Welcome to Ukulelear

Back in 2005 I brought a Roy Smeck ukulele to school. Kids were intrigued and wanted to try to play it themselves. The sound was pretty cool with just a few simple chords. Within a few weeks kids had bought their own Mahalo ukes and started to really enjoy playing.

Since that first ukulele group the Cal-Mum Uke club has had about forty students join-up every year. It has been a joy to teach in a school that is filled with the plinkety-plunk of the uke music.

Monday, February 28, 2011

Such a Nice Guy

The Cal-Mum Ukulele Club was Invited to Penfield High School near Rochester, NY, to watch Jake practice with the orchestra prior to the 41st Jazz Fundraiser. The music was sensational. I had no idea that the orchestra would perform as beautifully as they did. Jake was fantastic to watch and listen to, and the uke club kids stayed back and had their t-shirts signed by one amazingly nice guy...

A review of the performance by a viewer I happen to know is posted here at Ukulele Underground.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Fun at UkuZoo

The UkuZoo site has been around for a while and has not been advertised very much as far as I have noticed, but a lot gets by me with so much ukulele stuff going on. I just posted my two vintage ukuleles to Terry's web site because I want them to be part of the ukulele record. I think this site has the potential to become the place to research and enjoy the beauty of the vintage ukulele.

Another cool thing that Terry does is to send out a tweet for every uke that is added to the site. I dropped out of Twitter a while back but just might sign up again to see what happens over at UkuZoo...

On Twitter at: http://twitter.com/UkuZooKeeper
Web Site: http://ukuzoo.com/

Terry's bio from his web pages:

The Keeper of UkuZoo is Terry Tucker. No chops as a musician, no money as a collector, he keeps his hand in the ukulele game by writing about it. UkuZoo is the only ukulele database on the internet! Brought to you by Terry Tucker, in beautiful SouthBay, San Jose.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Blue Valentine

I'm trying to get out and see this movie, but life has a way of getting in the way...

You always hurt the ones you love...

Big Muffin Serious Band - pdf music

 


Great Site with links to a lot of pdf sheet music

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Xtranormal: Just to See if I Could

Well, I thought this might be an interesting way to teach kids how their written dialog might sound when spoken. But, I got suckered into it, and had to make one myself. The only problem comes when you want the xtranormal characters to say odd words like ukulele. I had to play around with the spelling and finally found that "yewkah laylee" sounded pretty good when the electronic voices reproduced the sounds. This is not really all that interesting a video unless you are a kid in my Cal-Mum Uke Club. If you happen to make a xtranormal ukulele video please share it with me - I would love to see it.

This is called: I Need a Ukulele