One of the most often asked questions by my ukulele students is “how do you know which strum pattern to use?”
There are many possibilities which I show in my video. Deciding which is the most appropriate depends on the mood, tempo, genre, and other factors.
Was I tempting fate by launching my first website on the Ides of March twenty years ago today? Just two years prior, I composed “Ides of March” after experiencing driving through a flood in Houston. It was so horrific that I had to rush back to my loft apartment to write the lyrics and the music in one go.
What propelled me to launch my first website? What has happened since?
Tonight we will be playing and singing songs from Ireland at the local library and going to a nearby pub afterwards — in Historic Lower Mills, a unique part of Boston, Massachusetts. One of these Irish songs is “Ride On” — a three-chord song I learned in the Hanwell Ukulele Group (HUG) in London. In teaching this song to my group here in Boston, I suddenly realised that I needed to listen to the original to get the feel of it.
Once upon a time, five teenage girls formed a band to compete in a talent show at their high school on Okinawa. Their band performed “Our Lips Are Sealed.”
They wore shiny purple blouses and sleek black slacks. They put on dark sunglasses the way movie stars tried to appear incognito. They chewed black Japanese bubble gum until it popped from their purple-stained lips.
Newcomers to Boston will soon learn that nearly every Bostonian knows the song “Charlie on the MTA.” There will be an aha moment when they realise that the card they use to enter the metro system is the Charlie Card. Some may surmise that Charlie is short for Charles, as in the Charles River.
Is it so?
At the request of my ukulele students, I recorded my first video tutorial. The song “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” is ideal for beginners as it gets them to practise frequent switching between the easy chords of C and F. It rarely requires the more challenging G7 chord.
Over the years, I subconsciously collected stories of successful business models with a view to writing and publishing an e-book to share with like-minded individuals. Here’s the story of my late grandfather who built a successful English school in Taiwan.
Little did I know that buying my first ukulele and learning to play it would change the direction of my life.
During the four hour mash-up medley marathon, I conferred with six other ukulele players that mash-ups shouldn’t just be about songs that have similar chords or rhythms. There has to be a rhyme and reason to choosing songs for a mash-up. I introduced my new mash-up of “It’s So Easy to Fall in Love” Linda Ronstadt style with “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” while our apple cake was baking in the new oven.
I’m building a playlist of songs I can confidently and competently lead a ukulele group. The secret to successful song leading is to do it in a key with the entire melody falling within my most comfortable vocal range. In observing song leaders, I noticed they only lead songs that they know well. They would never sightread. They would not risk winging it unless they have to. Of course, leading a jam session poses less risk than leading a performance. I’ve experienced fantastic jam sessions because the leadership is solid. What does it take to lead?