Hi, I hope you had an enjoyable break over Christmas and New Year. It does seem that a lot of us battled coughs, colds and generally feeling unwell for quite a number of weeks. If you made any resolutions i hope they are realistic and achievable and unlike me manage to stick to them!
Christmas party, thank you to all who were able to attend for making the last meeting of the year such an enjoyable event. Thank you for bringing along lovely food and for throwing yourselves into the morning, it was a lovely atmosphere.
First meeting of the year, it was good to get back into the swing of playing and blow away the cobwebs. Thank you for those able to attend and for those unable to attend we look forward to seeing you this coming Friday.
This Friday we will get back into learning mode and will start to learn Margaretaville by Jimmy Buffet. You will find 3 entries on our website for this song. There is a PDF of the song, a more detailed learning version and a link to a video of the song being played by a ukulele group. This will help you to get familiar with how the song sounds. You can play along to the video as it is in the right key for us. It is quite a simple song but I think is catchy and enjoyable to sing.
Riffing, I will take the opportunity with Margaretaville to introduce us to to playing Riffs. It will be good for a number of us to play the Riff within the song.
Riffs require an understanding of something called Tablature. Tablature (or Tab as it is shortened to) is another way of reading music instead of chord boxes. Ideally using chord boxes and Tab help us to interpret songs as we learn them, it is especially useful with songs requiring Riffs or learning melody.
Riffs, I have posted an introductory Tutorial on our website, you will find it in the Member Area of the site. Just go to the members area from the menu and then click on the box labelled Tablature explained. this will help you to start to understand how Tab is laid out and how to play it. It does take a bit of getting used to though.
Open Mike session, as I mentioned, we will invite individuals or up to 4 people to come up and showcase a song. We will do this on the last Friday of each month putting aside 15 minutes for this. The only stipulation is that you showcase songs that we don't currently have in our songlist. This has the potential for identifying new songs that we might like to add to our new songs list. We have some people already who want to showcase so don't be shy, either on your own or with a few other people put you name forward. As a group we are all very supportive of each other and will encourage all contributors. If you want us to play along with you then either provide some copies or let me know which version you are proposing to do and I can inform the group in preparation.
Current Songlist in Music area on the website, I will start to put some of our songs into a different key to help us move away from predominantly playing songs in the key of C. This also means people who struggle to sing in C can enjoy singing. I have added Take Me Home Country Roads in the key of G, if you can add this to your preferred method of accessing songs we can then try it out.
I have adjusted the Music area of the website, Gig songs are all in Brown and new songs for us to learn are in Green take a look if you haven't yet had the opportunity to do so.
Charity support, as we get gigs it is likely we will ask for a contribution to a charity or charities that we want to support. thank you to those who have given details of Charities that they are involved with and would like us to support as a group. We will decide as a group how we want to move forward with this.
HUG2 members of HUG2 will be joining us soon. It will be nice to make them welcome as they embark upon learning beyond the basics. Please take them under your wing and help them to settle in especially as they are unlikely to have all the songs at this stage. Playing with us is a big step up for them but will be the best way for them to progress. Playing with more experienced players certainly helped me to progress as did playing more stretching songs.
I look forward to seeing as many you as can make Friday and we will build upon what was a fun and enjoyable first year.
Dave
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