Bayside Ukes will return to the Hampton Community Centre next week on Tuesday 12 July at 7pm.
New members are welcome to join our friendly group of ukulele players. Please be on time to register for the evening. The session will begin at 7:15 sharp and remember to bring your copy of The Ukulele Club Songbook and a music stand.
We hope everyone had a fabulous holiday break. If you have not picked up your ukulele because of too much holiday cheer, now is the time to start practising.
We would also like to thank those members of the group who gave up two days of their holiday to perform for two local groups of senior citizens. We all had a great time.
This term we plan to be doing more performances so get ready to learn some new songs.
The two ten week term dates for the second half of the year are:
To relieve post Federal Election blues in Oz, here is fun video from our neighbours in New Zealand, the delightful Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra.
You’re on the stage, your throat and mouth go dry, you have shortness of breath and a sick feeling in the stomach. You fumble the chords on your ukulele and the audience seems to morph into a scary monster. You don’t have a virus. You have Stage Fright. If you have never experienced this before, don’t panic. It can happen to anyone, even professional musicians.
After a couple of years occasionally playing with a small group, I experienced a sudden attack of stage fright. At a small community event I made the mistake of focusing on a grumpy looking member of the audience and started to imagine that there was something terribly wrong with my performance. This made me really tense and nervous and I found it difficult to concentrate on my playing. At the time I did not consider that the grouchy faced person may have had a bad day or was unwell and it probably had nothing to do with me.
Once it had manifested I found that this type of anxiety kept happening, so I searched for information about coping with the problem on numerous websites. Here are a few strategies that I find helpful, as well as some I worked out for myself:
Thoroughly practice so that you can play a song under pressure because you know it so well. This is the most important factor for a good performance.
Make sure you are well hydrated so that you can produce some saliva to wet your lips and swallow if your mouth and throat become dry and keep a water bottle handy on stage.
Allow time for a good warm-up before a concert and go out there smiling. After the first song it is usually easier to relax. If you do make a mistake through nervousness, don’t stop but keep playing. You don’t need to be perfect for others to enjoy your performance.
If it is obvious that you have forgotten the chords or the words of a song when performing alone or as a lead player in a group, don’t freeze, but laugh or make a joke. Many professional performers use this technique. It diffuses the situation and puts the audience on your side. If this happens when you are with a large group, stop playing, mime and where possible, move behind other players while you get yourself together.
See the audience as benign and friendly. Concentrate on entertaining everyone and ignore any grumpy faces. Many more will be smiling and tapping along. If it helps, you can imagine the audience as happy little furry creatures, like Wombles (Google it) or as anyone else who is non- threatening. Whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable.
Remember to smile and have fun as this is contagious and the feel good aspect of playing the ukulele will prevail.
Someone once told me “you can never have too many ukuleles”. I heartily agree.
For a long time I have been considering the purchase of a second ukulele. The first ukulele I bought was a concert, and I still find it enjoyable to play, however sometimes I have thought it would be nice to buy a second ukulele with a different sound.
The trouble with buying another ukulele is there are so many styles and makes available that it became difficult to make a decision. It is not just about the size of ukulele to buy, whether soprano, concert, tenor, baritone or bass. Or whether it is an acoustic or acoustic/electric. You must also consider whether you want a commercially manufactured ukulele from Australia or overseas, or do you want your ukulele custom made by a luthier to your own specifications. Maybe you would like to build your own ukulele just for fun? In any case you must choose how your ukulele is constructed. This is where buying a ukulele has became more complicated and I referred to several buying guides.
I found this information very helpful but it not make my decision any easier.
My next line of enquiry was to look at ukulele players to see how they have built their collections. For a start, does the collection show the progression in quality from a cheap ukulele to an expensive ukulele as the collector’s playing ability improved? Or does the collection seem a random mix of ukuleles with different body shapes, woods, finishes and construction methods? Ultimately does the collector continue to play each ukulele? On the Internet you can find many ukulele collections, but I find the most interesting sites are of collectors talking or writing about their ukuleles.
Both of these collectors seem very passionate about their ukuleles, and I think it is inevitable for players to develop an emotional attachment to their instruments.
As I already owned a concert size ukulele I did not really want to buy another one. I could have looked at a resonator, but another member of our group has one and I thought that two could be too loud at the one time. I ruled out buying a soprano ukulele, as my two arthritic fingers would have trouble negotiating the shorter fret-board and I ruled out a baritone ukulele because it uses guitar tuning. So this narrowed it down to buying a tenor ukulele.
After my research I finally decided it was the moment to buy my second ukulele. I knew I did not have the patience or skill with tools to make my own and I did not want a custom made ukulele from a luthier as my skill as a player is not good enough justify the cost. Also I did not want to buy an instrument online because I wanted try a variety of ukuleles to find the one that was comfortable to play, had a good tone, was visually appealing and was an acoustic/electric. Sometimes it is nice to be loud.
After checking out several music sites online to see what was in stock, I went to a local music store to look for a ukulele. The selection was between three good quality tenor acoustic/electric ukuleles. I did not want to be indecisive and go from store to store so I knew it was between these three ukuleles. There was an eight-string ukulele that sounded rather impressive. In the past I had considered an eight-string ukulele for the different sound it would bring to the group. It was not for me. Unfortunately I found it difficult to play, as I could not always evenly press both strings with my arthritic fingers. Also there was the annoying thought of restringing the eight strings. The other two ukuleles had the usual four strings. Both were beautifully made with a good tone, with fingerboards of the same dimensions and they were the same price. The difference came down to one having slightly deeper sides on the body than the other. This was the one I chose. It has a good tone, is easy to play, it produces a good volume of sound and is pleasant to hold and to look at.
I will not reveal the manufacturer’s name because that is not the point of this article. When you choose a ukulele it is a totally subjective decision that should not be based on advertising and brand recognition. When choosing a ukulele you need to use both your head and your heart and buy the instrument of the best quality you can afford. After all, you will be spending a lot of time together. Happy hunting!
As we approach Winter in Melbourne and contemplate a cosy fire, would’t it be nice to be on the beach like Taimane Gardner at Waikiki, then in sunny Queensland, Australia for the Cairns Ukulele Festival from the 25-28 August?
Recently one of Bayside Ukes members attended a local rock band gig where the lead guitarist said something like “ukulele players should have their fingers broken”. What! The performer may have been joking, but I have also been in music stores where sales people have made snide comments about ukulele groups. Why the hostility towards such a harmless genre of music?
Treating the little ukulele as a bit of a joke is not a recent development. In a 1939 Pathé short film about music and musical instruments, the sneering narrator, after praising the piano and various other instruments, refused to believe that the noble Greek Lyre was the father of “this instrument” as the film displayed two young women happily playing ukes. Some of the instruments mentioned in the film have for years become highly institutionalized, with structured teaching syllabuses and exams. While you can have paid lessons, the ukulele has always been an instrument of the people, where knowledge is shared between players and beginners so anyone can learn. You can also play any style of music you like from rock anthems to classical melodies. Maybe this is threatening to some elitist musicians and traditional educators who like to have control over their forms of music. Or maybe the uke is considered to be too cheeky for serious music, hence the snobby attitude towards the uke. Well that’s their problem.
We as ukulele players can be proud of our heritage that includes legends such as George Formby, Tiny Tim and George Harrison. Like other musical genres we have our virtuosos: Jake Shimabukuro; Taimane Gardner; The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, to name a few. We have our rock and pop heroes like Eddie Vedder; Vance Joy; Amanda Palmer and many more. There is a history of actors who have promoted the uke, like Marilyn Monroe and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. So there is no need to apologize for being a uker.
All ukers should be congratulated for being part of a grass roots cultural and social movement that has grown from the ordinary person’s need to make their own music and is not directed by “the powers that be.” This is one of the reasons why the ukulele has become so popular. Another reason is that members of the ukulele community enjoy giving their time and energy to entertaining others and this is very rewarding. Think of all the small communities that have benefited from the free ukulele performances in shopping centres, seniors’ facilities, local festivals etc. At a period in history when there is so much gloom and doom in the media, it is wonderful that there are so many people who want to generate some joy.
Let’s ignore the naysayers who are probably envious of the ukes success. There are countless more fans of the ukulele so the detractors have no real power. Individually we may not all be brilliant musicians, but as members of a ukulele community, we can enjoy both the benefits of making music and sharing it with others and after all, that is what playing an instrument is all about.
We can all play our ukuleles with pride. Power to the Uke!
Two of the most common strumming patterns for ukulele are the Church Lick and the Calypso Strum. Many beginners may have come across these strums before but know them by no name or different names. If you wish to play with others or play more difficult songs it is important to know the name of the strum pattern being used.
Ukulele Mike has two good videos to demonstrate both of these strumming patterns and they are both in 4/4 time. He also stresses that you must practice both using a straight strum and a swing strum, to the extent that your “muscle memory” allows you to play them both ways automatically. Repetition is the key.
The Church Lick:
Can be written as:
down-down up / down-down up down-down up /
d.du / d.dud.du /
Ukulele Mike demonstrates this as a Straight 8th note strum and as a Swing 8th note strum. This is also useful for changing chords within a bar (Ukulele Hunt).
The Calypso Strum:
Can be written as:
1. / down-down up-up down up / down-down up-up down up /
2. / d.du.udu / d.du.udu /
The Calypso strum is also known as the Island Strum or for guitar players the Rock Strum. It is widely used in popular music and as Ukulele Mike explains in his video, can be played as a Straight 8th note strum or a Swing 8th note strum.
Both songs, He’s Got the World In His Hands and Jamaica Farewell, that Mike mentions as suitable for learning the Calypso strum are in The Ukulele Club Songbook.
The wonderful Ooks of Hazzard play an up tempo version of Creep at the Swallow Hill Music Denver Ukefest in 2014. Hope they come to Australia in the not too distant future.
Found this beautiful student animation on Youtube. It’s about an old Hawaiian souvenir and his ‘Ukulele Lady’. Great use of the song. There are some talented people out there
baysideukes.com 