Over 160 ukulele players joined to make music together at the April Austin Ukulele Society online meeting. With participants from Australia, India, Brazil, England, Canada, Germany, the UAE, and many points throughout the U.S. — including Hawaii — we had a diverse gathering of friends who share an affection for our favorite little four-stringed instrument! A big thank you to Jen for moderating the live chat and to Lyda for her amazing projectionist work.

One of the most influential and legendary singer/songwriter/composers of our time, Sir Elton John, celebrated his 74th birthday last month. So it was the perfect time to pay tribute to him. It’s truly not easy to choose a song to learn from a catalog as vast and varied as Elton John’s, but we enjoyed learning one of his huge hits from 1973, “Daniel“.

 

We kicked off our meeting with some ukulele news and updates from Bob, including a “Save the Date” for an upcoming workshop and concert we’re hosting with Lil Rev on Wednesday, May 19. We warmed up our fingers, voices and hearts with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Next, Bob performed a lovely demo of his arrangement of Elton John’s “Daniel.” He then took us through helpful exercises on the chords and chord progressions, the strum style and the fingerpicking options. Everyone enjoyed learning this pretty song and seeing what a nice fit it was for the ukulele, especially with Bob’s terrific arranging and teaching. When we played the song through, we all felt good about how much we’d learned and how good we sounded. We closed our meeting with Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and debuted the excellent video collaboration of The Cranberries’ “Dreams,” produced by our friend Marty Porter.

You can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for “Daniel,” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills. You can also watch a replay of the April 8 live stream. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!
      ● Welcome
      ● “Three Little Birds” warm-up song
      ● Bob’s “Daniel” tutorial
      ● “On the Road Again” closing song
      ● Bob’s demo video of “Daniel”

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and staying connected!

Many, many thanks to Marty Porter for putting together excellent collaborative videos after each monthly virtual meeting! Check out the fabulous group performance of our featured song from March, “Dreams” by The Cranberries:

We look forward to seeing everyone again on Thursday, May 13! 🙂

 

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

Contact Us if you have any questions 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 fall. In celebration of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 10th anniversary in 2021, 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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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this: .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

One hundred and fifty Austin Ukulele Society members from around the globe tuned in to enjoy music together at our March 11 meeting.

We ukulele players have definitely made the most of a year being socially distanced and in lockdown by finding ways to connect with each other, and we’re so grateful to those of you who have joined us every month of the past year’s virtual meetings and to those of you whose first time was last week. For Bob and Jen, you are truly a beacon of joy and positivity. Thank you for being a pandemic silver lining!!

We kicked off our March meeting by sharing some local ukulele news and warming up with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” which always gets us in a great mood for learning our featured song. This March, we took some inspiration from St. Patrick’s Day and Women’s History Month and learned a super fun, early 1990’s hit by the Cranberries: “Dreams“. Bob took us through the strum styles including how to strum in the fan style, the chord progressions, fingerpicking positioning and options for this infectious tune.

We had a great time practicing and asking questions that Bob answered well to help us all learn new tricks. When we put “Dreams” all together and played it through twice, we felt quite accomplished and sounded terrific. We wrapped up our meeting by playing Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and debuting Marty Porter’s excellently produced collaborative video for “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

You can download the lyrics and chords for “Dreams,” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills. You can also watch a replay of the March 11 live stream. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!
      ● Welcome
      ● “Three Little Birds” warm-up song
      ● Bob’s “Dreams” tutorial
      ● “On the Road Again” closing song
      ● Bob’s demo video of “Dreams”

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and being so positive!

Many, many thanks to Marty Porter for putting together excellent collaborative videos after each monthly virtual meeting! Check out the joyous group performance of our featured song from February, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”:

We’ll be sticking with our virtual monthly meetings for at least several more months, so please keep joining us! We’ll see you on YouTube on Thursday, April 8th! 🙂

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

Contact Us if you have any questions 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 fall. In celebration of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 10th anniversary in 2021, 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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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this: .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

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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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this:  .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

After an extraordinary week of damaging snow, ice and freezing temperatures in much of Texas, the Austin Ukulele Society’s Bob and Jen were very grateful to have the pleasure of hosting a wonderful February meeting. Over 150 friends from all over the U.S. and Canada, and from points in Europe, South America, Asia and Australia, got together to sing and strum (virtually) together.

Bob kicked off our February meeting by promoting some great Austin-area ukulele bands and reminding us to support ukulele music whenever possible. We then launched into our warm-up song: Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” which put everyone in good spirits. Bob began our lesson for the evening by sharing some information about Queen and Brian May’s connection to the ukulele, and then he gave a demonstration of his arrangement of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

Bob expertly led us through learning the chord progressions, helping us with any that we struggled with along the way. We looked at some tab options and had fun working on each piece of the song. Once we practiced each part, we put the song together and played it through twice. Everyone appreciated Bob’s tutelage and expressed their gratitude for a wonderful evening. We owe many thanks to Lyda, for being a terrific projectionist and to Jen, for moderating the meeting chat/comments/questions.

You can download the lyrics and chords for “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills. You can also watch a replay of the February 18 live stream. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!
      ● Welcome
      ● “Three Little Birds” warm-up song
      ● Bob’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” tutorial
      ● “On the Road Again” closing song
      ● Bob’s demo video of the medley

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and being so positive!

Many, many thanks to Marty Porter for putting together excellent collaborative videos after each monthly virtual meeting! Check out the group performance of our January medley of “I Can See Clearly” and “Blue Skies”:

We look forward to seeing everyone back on Thursday, March 11, at 7pm CT, on YouTube! 🙂

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

Contact Us if you have any questions 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 fall. In celebration of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 10th anniversary in 2021, 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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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this: .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

Last Thursday, the Austin Ukulele Society was thrilled to celebrate its official 10th anniversary (January 2011 – January 2021!) and kick off its 11th year of monthly meetings. We are so proud to be part of Austin’s music community and delighted to have extended our reach globally through our virtual meetings for the past 10 months. Thank you to all of the friends who joined us via YouTube on Thursday, including the first-timers and those that have been with us since the first meeting on January 11, 2011 in a small community room at a supermarket. We really enjoyed the shout-outs from New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Brazil, Australia, the UK, and many points across the U.S. and Canada.

As has been our tradition since that very first meeting, we began by sharing local ukulele news and warming up our fingers and voices with Bob Marley’s ever-cheerful “Three Little Birds.” It was a perfect warm-up song, as we dove into learning a medley of two more uplifting tunes: the late, great Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” and “Blue Skies,” an Irving Berlin classic arranged by Bob for the uke, in the style of Willie Nelson’s 1978 cover.

Bob led us through his excellent tutorial, which included practicing strumming styles and switching from one strum to another and back. He also helped us get comfortable with the chords, their positioning and transitions. We were feeling confident by the time we put the complete song together and played it through twice. Before we ended the meeting with Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” Bob thanked Jen Richardson for her partnership in running the Austin Ukulele Society and his wife Lyda for designing our beautiful logo and shirt designs and being an excellent projectionist to boot.

You can download the lyrics and chords for our medley of of “I Can See Clearly Now” and “Blue Skies”, or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills. You can also watch a replay of the webcast. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!
      ● Welcome
      ● “Three Little Birds” warm-up song
      ● Bob’s “I Can See Clearly Now / Blue Skies” medley tutorial
      ● “On the Road Again” closing song
      ● Bob’s demo video of the medley

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and being so positive!

We look forward to strumming and chatting with everyone at next month’s meeting on Thursday, February 11! 🙂

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

Contact Us if you have any questions 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 fall. In celebration of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 10th anniversary in 2021, 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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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this: .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

The Austin Ukulele Society joyfully celebrated its 10th Annual (wow!) Christmas Music Strum-a-long, on December 10th. While we typically gather with food and drinks together, we stayed safe this year by singing and strumming from our homes, all over the world. From Singapore to Austria, Mexico to Germany, England to Canada, and all points across the US, we all could appreciate this silver lining of the pandemic: bringing 200 ukulele players closer together and finding peace through music.

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We kicked off the meeting with local ukulele news, including an exclusive 25% discount on ukuleles and ukulele gig bags, offered by Austin-based Journey Instruments. All Austin Ukulele Society members/friends are able to use the discount till the end of December – enter AUSXMAS as the coupon code at the top of the checkout page. Bob played quite a few songs on the Journey tenor uke that he’s been enjoying, so you can watch the recording of the December meeting to see the look and hear the sounds. We warmed up our fingers and voices with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Then Bob provided mini-lessons on the chords and strum patterns for all of the songs in our 2020 Holiday Songbook.

We also enjoyed the world premiere of the collaborative video of “Last Christmas,” excellently produced by our dear friend Marty Porter:

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You can view and download a copy of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 2020 Holiday Songbook, and watch a replay of the webcast:

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As always, we owe a huge thanks to Jen for expertly moderating the chat and to Lyda for her excellent PowerPoint skills (as well as harmonies on “Baby, Please Come Home.”) Bob, Jen, Lyda and Matt all have lots of behind-the-scenes duties that help the Austin Ukulele Society run smoothly – and we thank you so much for all of your kind sentiments and notes that go along with the great selfies. We wish everyone a peaceful, joyful and healthy holiday season and a great start to 2021.

We’ll ‘see you’ on YouTube on Thursday, January 14th, to celebrate the start of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 11th year! 🙂

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

Contact Us if you have any questions 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 fall, in time for the holidays. In celebration of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 10th anniversary in 2021, 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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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this: .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

Happy November! The Austin Ukulele Society’s members and friends from around the globe had a wonderful time kicking off the holiday season together, at the November 2020 meeting. We began the evening with greetings from uke lovers near and far, from the Philippines to Brazil, Germany to Canada, England to California, areas in and around Austin and, of course, many points across the U.S. Bob shared some news and updates, reminding friends to subscribe to our YouTube channel, enjoy our group videos, consider purchasing our new 10th anniversary t-shirt and to support their local ukulele music groups however they can. We then warmed up our fingers and voices with Bob Marley’s timelessly cheerful “Three Little Birds”.

We’ve always loved to learn and play a holiday season song at our November meetings, as it’s never too early to get that Christmas/holiday spirit going! There were several years where we’ve visited Christmas standards from 50-100 years ago, but Bob and I are big fans of 80’s music and the 1984 Wham! hit “Last Christmas” is a modern day classic that were very excited to share with you! Bob performed a great demo of “Last Christmas,” to help us get familiar with his arrangement, strum pattern and tempo. He took us through helpful exercises to get us comfortable with the chords, strums, and gave us a great tutorial on chuck strum styles. We put it all together and played “Last Christmas” through, twice – and we all sounded wonderful! 🙂

Many friends stuck around and enjoyed the world debut of the collaborative video of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” excellently produced by our dear friend Marty Porter.

A big thanks to Lyda Guz for being an excellent projectionist and to Jen Richardson for all of her engaging ‘chat’ moderation.

You can download the lyrics and chords for our arrangement of “Last Christmas” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills. You can also watch a replay of the webcast. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!
      ● Welcome
      ● “Three Little Birds” warm-up song
      ● Bob’s “Last Christmas” Tutorial
      ● “On the Road Again” closing song
      ● Bob’s demo video of “Last Christmas”

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and being so positive! We hope you have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

We look forward to seeing you again on Thursday, December 10, for our “holiday strum-a-long and virtual party”! 🙂

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

Contact Us if you have any questions 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 fall, in time for the holidays. In celebration of the Austin Ukulele Society’s 10th anniversary in 2021, 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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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this: .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

Happy Halloween, friends! Spook-ulele players from around the globe joined in for the Austin Ukulele Society’s virtual October meeting. It was wonderful to greet friends from as far as Peru, Germany and Canada, as well as our Austin-area longtime friends and many acquaintances from around the U.S. We kicked off the meeting with some ukulele news, including a recap of Lil Rev’s September 25th finger-picking workshop and concert, plus a reminder to check out our website’s Events tab for info about local uke bands who may have virtual and/or socially distanced live music to enjoy. We then warmed up our voices, hearts and fingers with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

As is our habit in October, we picked a song that could easily fit into your Halloween-themed playlist: the Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1“. It was a really fun choice, and we’re so glad to hear both from long-time fans of the Flaming Lips, and from many of you who didn’t previously know the song, that you really enjoyed getting familiar with it. Bob broke down the song to teach us each part – the strum styles, the chord shapes and progressions, as well as the tab and finger-picking options. After practicing each part, we confidently played and sang the song through a couple of times.

Before the meeting ended, we played our closing song – Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”

We’re grateful, as always, to Lyda and Jen’s contributions to helping the meeting run smoothly – Lyda’s excellent presentation skills and Jen’s moderation of the chat are essential, and an extra thanks to Jen for battling the bad troll-bots while we learned “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.” 🙂

You can download the lyrics and chords for our arrangement of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills. You can also watch a replay of the webcast. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!
      ● Welcome
      ● “Three Little Birds” warm-up song
      ● Bob’s “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” Tutorial
      ● “On the Road Again” closing song
      ● Bob’s demo video of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and being so positive! We hope you have a safe and happy Halloween, and that you stay healthy through the pandemic.

We’re looking forward to “seeing” you all again at our November 12 meeting! 🙂

Hello friends! The Austin Ukulele Society is excited to host a virtual workshop and concert with the one and only Lil Rev! We’ll go live on the Austin Ukulele Society YouTube channel on Friday, September 25th, from 7:00 – 9:00pm, CDT. If you had the pleasure of attending Lil Rev’s in-person workshop with us in January 2018 or back in 2012, you know first-hand what an excellent experience you’ll have. And if you haven’t experienced Lil Rev’s magic yet, then you’re in for a treat!

The workshop and performance are open to all, and Lil Rev will gratefully accept tips (recommended donations of $10-20 per attendee, which can be paid directly to him via PayPal, Venmo or by check. Donation information will be posted during the event.

Simply click the YouTube Live Event to join when we go live on September 25 at 7:00pm US Central Daylight Time (GMT -05:00)!

A recording of the workshop and concert will be available only until October 10 at noon US Central Daylight Time!

Workshop: Fingerpicking On The Ukulele
This is an intro level course that teaches six different fingerpicking patterns with simple 2 and 3 chord songs, that we’ll try them out with. Together we’ll explore: Inside/Outside Pattern, Outside/Inside Pattern, The Pinch, Alternating Thumb Patterns, Arpeggios for song accompaniment and adding variety when backing up others who are strumming. In addition to this, we’ll learn a Texas Blues Classic by the late Blues Legend Mance Lipscomb, and arpeggiate a 150-year old shaker Hymn along with much more! All levels are welcome.

Lil Rev is a world-class entertainer and steward of vintage song and lore. Performing with ukulele, harmonica, mandolin, guitar and banjo, Rev has an unmatched repertoire of both traditional and original song, poetry, storytelling and humor. Audiences will sing along, clap, laugh, and maybe even shed a tear at a Lil’ Rev performance. Both entertainer and educator, Rev is renowned as one of the preeminent ukulele instructors and performers in the nation with seven instructional books to his credit. Learn more about Lil Rev on his website.

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

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If you don’t already follow this website, why not take a moment to click on the “Follow Austin Ukulele Society” button? We’d really appreciate it! It’s in the right margin, just under the “Like us on Facebook” button and looks just like this:  .

By following our website, you’ll always be kept up-to-date with the latest meeting announcements and other Austin Ukulele Society news. Thank you so much!

For the Austin Ukulele Society’s September meeting, nearly two hundred ukulele enthusiasts from around the globe met up to sing, strum and pick together virtually. We enjoyed greeting friends from Peru to India, Australia to Canada, Germany to Singapore, and many U.S. states. Bob kicked off the meeting by sharing some ukulele news, including info about the upcoming Lil Rev workshop and concert we’re hosting on Friday, September 25. We warmed up our fingers and voices with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Next, Bob demonstrated his terrific arrangement of the classic power-ballad by REO Speedwagon, “Can’t Fight This Feeling.” Bob then took us through the exercises he’d prepared, which helped us learn the strumming style, the picking options, and the chord changes for this huge 1984 hit. When we put the song together and played it through a couple of times, everyone was feeling confident and happy! We closed out the evening by playing Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”

Many thanks to Bob Guz for sharing his expertise, Lyda Guz for presenting the PowerPoint slides, and Jen Richardson for moderating and responding to the live commenting.

 
You can download the lyrics and chords for our arrangement of “Can’t Fight This Feeling” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills. You can also watch a replay of the webcast. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!
      ● Welcome
      ● “Three Little Birds” warm-up song
      ● Bob’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” Tutorial
      ● Bob’s demo video of “Can’t Fight This Feeling”
      ● “On the Road Again” closing song

We love all of the selfies you sent — makes it almost feel like an in-person gathering! The many notes we received were very thoughtful and kind, and we’re so glad everyone felt they learned something!

 
We’re looking forward to “seeing” you all again at our October 8 meeting as well as the Lil Rev workshop on September 25! 🙂

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

Contact Us if you have any questions or would like to be added to our mailing list!

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