If you are reading this Blog thankyou. I did consider stopping writing the Blog after feeling deflated that less than 12 people had read the Blog by Friday morning on the 9th Jan. I have always emailed when the Blog was available and in particular to highlight that it is the way I communicate major things for us. It is almost invariably less than a 5 minute read but take up to 3 hours to produce. I am going to continue because there are those of you who make a point of reading without prompting. I will not however, be sending out an email when I have posted from now on.
Hugukuleletv123, we have been going through our songs in alphabetical order just so we can be sure all songs are being played over a few weeks. It does mean we play more songs so no bad thing. We seem to be steadily picking up people subscribing to our channel so we must be doing something right.
Now we have Christmas and New Year behind us it is time to add to our song list so do watch out for new to us songs.
Incidentally, If you kindly did an audio of a song back in the days then it would be great to have you create a video of the song. Don't forget we can collaborate now so please let me know if you would like to update any song you previously contributed so we can agree the best way to do it.
Open Mike and Original Songs, It was pleasing to start to receive Open Mike contributions. So far we have three but I would welcome more so that we can have a feature session early February.
Don't forget those Original songs, so far I have one. It will be great to showcase talent once again.
HUG SOCIAL, the social continues to be an opportunity to quiz and socialise but also will be the place where new to us songs are featured and learned. I have eased us in to this with fairly easy songs at the moment. So starting with Return To Sender last night we added this song to our list and learned strums and stops starts etc. More to come! We used a learning format initially as always on the Tuesday night but I have posted the normal pdf format on our website for you. this is the version I will display when we play the song.
Blues Course, after the break for Christmas we have picked up again and finished off the initial foundation courses with Blues Turnarounds. These are critical to playing the Blues as they signal to the audience the music is resolving back to the beginning. We are going to use basic turnarounds but there are also some more complex ones once we feel more confident. Next week we will start with the second part of the course and learn some individual riffs played as lead parts. Then onwards from there. The only thing that is really frustrating is that the sound is naff on Zoom! I have been getting around this by recording audio files to send out.
I am hoping to run the course again for anyone else who would like to explore the Blues now that I have learned so much more about running courses on line.
A Little Hug played at the Fox and Hounds before Christmas, sadly we had to keep it to Geoff Sheila and myself to be able to comply with all the limitations. It was great to play again and for certain we will be welcome back as a larger group when we can. We raised £150 which we donated to Wirral Hospice St John's. I hope you don't mind me doing this but it was done in memory of Roses sister and others affected by cancer. The Hospice kindly sent us a letter of thanks and also a letter to The Fox and Hounds as they made the contribution to us.
I wouldn't buy anything with Velcro.
It's a total rip off!
Kate kindly spent some time setting up bespoke playlists for us. The idea was to get more control over the videos but fair to say whilst we gain control we lose other aspects so it is still work in progress!
So thank you for being one of the people taking the time to read the Blog and your continued support. Look after yourself and see you either Tuesdays or Fridays or maybe both!
Dave