On Ukulele Clubs

If you’re new to the uke, looking to grow your range, or just want to meet some like-minded folks then get thee to a clubbery!!

Uke clubs come in quite a few varieties, but they all share this trait: encouragement. They’re safe havens where no one will judge your skills nor your singing (or lack thereof if you’re like me), and showing up is the one test for admission.

While groups do vary a great deal you can more or less expect:

• Meetings consist of a couple group-play sets, with a short coffee break
• Some open-mic time at the end for those who wish to show-off any style song they’ve been working on or want to share - both instrumental and singing are welcome
• Most pass the hat, $5-10 being typical amount to chip in, with part of this kitty going to the coffee house, cafe, pub, or church providing the space, and the other for group expenses and events. Often first timers are waived. If it’s at a coffee house it’s good form to buy a few treats from your host store.
• While chairs are provided, music stands usually aren’t: so bring your own music stand!
• All clubs have a ringmaster (or two) and this person shapes the club’s vibe more than any other factor, whether it’s tightly regimented or loosey-goosey.

As for songs, well, the selections and sources vary, often in step with that leader’s goals (social versus rehearsal for performances, for example).

The one essential question you should ask before showing up is “what’s your songbook or playlist?”. They might not have extra copies! Songs might be…

• Liz & Jim Beloff’s Daily Ukulele songbook
• an official club songbook
• members provided. Everyone’s to bring a song or two related to that session’s theme, such as “Pirates” or “Thanksgiving” (bring enough copies for everyone, so ask what’s a safe number)
• songs projected on a screen for all to follow

If they have a songbook this might be a good time to buy yourself that iPad :D (unless you feel like printing and lugging about a few hundred pages). Some clubs charge for their songbooks. Also, the songbook might clue you in as to whether it’s a PG-13 or G rated group, if that matters to you.

Regardless, find out what they use.

Most are open to suggestions, building in some time for sight reading or anyone to lead a new song.

Recapping what to bring:

1. your uke
2. a tuner
3. folding music stand
4. the songbook
5. some pocket money

Cases for your uke and music stand are encouraged. Avoid stands that have too much plastic, someone’s gonna whack into yours.

Club sizes vary tremendously week-to-week, club-to-club — from four or five on a bakery’s sidewalk to the hundreds at the monthly Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz.

Clubs do skew toward us older folks, but age is largely a function of the area. A club in a college town tilts a bit younger, which isn’t to say that you won’t have a few 10 or 12 year old regulars at any club.

The last bit of advice: try to attend as many different groups as you can, it’s not disloyal to date around. In fact, you’ll recognize faces from other clubs. So get to know all your local groups. And if you’re traveling find the local groups where you’ll be staying, too. What better way to see the world?

I hope sharing this will encourage you to hit your local music store, Facebook, or start Googling to find the groups in your area — I’ve met (and continue to meet) some great folks, and true friends.

In the video above the Atomic Ukes play “I Feel Pestamistic’ (video by MarkGray). The Atomics have been meeting for over a decade and it’s a very informal, convivial evening sitting around Terry’s dining room table (or out on his deck on warm nights) with terrific, talented people.

(via BeginnersUke)

Now Supporting “Muted” Strings For You PowerChord Kids

Pleased to demo “muted” chords (shown above with “inline” option turned on to show the mini-chord diagrams above lyrics).

Sometimes a chord only requires two or three notes. These often appear in rock songs (at least all the really good ones :D) and are called “Power Chords”. So we need a notation that’ll allow us to show which strings should not be played (or are “muted”). We can do this!

Define non-played strings by using an “X” in place of the fret number:

{define: D5 frets 2 2 X X fingers 1 1 2 2}
{define: F5 frets 5 5 X X fingers 1 1 2 2}

A Halloween “Spookulele”: Your Friendly Vampire Bat Uke

Happy Halloween, everyone!

(via BeginnersUke)

from beginnersuke:

Free YouTube to MP3 Converter

Ken Middleton turned me on to this super cool tool that converts a single YouTube video — or entire YouTube playlist — to MP3 (several quality presets available) or lossless WAV files. It even auto-imports ID3 tags and embeds a thumbnail. Sweet.

This is a godsend for practicing — I’m currently converting the Ukuleles For Peace 2011 demo performances.

DVD Video Soft site

from beginnersuke:

(Free) Power Tab Editor Software by Brad Larsen

If you’ve ever stumbled upon a song file with the “.ptb” extension, well, you’ve found a Power Tab (Music) file that you can open and edit thanks to this free (Windows-only) editor:

Power Tab Editor is a tablature authoring tool… to create sheet music, more commonly known to musicians as tablature. The program provides the most commonly used symbols in tablature, including chord names, chord diagrams, rhythm slashes, bends, slides, hammer-ons/pull-offs, harmonics and palm muting.

This program even plays (in full MIDI glory) the song with metronome! 

Sadly, it appears that development on this particular program ended in 2006 with the Music Publishers’ Association announcement that they intended to go after folks distributing sheet music. According to the Wikipedia entry, however, the source code is available on Google Code.

I’ll not editorialize about supporting artists, fair compensation for creative works, overreaching corporate partners squelching fair use or the artists’ intent, nor will I rant about 90 year copyright protection just to save Mickey-flippin’-Mouse from Public Domain. Nope, I’m not one to rant… no editorializing here.

Here’s a teaser for the next generation UGS song editor that I’m currently working on (U.G.S. — that’s “Uke Geeks Scriptasaurus”). It’s intended to hide the somewhat off-putting ChordPro Markup, things like {soc} or {define:...}

Also includes…

1. switch between soprano and baritone ukulele tuning
2. alternate color schemes (standard white page plus reversed mode)
3. more layout options (chord diagrams on top or along the side)

All in a lovely simulated wood-grain console that reminds me of my 70’s plastic alarm clock that doubled as a tornado siren. It was loud.

Oh, so much to do!

(Originally posted on BeginnersUke) I’m finding this fret-board diagram incredibly helpful as I’m converting some vintage (1920’s - 1950’s) sheet music to tablature at the moment.

To pat myself (and the other hundreds of kindly folks who’ve also made similar charts), it’s great to have a quick reference, even as a mere sanity check.

I’m also finding that with each song I need to refer to this less and less — look, ma, I’m relearning to read music!

OK, my original post:

“Real” Notes On Your Ukulele Fretboard (Diagram)

I’m still strumming chords (badly), but I’m looking forward to reading music — and I’d prefer skipping tablatures altogether as these seem, well, redundant. There’s a known way of writing music, used injury-free by every composer & 4th grade piano teacher, so why not use that? (I’m sure I’ll live to eat those words)

Anyway, here’s a roundup of resources explaining notes, chord shapes, and musical staffs:

• Dejays World.net’s Ukulele Notes and Scales
• Nut House’s “Make Your Own Chord Shapes” that includes every note on the ukulele
• Kauai Rainbow’s “All The Notes On All The Strings”
• Ukulele Underground’s Uke Minutes 14 – Minor Scales & Chords

My own version of the note chart is pictured above. Those color-coded circles indicate identical notes and are useful for “self-tuning”. Each color pair indicates one string to be played open (the solid dot above the fretboard) and another to be plucked at the appropriate fret matching the open string’s note (the same color circle around a note).

Self, or relative, tuning means you start with one string as a reference string, and, assuming it to be properly tuned, you tune the other three strings so they build off this reference string’s tone.

Thus your uke’s tuning is relative to itself, adjusting one string pair at a time (G-C, C-E, E-A, assuming you relative tune off your uke’s “G” string, as I do, you only need the C, E & A finger positions).

Free Blank Ukulele Staff & Tablature Music Manuscript Paper

Part of the reason I’ve resumed work on the tablature conversion “software” (JavaScript is software? sure. why not?) is so I could learn to play a song’s melody— you know, music that sounds like “music” as opposed to just the chords (I cannot sing) — with people asking, “ummmm, what are you suppose to be playing now?”

However, in order to do this I needed blank manuscript paper, paper with the musical staff (just treble clef, of course) plus the tablature “bars”. Naturally, I made my own… because I’d never heard of this Google thing.

(via UkeGeeks)

from BeginnersUke

UkeGeeks was borne of my desire to have all my ukulele “music” formatted the same (by “music” I mean, of course, chords and tablature — close enough) — same layout, same fonts, same colors.

And I didn’t like the dashed-lines in the tabs, either (less an aesthetic preference actually, just too darned distracting).

This picture captures the result of my pursuit of this goal.

(via UkeGeeks’ Scriptasaurus JavaScript Chord Diagramming Library)