We hope the month of March has started off well for you! Bob and Jen are looking forward to the March Austin Ukulele Society virtual meeting on Thursday, March 11, 7:00-8:30pm US Central time. We enjoyed our February meeting with friends from five(!) continents and hope you will all be back to strum and sing with us virtually next week. The live event is scheduled, and it is the very first item at the top of the Austin Ukulele Society’s YouTube channel page. Simply click the YouTube Live Event to join when we go live on the 11th at 7:00pm (CST, GMT -06:00). The PowerPoint presentation (with our warm up and closing songs, as well as the new-to-us song we’ll learn) will be viewable alongside Bob, during the YouTube event.

Lyda will take us through the slides while Bob explains and teaches his arrangement of our featured song. If you are logged into YouTube/Google, please say hello and share any questions/comments with Jen, moderating on behalf of the Austin Ukulele Society – Jen can get inquiries about the arrangement to Bob for live response. 🙂 If you have a chance to practice the song in advance, and you have questions, feel free to email them to us.

Pro Tips:

• The event is accessible without logging in and you don’t need a YouTube/Google account to watch. But to comment, you’ll need to log into YouTube with a Gmail account ID.
• When you join the YouTube live stream, if the video or sound quality is not at its best, roll your mouse over the video to find the ‘gear’ icon. Click it and select the ‘Quality’ option; 480p or higher (we recommend 720p) should improve video and sound quality for you, if you have the internet bandwidth to make the change. 🙂

The month of March brings so many things to celebrate: longer days with Daylight Savings Time, seasonal changes, Women’s History Month, St. Patrick’s Day and more. With a nod towards the last two mentions, we’re excited to learn a great pop song by a well-known, woman-led Irish rock band: The Cranberries’ 1993 mega-hit “Dreams.” We’re sure you’ll enjoy getting familiar with it if you aren’t already. 🙂

The Cranberries’ original recording is in the key of E, which has pretty challenging chords on the ukulele, so Bob dropped the key a full step to the uku-lovely key of D.

Download the song sheet for “Dreams” and practice along with Bob’s lush demo performance:

Here are some details about the song sheet:

• Pages 1-3 have the lyrics and chords
• Page 3 also includes notes and diagrams of the strumming patterns we’ll use
• Pages 4-5 have notes, tips and diagrams of the finger-picking pattern that can be played alternatively to strumming, during several parts of the song

At the virtual meeting, Bob will perform “Dreams” to demonstrate the arrangement. He’ll then take us through some helpful exercises that break down the song into its components, getting us comfortable with the chords and chord progressions, strum styles, and picking options before we put it all together to play it through. As always, Bob will be sure to share both the simple and more advanced options for playing this song, so players of all levels can learn and enjoy our meeting and his tutorial.

We recommend getting familiar with the song by listening to The Cranberries’ original recording of “Dreams” and by practicing using the song sheet and Bob’s demo video.

We always play Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” and Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” as our opening and closing songs, so if you’re new to the group and want to get familiar with them, you can play along using the presentations and our videos, available on the “Music Library” page. We’ll also display the presentations for these two songs during the live broadcast, for your convenience. 🙂

Newcomers and beginners are ALWAYS welcome, and we certainly look forward to having friends from far and wide join in with our live stream! Even if you’re a complete novice, we encourage you to join in. There are always easier ways to play the songs, even if you can play only a few of the chords. Or just sing along!

Stay tuned and keep strumming!! We’re looking forward to having everyone tune in on Thursday, March 11, at 7:00pm US Central Standard Time!

Contact Us if you have any questions, need more information, or would like to be added to our mailing list.

Ukulele Society T-shirts!
As you may know, we create a new t-shirt every year. In celebration of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 10th anniversary this year, we are thrilled to unveil our latest edition t-shirt, designed by the talented Lyda Guz!

The shirts are silk screened here in Austin at a fantastic locally-owned print shop and are available for purchase via mail order. The new 10th Anniversary design, Mermaid, Cowboy, and “Austin Lasso” shirts are $20 – all other styles are $15. Please drop us a line if you’d like to purchase a shirt (or two or three). 🙂 At this time, we can only ship orders within the U.S.

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