Cat's Ukulele Songs

Hello again. I have taken a bit of time off, trying to decide if it’s worth it to continue on this website, and after finding that I do come up in Google searches – on pages 3, 4, sometimes 5 – I will be continuing on.

Cheryl and I just started our third year running the Tillsonburg Uke Society together. As much as we feel like we know what we’re doing now, we still have moments when something we planned falls apart and we feel like, dang! we don’t know what we’re doing!!! One thing we have learned is not to pay for a website. Our Facebook page and submitting info to the Community Events column in the local newspapers has done plenty for us, so we have let that Meet-Up website go.

We also learned to relax and take it easy, and we also decided to shorten the lesson and have the play-along portion of the evening run longer. This comes from the “knowing what we’re doing” side of things. Another new thing we are trying is an alternate location at a local church to keep the continuity flowing for lessons. The Red Station Room is not available to us on the first Tuesday of every month, so we used to take that night off and not have lessons. But, despite our best efforts, many times players have showed up to an already occupied room, realizing too late that it was first of the month.

Of course, with the changing seasons and holidays coming and going, we both like to rummage around our numerous binders for songs and also on various internet sites. Just going to the BUGs website is a goldmine of songs and song books.

Just found this one, never seen it before, full of comprehensive instructions about Blues for the ukulele, including numerous great Blues songs to use their various theories with, which include not only chords and strumming ideas, but also picking and solo-ing instructions. I LOVE it when it’s actually laid out for me, notably using the Key of A for an example, which just happens to be my favourite Key.

Markelele’s Ukulele Songbook I don’t know why it’s called this, even the title page does not really give away the fact that the subject is Blues. However, once I got started I was stuck on Pride and Joy which I heard a singer perform at karaoke at the Norfolk on Thursday night.

From the about songbook, I was immediately hooked in to the way you can play back and forth between the A and A7, the D major and D7 chords, and then you off-play those with the E7 chord, back to A and then he explains what a turn-around is, and he also has a page with the turn-around chord for every Key, and then another page with the blues chords for every K. Plus lots of tips, playing instructions, diagrams, etc. I will be trying out a number of songs this week, but to start us off, here is Pride and Joy, in A.

PRIDE AND JOY