I, me, Brad Bordessa have been playing the ukulele since 2005. Teaching and performing music is my full-time job and has been since I graduated from the Institute of Hawaiian Music.
As such, I bring a high-level of real-world experience and expectation to the work that I create. Instilled in every article is my knowledge, opinion, and experience.
Content Policy
I strive to make content that is informative and interesting – content that is genuinely useful and created in your best interest.
Every article on Live Ukulele is written to be worth your time to read. There are no “gottchas!”, no fluff content created to sell an affiliate link.
With the exception of several guest posts by Dagan Bernstein (also an ukulele player and a gigging musician), I write everything here.
Every once in a while, when I’m really stuck, I’ll ask ChatGPT for some ideas for headlines. That’s the extent of AI on the website.
Link Policy
Every link on Live Ukulele is vetted and chosen by me as a relevant and useful resource.
I don’t accept paid links. Stop emailing me about it.
Throughout the site there are a few affiliate links that point to Sweetwater.com. I use Sweetwater for a majority of my personal music gear purchases and they are great.
These links earn me a small commission if you choose to purchase something through them. They don’t cost you any extra.
Review Policy
I mostly avoid reviews since I don’t believe they’re the most valuable use of my expertise or time. However, every once in a while I get an itch to share my opinion.
Except where stated, I’ve purchased these items with my own money. No money has ever been paid to influence my opinion.
A review is an honest sharing. If an item is provided for free for the purpose of review, it is given freely with faith that the product will speak for itself in a positive way.
I don’t accept stipulations from manufacturers. If a manufacturer wants to have an editorial say in what I write, it will be through a clearly disclosed piece of sponsored content. (I have yet to do ANY sponsored content pieces and it will be very obvious if I ever do.)
Hawaiian Language Policy
At every possible point, I use the proper Hawaiian spelling for Hawaiian words and places. (Hawaiian is an English word, please don’t spell it “Hawaiʻian.”) For many years I was unable to insert Hawaiian diacritics into this site. This means there are probably some spellings that I haven’t yet updated. If you find one, let me know.
The exception to proper spelling is “ʻukulele.” It’s supposed to be spelled with an ʻokina. Since Google sees this as a different, much less popular variant of “ukulele,” I removed the ʻokina to compete in search engine rankings.
In my head I hear the Hawaiian pronunciation so I write “an ukulele” instead of “a ukulele.” This is intentional and follows English conventions when the word is pronounced “oo-koo-le-le.”