★ Our Next Online Meeting: Thursday, October 22! ★

Our next online meeting is fast approaching on Thursday, October 22, 7:00-8:30pm US Central Time! We’re looking forward to strumming and singing with our global Austin Ukulele Society community!

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 22nd at 7:00pm (CDT, GMT -05:00). The PowerPoint presentations (with our warm up and closing songs, as well as the featured song we’ll learn) will be viewable alongside Bob, during the YouTube event.

We’ll go through the detailed presentations 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. She can get inquiries about the arrangement to Bob for live response. 🙂 If you have a chance to practice the songs 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. 🙂

Our virtual meetings give us the opportunity to truly focus on learning and improving our playing, with a detailed tutorial presented by Bob (with live Q&A fielded by Jen and Lyda). Therefore, rather than focusing on the in-person meeting’s latest song, we enjoy revisiting a great song from a past AUS meeting.

With Halloween and Día de los Muertos just ahead, we’ll enjoy paying homage to this spooky season with our song choice. For this virtual meeting, we’ll learn a rockin’ tune by one of music’s most enduring bands – The Rolling Stones. “Paint It Black” is a dark and timeless hit. Nearly 60 years since its release, it is still quite popular and on many a Halloween party playlist. We know you’ll be singing along in no time!

Download the song sheet for “Paint It Black” to practice. The Rolling Stones’ 1966 original recording is roughly between the keys of Em and Fm, but Bob moved his arrangement to Dm, which makes all of the chords very accessible on the uke and puts the picking parts in a nice position on the fretboard. Bob has simplified the picking part for the Intro, but apart from that, the overall arrangement is pretty close to the original. 🙂 You’re encouraged to play along with with our haunting performance video from October 2022.

In the song sheet you’ll find:

Pages 1 through 3 have the chords and lyrics, as well as tab for the picking option in the Intro
Page 3 also has a description of the main strum pattern, along with a simplified alternative
Pages 4 and 5 have vocal harmony options for the Verses
Page 5 also has tab for the riff played at the end of the third line of each Verse
Page 6 has tab for the iconic melody that we’ll play in the Intro and Verse 4
Page 6 also has vocal harmony options for the Ending

Early in the livestream, Bob will perform “Paint It Black” to demonstrate the arrangement, and then take us through helpful exercises to get us comfortable with the chords and chord progressions. We’ll explore the song, strum styles, harmony options, and more. The lesson will be beginner-friendly, but there will be plenty to gain for uke players of all levels.

As always, we recommend practicing by using the song sheet Bob created, The Rolling Stones’ 1966 original recording, and the Austin Ukulele Society’s performance video, before the 22nd, if possible. 🙂

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 our “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 livestream! 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 look forward to having you join us at our virtual meeting on Thursday, October 22, at 7:00pm US Central Daylight Time!