What is it all about?
What happened when you woke up this mornin’?! Has your baby dun left town? Is you all alone? What you gonna do but sing the blues, baby! And what better way to do it on than the humble ukulele.
The uke is ace for bemoaning the hardships of life (or, as you’ll might find, the dark joys of backsliding). In addition, it’s a great, simple instrument to learn to accompany any voice! The ukulele is enjoying a popular renaissance courtesy of inexpensive starter ukes, a multitude of YouTube covers, blogs and ‘how to’ clips, and the technology of get-playing-quickly electronic tuners.
Make the soundtrack to your life! We’ll visit a variety of easy-to-play blues based in the key of A. They’ve been sung by sirens over the years to start us on the way to many hours of singing how unfair it all is.
What will we cover?
- How do you hold it? How do you strum it? How do you keep the beat?
- Why a uke is much more than a little guitar. Tips on strings, ukes to buy and not to buy, and why a simple electronic clip-on tuner is essential for the modern uker.
- Win trivia night points with a touch of uke history.
- We will learn a few classic blues standards to gradually build our stock of fundamental chords and strums. You’ll go home with these tunes ‘under your belt’, clear directions where to find others to study and a very useful list of resources you can access online.
Who will be teaching it?
Harry Harrison runs the Yarra Yukers uke group (details at www.greatbigukes.com). He has played with the fabulous Melbourne Ukulele Kollective, helps out at the Melbourne Ukulele Festival, is a member of AUTLA (Australia’s peak uke body) and teaches workshops and at festivals around Victoria. He’s a passionate advocate of this humble little instrument as a fun, mobile and (usually) inexpensive box o’ joy that appeals to musical beginners but ascends up to international performance level.