About us

Ukekey started because I was frustrated by things that didn’t work properly, and tired of things that felt cheap.

About six years ago, I was looking at my bookshelf. I had this massive chord dictionary that I never actually used. If I didn't know a chord, I just looked it up online. The book was completely impractical to carry around. Worse, it was organised by root note. If I wanted to play a song in a new key, I'd be spending half my time flipping back and forth between different pages just to find the basic chords I needed. My memory isn't good enough for that.

I wanted something pocket-sized. More than that, I wanted to see every core chord for a specific key, all in one place, without the clutter of a hundred chords no one ever plays.

Most ukulele groups or solo players default to transposing everything into the key of C. It’s easy, but it makes everything sound a bit "samey" and predictable. Strumming gets boring when it’s too easy. I figured if people had an easy way to see an entire key at a glance, they might actually challenge themselves to play songs in their original, proper keys.

For a long time, it just stayed as an idea. I didn't know how to manufacture it. I designed rough layouts in Windows Paint, thought about buying membership card printing machines, bought a name, and bought a logo. But nothing happened for years.

Eventually, around 2023, with more ideas of things I wanted to make, the right technology fell into place, and I figured out how to bring my ideas to life using lasers and 3D printing.

Ukekey isn’t about churned-out, mass-produced items. It's about thoughtful, unusual gifts and items, that allow us to express ourselves more, show our love of ukes, and hopefully items that solve specific, real-world frustrations for people who actually play the instrument.

If you're interested in knowing more about the 'how' and 'why' of what I make, I'll be adding those stories to my Blog page.

One of my original draft ideas in Paint. Not sure where I was going with this!