Sunday, September 18

Nine people attended the ukulele workshop at the gallery today. Kate Ferris with backup from her husband, luthier Fred Casey, began the session with a history of the ukulele. Despite its popularity in Hawaii, the ukulele was actually first introduced to Hawaii by sailors from Portugal when they brought two similar small guitar-like instruments with them to the island shores.

Kate took us through some different sizes and kinds of ukuleles. We got to see some of the fine ukuleles made by Fred including a domed back bass ukulele and an eight string ukulele as well as a a vintage 1920s Hawiian ukulele he and Kate found in an antique shop in Morden,

As we had a few beginners in the group we began by looking at how to make chord shapes, starting with C, F and G. After learning G7, we played "Jambalaya". Next was "You Are My Sunshine", a popular C, F and G7 song for players just starting out. Throughout the workshop Kate showed us how you can easily add extra embellishments to a song to make it more interesting.  For "You Are My Sunshine", following Kate's song sheet arrangement, we added a C7 on the first and fifth line, and an Am on the third line and seventh line.

Next we moved on to "Jamaica Farewell" which we played with a calypso strum.

With Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" we learned a reggae strum, or at least a Manitoba version, drumming our ukes for the first beat to account for the strum beat coming on the second and fourth beats instead of the first and third.

Another extra embellishment we worked on was adding stops to songs . In the sheet music for "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" a stop was designated by an "x". The "x" (in the case of this song we actually moved it from where it was marked to directly above on the previous line) indicates where the player would quickly dampen all the strings.

Again employing a calypso strum we played "Under the Boardwalk" with a call and answer effect on the chorus split between the male and female singers.

After a short break we played "King of the Road". Kate taught us, with a very nice Circle of Fifths chord wheel she supplied in our song packages, how to easily transpose the key of the song from C to G.

Next up was "Tonight You Belong to Me". Kate pointed out that many different famous versions of the song have been recorded including:

the original by Gene Austin

this version by Patience and Prudence which inspired most of the modern day covers of the song

Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters' version from the movie The Jerk

Eddie Vedder and Cat Power's version

this version with the pink ukulele that went viral

and my second favourite version (my first being The Jerk version) that Kate didn't mention that features Zooey Deschanel and Ben Schwartz

A particularly interesting add on to the song was the full barre 6th fret slide to a full barre on the 7th fret at the end of the song.

Kate and Fred introduced reading tabs using the simple song, "When the Saints Go Marching In". After trying the tabs we broke into two groups with one group playing the tab while the other group played the chords. Then we switched so everyone got a turn playing the tab.

Expanding our knowledge of tabs to include multiple finger placements in one tab, we next played the Beatles tune, "And I Love Her" featuring a beautiful tab intro and extro.

Still working on tabs, we learned the main beginning riff for John Lennon's "Imagine", with some of us also incorporating the riff throughout the song. Departing from the supplied song sheet we switched the 2,3,4 riff on the G strong to an open, 1, 2, 3 riff on the A string.

Our final song was the classic Hawaii-inspired Tiny Bubbles with Kate filling in some Hawaiian lyrics.

Thanks to Kate and Fred for an informative and enjoyable workshop and to Brenda and Louise for coordinating the arrangements for the session.

Kate reminded us about the Ukulele Club of Winnipeg Strum at the Kings Head every second Sunday (the next one will be October 2 from 2-4:30), and the monthly Tuesday jam at Casa Grande Pizzeria (the next one will be Sept. 20 from 6:30 - 9:00 p.m.). In the future the Winnipeg club will be organizing sessions at the Casa Grande Pizzeria once a month where members can learn one or two songs in depth.  You can find out more about the Ukulele Club of Winnipeg here.

Hope to see you next Wednesday evening at our strum at the gallery starting at 7 p.m.

- Heather