. But I don’t have anything else to say about that right now, because: What is the deal with the mockery […]

The Magic Ukulele Waltz by Roy Smeck, the wizard of the strings! This song was written in the 30s, I think, although my internet searches are coming up a bit muddled at the moment and I can’t be quite sure so don’t quote me on it 😉 I’ve had this one in my repertoire for […]

A song by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley. I learned this because Nellie McKay played it on her 1960s cover songs album. When I do these videos I want there to be something extra special about them and usually for me that means learning a new technique or a new chord melody arrangement on the […]

For those of you who learn well through observation, here is a tutorial of a sort. More of a playthrough, actually. A few years back I scoured the web for every ukulele version of blackbird I could find and developed this arrangement using my favorite bits from each. FWIW I think this song is a more of a challenge on […]

Paul McCartney is my favorite Beatle. -s

Practicing my curtsies. And my french singing. <3 -s

This is a song that appears on the beautiful (if I do say so myself) album I made with Meredith Wilder called “There Will Come Soft Rains.” It’s an album of Sara Teasdale poems we made into songs and I am pretty sure it is the one thing among all things I am proudest to […]

This is one in which I use my Mother Maybelle voice! Plus I had the bright idea to sing with myself, what do you think? <3 -s

This is a song where I started exploring composing for the music box. That is the way it appears on Beautiful William’s album, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (available on a streaming service near you). See the music box—and my beautiful friend Meredith Wilder—in action here. But said music box is having some troubles so […]

This is a song I wrote four years ago what felt like a revelation. When will I feel like writing again? Hm… I am very excited about this album of originals (many of them featured here) that is in production right now. “In production” means that early in the pandemic I visited my folks and […]