The ukulele is a versatile little instrument.  Mostly associated with sunny sounding chords, it’s also good for playing melodies, and even combining the two, as in the tune I’m sharing here.

It’s aimed at people who’ve played the ukulele before, and would like something a bit more involved than just strumming C, Am and F.

Here’s a five section tune, with a Spanish feel to it.  The scales and chord strums are inspired by the sounds of Flamenco guitar, hence the rather tacky title.  It’s good fun to play, though and you can let rip a little on the final E section – possibly even letting out a boisterous “Ole!” in the process.

It starts with a few chords, followed, just after strumming the D chord,  with an up stroke broken D chord – best done with the first finger of the left hand, what you do is play the D chord with each string clearly sounding, from the A string to the G string.

Section B is plucked with alternating right hand thumb and first finger.  The first finger takes care of all the open A string notes, while the thumb plays the rest.  Because most of the thumb notes are played on the E string (adjacent to the open A), you’ll have to watch that the left hand fingers don’t get in the way of the open string.

Section C is a short echo of the ending of section A.  It is usual, in Flamenco solo guitar to have melodic sections alternating with strummed sections.

Section D is another melodic section, followed by a lively E section, which can get gradually faster, if you wish.

Tunes like this have proved very popular with my students over the years, and it’s my aim in the near future to put together a book of similar tunes of different styles, so watch this space.

To help with learning the Flamenculele, here’s an audio clip of it: