The Austin Ukulele Society had a truly great March meeting! It was made extra fabulous by 12 vibrant and energetic Galveston Ukulele Society (GUS) members joining us, as well as first timers from as far as Wisconsin and California, friends we hadn’t seen in a while, and so many wonderful regulars as well. To kick off the evening, we introduced ourselves and Bob shared some local ukulele news, including some exciting info: after more than a decade at Memorial United Methodist Church, we will be changing our meeting location to St. John’s United Methodist Church, effective our May 9th meeting. More details will be shared on this soon, so please join our mailing list if you’re not on it already!

At this meeting, we learned to strum and sing Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”, which she and her brother wrote for the film “Barbie.” It won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best Song Written for Visual Media, as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Bob shared some details about our featured song and gave us a terrific performance of his arrangement. He then took us through his presentation, where he broke down each part of the song via short lessons, to help us get comfortable with the strum patterns, chord progressions, tab and more.

We took a break for the open mic portion of the evening, where the Galveston Ukulele Society, Jana, Rodger, and Bruce treated us to terrific performances. We’re so grateful to them for sharing their talent with us!

After the open mic session, we got back to work on “What Was I Made For?” and got better and better with thoughtful instruction from Bob as well as practice. We recorded our performance for you to enjoy and play along with at home. Look for the video coming soon to our YouTube channel. We hope you’ll enjoy playing along with us! 🙂

To play along with us, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “What Was I Made For?” 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).

Have a great start to spring, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at our April 11th meeting at Memorial United Methodist Church. Be well and keep strumming till then! 🙂

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

We appreciate your support and interest. If you’d like to make a donation to the Austin Ukulele Society (a 501(c)(3) organization), visit our Square Donation site. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, please fill out our this short sign-up form. For any other inquiries, please contact us or shoot us an email if you have previous correspondence with us.

Ukulele Society T-shirts!
We are proud to unveil our latest shirt, new for 2024: the “AUS Grackle Ukulele,” design, hot off the presses! All of our shirts are thoughtfully 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. The new “AUS Grackle Ukulele” design, “”Classic Ukulele” Ukulele Around the World,” “10th Anniversary,” Mermaid, Cowboy,” “Austin Lasso” and other shirts are $25. We also have vinyl decals with the AUS logo for $1 each. We can accept cash or a check made out to Austin Ukulele Society; you can also make payment via Venmo or PayPal. 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.