Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Our group was the tiniest ever….but there were two brave souls who came to play last night.. Marge Warkentine and myself.  

I didn’t make a list of all the songs but we did work on the island strum and the various picking patterns we are learning.

- Lorna

You were brave to make it out in that cold!  

Here is some info on the strums Lorna mentioned:

Strum known as “Island” strum (from liveukulele.com/lessons/strums)

D DU UD

This one is used in a lot of contemporary Hawaiian songs and is most people’s default “island” sounding strum.

The hand motion is down, down, up, up, down.

Since there are double downs and double ups, you must sometimes move in the opposite direction without strumming to get back to your starting point. This essentially makes the hand motion for this strum just a simple D/U pattern. The only difference is that you are only strumming the strings some of the time. The rest of the time you are skipping strums even though your hand is still moving.

This is key: Keep your hand moving the entire way through the strum pattern!

Here’s the timing:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

D - D U - U D -

With the “invisible strums” and keeping your hand moving the entire time:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

D(U)D U(D)U D(U)

https://liveukulele.com/lessons/strums/

Here is a video by Cynthia Lin featuring the Island Strum:

The Beatles Pluck Strum sheet for I Will and 'Til There Was You can be found on the Drive. The other songs that will help you practice the strum are: Dream a Little Dream of Me, and Blue Moon. I have also added these songs to the blog.

 - Heather

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Lynn reported that fun was had by all who attended.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Lynn, Louise, Heather, Thelma, Verna and Barry met upstairs in the gallery. 

It was a nice gathering after two weeks off for the Christmas season.

To mark Verna and Thelma’s one year anniversary of joining the group for their first strum, Verna played Silent Night using a new picking pattern she had learned over the past year for each verse, including the Travis pick, Cynthia Lin’s Moon River finger picking pattern we learned last year, and a picking pattern from Hal Leonard for a final verse she sang in German.

Congratulations Verna and Thelma! Thanks to Verna for a nice reminder of how far we have all come as a group and how much we enjoy our time playing together.

With the smaller group each person had many turns to choose a song as we went around the table. 


Our choices included: Passing Through, Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, January Wedding, Keep Me In Your Heart for A While, In the Year of 39 (Lynn brought some sheets of this Queen song and said the movie was very good. There were a few problems with the chords so hopefully we can find another version), Act Naturally, You Belong to Me, You Don’t Know Me, Go Lassie Go, Rain and Snow, Make you Feel My Love (with 4231 picking), If I Needed You, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Wagon Wheel, Let Me Be There, Me and Bobby McGee, and our signature set ending song. 

Lynn wanted to play La Vie En Rose which wasn’t on the drive but is now. Another request was Wabash Cannonball which I have also added onto the drive.

We discussed that Lana, who has worked very hard to keep the drive updated, including re-adding a bunch of songs that went missing, shouldn't feel she should have to change all of the songs to match the versions in the new Ukulele Club of Winnipeg book as we have enough copies of the book to share.

Thanks again Lana for your dedication and know I can also help add songs to the blog and Verna can help with scanning. If anyone finds songs missing between the blog and the drive, please let me know and I will add them. For new songs you bring to the group, please bring a copy to be scanned or direct us to the version you brought so we can add it to the blog and drive.

- Heather

Wednesday January 2, 2019 and Wednesday, December 12, 2018

After taking the last two Wednesdays off for the Christmas season we will meet again Wednesday January 2 (tonight) at the gallery.

Hope everyone here and our snowbirds had a great Christmas and New Year's.

Here's to lots more strumming in 2019!

I will update the blog with another post for Wednesday, January 2 after our meetup tonight.

I have included a few photos of our wireless open mic night and pre-Christmas party from December 12th.

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

UPDATE: I sent out some ukulele links for Christmas carols and seasonal tunes via email. You can also find links here. See Lana's email for details on the December 12th strum.

- Heather

Barry, Linda, Verna, Thelma, Lynn, Lana, Marge, Louise and Lorna attended. Hope I didn't forget anyone

Songs: Early Morning Rain, If I Needed You, I'll See you in my Dreams, Cryin' Time, Song for a Winter's Night, You don't know me, Fannin Street, Silent night, Come on Ring Those Bells, Harvest Moon, Angeline the Baker, Rock and Roll Beat, This World is not My Home, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, Silver Wings, Working Man, Rox in the Box, Me and Bobby McGee, Moon River, Lie Down beside Me, Hey Good Looking' and We're Going to be Friends.

It was one of the best quality strums we have done.  We nailed some of those songs we struggle with and had a great time doing it.

- Lana

I'll be updating the blog with some posts about what we've been doing the last month or so for those of you following along from home or afar. 

- Heather

Sunday, December 3, 2018

It was an honour to perform at the Sonatrice Singers' Christmas Cheer Board concert on Sunday afternoon.

The concert featured performers aged from 11 to 100. A special treat was a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday for 100 year old Carm Colvin who was there playing piano with the Scratching Fiddle Band. There were also performances from some students, a trio who sang, part of the band Group Therapy, the Active Living Centre Choir, the United Church Choir and, of course, the Sonatrice Singers themselves.

Our first tune was Ring Those Bells with Lana not only playing ukulele and singing but adding some jingling bells to accompany us.

For our second tune, which we kept sort of a surprise by not mentioning it on this blog or elsewhere, was, the Good Ole Hockey Game. Deanna, who was playing organ at the venue for a number of acts during the concert, channeled a hockey game organist and provided us with a  a fantastic intro - Da, da, da, da, da, da.... Da, da, da, da, da, da... Da, da, da, da, da, da,... 

Lynn and Barry provided a count down and then came in with, "Hello out there... we're on the air. It's hockey night tonight..."

Lynn, Barry and Tom, who accompanied us on bass ukulele, sang the verses while Barry called out the period "updates". We all joined in for the chorus parts and yelled out our cheers for the Beavers and "He shoots, he scores!" at the end. 

It was great fun to play and sing and enjoy the other performances. I recommend attending this annual concert to start the holiday season.


- Heather

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Photo courtesy of Philip Natividad instructor for a workshop some of our members signed up for on the Beatles strum. It sounds like it was a great workshop and I'm sorry I missed it. I was thinking of you while sipping hot chocolate and singing Christmas carols at the Christmas at the Museum event (sadly, no Beatles tunes). We are hoping to host another workshop this spring so watch this space for more details. 

- Heather