February is here

February is here and we have a pretty full schedule for this short month.  Our regular Tuesday evening meetings at the Western Country Diner is on the 12th and 26th.  Our new Thursday evening meetings are at the NYC Pizza on the 7th and 21st.

Since the major Hallmark Card holiday this month is Valentine's Day, let's keep with the love song theme -- love found, in love, falling out of love, maybe even something like Banks of the Ohio, or some novelty tunes would work too.

We'll try some of the songs in the Beloff Daily Ukulele books, which are good since they have the melody line as well as the chords, all in a uke friendly key and arrangement.  If you want to work on any of these songs, let us know and we can put them in our plans.

Check out the new products

As some of you may know, the staff at UU make the annual trip to Anaheim for the winter NAMM show.  This is a trade show, aimed at getting dealers to know about the new products that are going to be in the 2013 ukulele market.

Here is the link:  http://ukuleleunderground.com/

There is a large black box in the lower right.  Click on it and you will see a number of interviews with the vendors describing their latest products.

It is always interesting to see what is in the marketplace.

Be prepared for a couple hours of browsing if you want to see all of the interviews.

Ralph

Learn the ukulele fingerboard

Here is a blog on learning the ukulele fingerboard that might be useful.
http://lambchopukulele.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-to-learn-13-of-ukulele-fingerboard.html?m=1

Someone saw us!!!!!

Someone must have seen us last Tuesday evening.

Ukulele strap

This is an innovative way to add a strap to your ukulele, perfect for those reluctant to add a strap button to their instrument.  It won't work on a pineapple shape, but for the great majority of ukes, this would appear to be quite nice.

One could make one, but for the price, why not just order it?

http://mobiusstrap.com/

He's a WINNER

Rex routinely sends a video to the UU contests and he just recently won the "47th Season" contest with a cover of Roger Miller's "Kansas City Star" song.

Nice banjo uke work, Rex.

Congratulations on your successful entry.

World Ukulele Day

Anyone want to organize something for Saturday, February 2?  Most of us have seen many of Mike Lynch's instructional videos and he promotes this day as Ukulele World Day.

The OKC folks have a meeting on this day, so that is one option.  Anyone not able to get there for Saturday evening want to set up something here, say for Saturday afternoon?

In praise of the uke

Here is a super musician with a baritone.  A fabulous musician showing what one can do with a good baritone ukulele.

I don't know if Benny Chong travels, but Byron Yasui does travel and give ukulele workshops around the country.  The Dallas group had him for a ukulele workshop a couple years ago.  He is a professor of music at the U of Hawaii, specializing in the upright bass, as shown in this video.  For the uke, he prefers the baritone for the fretboard range it provides.

And for the other size extreme, a soprano, here is what has become a classic piece.

Beginner strum lessons

Here is a video for some basic strums for the uke, aimed at the beginner.  We all need these in our quiver.
I'll add that in pattern #3, one can locate the missing strum at the other end of the sequence too.

Sunday, Jan 27.

There has been some interest expressed in having a uke gathering on a weekend, versus just on midweek evenings.  Some folks just cannot get free on midweek but could meet on a Saturday or Sunday.

Ellen has offered the Activity room at the Prairie Rose retirement village for such a gathering, and the best time appears to be the last Sunday afternoon of the month, starting at 2 PM.  For January, this is Jan 27.

So we will give this a test this month and see how this works out for our members.

Give me some feedback on this please.

Ralph

Thursday 17 January

As you many know, some folks in the ukulele world have some difficulty making our meetings on Tuesday evenings, and we have heard some requests for an alternate evening.

Cap'n has taken on the task of finding a different evening and has set up a date with the NYC Pizza restaurant for our use.  This restaurant has set aside a room for us, so we won't disturb their other patrons, but hopefully, they will know about us and may check out a uke for themselves.  Here is their web page

http://www.nycpizzatulsa.com/homepage.html

The initial day is Thursday, Jan 17.  6:30 to 8:30.  This is lasagna night, so that special will be available in addition to the regular menu

The restaurant is located at 4775 S Harvard.  

So if you would like to check out another location, come on out to the NYC Pizza location on the 17th.  Bring your song book and uke and any special songs to share.  Remember this is "love theme" month.

Hope to see you there.

Ralph

OKC club startup

Jeff and Steve have taken the OKC Tradional Music Association ukulele group one step further.  They are planning to have regular OKC ukulele club meetings on the 3rd Saturday of the month at a local church a bit north of the Kirkpatrick turnpike, a location that will be very convenient for those coming down the Turner turnpike.  This will result in two planned OKC uke folk meetings a month, the 1st Saturday at the OCTMA meeting and the 3rd Saturday at the new uke club meeting.

For those of us in the Tulsa area, this will open up another evening for a uke gathering not too far away.

Love themed songs

I sent out a file with the songs in our club song book with the "love" themed songs highlighted by email.

If you did not get this file, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Ralph

Happy New Year

Greetings on the first day of the new year.  

I hope that your Christmas list to Santa was fulfilled. I asked for some more skill but it has not come to the Christmas stocking yet so I will just have to struggle along.

I think that for the first couple months of this year we should highlight some songs with a "love" theme given that Valentine's Day is coming up in about 6 weeks.  Our club book has a number of songs that fit into this category, including Ain't She Sweet and Hey Good Looking.  The book contains some songs that I don't recall the group working on, including Eight Days a Week.   So that is a resource

Then there are love themed songs that you individually like that are not in our current song book.  There must be thousands of songs in this genre if one includes "falling in love" (Hey Good Looking), "in love" (I love to see you smile) , "falling out of love" (Pretty When New), "love spurned" (One by One), "love gone really bad" (Banks of the Ohio).

So let's spend some time on these songs at our next meeting.  If you like one that is not in our book, bring copies to share.

Hope to see you there.

Ralph

Western Country Diner, Jan 8, 6:30