Songwriting Group
After the impromptu song writing at last Monday’s Ukearist we thought we might try and set up a song writing group to meet up at a separate time from the regular fortnightly Monday evenings with a view to forming one or more groups to get something together for song writing competitions later this year.
It would be good to try and arrange something fairly soon. Please let us know in the comments below if you would like to get involved with and devote extra time to this.
Richie from UOGB with a Ukearist t-shirt!
Fame at last for the humble Monday Ukearist! Here’s a pic of Richie from the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain proudly wearing one of our very own Monday Ukearist t-shirts, taken last week in Belgium:
He explains:
Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
Two bits of UOGB news:
The DVD of their 2009 Prom is now on sale through their website.
If anyone already has this, can you rate it for us?
The other bit of news is that the UOGB will be playing in Perth on Tuesday, 25 May. Tickets on sale from Monday, 29 March.
Anyone interested in going as a gang?
Tickets for Ukulele Festival of GB now on sale
A quick heads up for you all that tickets are now on sale for the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain. Tickets are £24 for all events, get yours quick! I’ve bought mine already!
Show us your talents and share your skills
At the last couple of ukearists we have experimented with setting aside part of the night to individual performances and for folk to teach the rest of us something new on the uke. This has worked out really well so I reckon we should make it a regular feature at the Ukearist, it certainly adds a bit of variety to the night.
So far we have had performances from myself, Dave and Steven and Chris has taught chunking and 12 bar blues and did a bit about the blues scale for improvising.
I suggest that at around 9pm each night whoever fancies doing a performance or bit of teaching can do so.
This will be a really great for giving any of you interested in performing a friendly and low-pressure environment to do it in and will be really interesting for the rest of us to see what sort of things folk play outside of the ukearist. I’m also really looking forward to learning new skills from the rest of you.
If you have any other suggestions or comments please share them below.
Cigar Box Ukulele
I made a cigar box ukulele of Christmas and, surprisingly, it turned out rather well! Here’s a short video of it in action:
Seasonal Uke Gifts??
Greetings All!!
OK, fess up! What uke-shaped oddities did you find under your trees?
Z, am especially interested to know what you found there ….
Nothing uke-shaped under my tree, though the ukes did make an appearance at the P family gathering. There was some strumming and some singing (not *all* of it done by me!).
Made sure not to go on *too long* (leave ‘em wanting more – or at least not wanting to forcibly remove you and uke from the premises) and looking forward to a foray into Glasgow music shops on Tuesday.
And the rest of you?
Hope it has been a joyful ukey time!
No Ukearist on 4th January
Monday Ukearist will be taking a break on Monday 4th January, next one will be our first birthday special on the 18th January.
Wishing you all a wonderful festive period, see you in the New Year.
Christmas Ukearist this Monday
Don’t forget it’s Christmas Ukearist this Monday where we will be playing lots of Christmas songs from this song book. Please print the songbook out if you can as we won’t be providing copies! Well, I might bring a couple spare along, but don’t count on it!
Next most important is that this night is also a bit of a party so please feel free to bring along mulled wine, other Christmas boze such as sherry, brandy, baileys and special brew and Christmas nibbles such as mince pies, chocolates, turkeys, nut roasts, brussel sprouts and santa’s shoe stew.
There will doubtless also be a post-ukearist trip to sofis for a few more drinks and a wee strum.
Hope to see many of you there, for those of you that I don’t, have yourselves a very merry Christmas!
Killing In The Name Of on Ukulele!
Picture the scene; it’s a cold Sunday night in late Decemeber, snow is on the ground, an excited anticipation hangs in the air, not only for Christmas, but also to find out which plucky young chart scoundrel is going to make it to the very top of the chart tree and claim their rightful place as Pop Fairy.
Well this year is different, railing against the turgid anti-music churned out by x-factors, pop idols and the like comes a battle hardened challenger going by the name of Rage Against The Machine, proffering their jaunty sing-along hit ‘Killing In The Name’ as contender for the top spot.
Now what could be better than a big yes vote for real music over pre-fabricated shit masquerading as music? I’ll tell you what – being able to play along with this year’s Christmas number 1 (fingers crossed!) on your ukulele!* Well look no further than ukulele hunt who tabbed the riff toKilling In The Name a while back.
And if you haven’t already, go out and buy it!
iTUNES – 99p – track #2 (click on ‘view in itunes’ on the right)
http://bit.ly/ratm-itunes
PLAY.COM – 65p – it’s the only track on the page
http://bit.ly/ratm-play
7DIGITAL – 50p – track #2
http://bit.ly/rage-7digital
HMV.COM – 79p (careful – this is track #1)
http://bit.ly/ratm-hmv
TUNETRIBE – 49P – track #2 – LIVE version (yes it counts)
http://bit.ly/ratm-tunetribe
or
http://bit.ly/rage-tunetribe (Studio Version)
TESCO DIGITAL – 67p – track #2
http://bit.ly/ratm-tesco
WE7 – £1.07p – track #2
http://bit.ly/ratm-we7
* It might sound a bit rubbish if you play along as the tab is in a different key
