The Austin Ukulele Society was pleased to host its June meeting for a wonderful group of ukulele-playing friends from far and wide. Our summer meetings are especially fun, as we find teachers and students who are too busy during the school year making time for our favorite hobby – strumming that uke and singing along! We began our meeting with local ukulele news, including announcing a fundraising workshop and concert to be presented by Bob Guz on Friday, July 26, and a reminder about our upcoming ukulele open mic eve at Kick Butt Cafe on Saturday, August 17. Then we warmed up by playing Bob Marley’s always uplifting “Three Little Birds.”

This month, we learned to sing and strum Carly Simon’s 1972 hit, You’re So Vain.” This great song has definitely stood the test of time in its popularity; it has been covered, sampled, used in films, and more over the years. Bob shared some details about his arrangement and played it through to give us a delightful example of what we’d be learning. Bob then took us through some helpful exercises to get us comfortable with the chord progressions, strum patterns, picking options and vocal harmonies. We put the song together and sounded better and better with each practice. We later recorded it for our YouTube friends around the world. We’d like to give a special thanks to Aaron Lewis for his excellent accompaniment on U-bass – it always enhances our uke performance but was especially nice for providing the rhythm on “You’re So Vain.”

To play along with us, you can download the lyrics and chords for our arrangement of “You’re So Vain” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide (what we project on the screen for all to follow along, including exercises and drills).

 
During our open mic portion of the evening we enjoyed the talented brothers Sho and Shin on a great duet, while Marie (with baby Zia) performed a clever original, and Jay did an excellent tribute to Leon Redbone. As always, we’re so thankful to our open mic performers for sharing their craft with us.

 
We can’t wait to see you all on Thursday, July 11, for our next meeting! 🙂

 
For more downloadable music, visit our Ukulele Music Library. For more Austin Ukulele Society videos, check out our YouTube Channel.

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