Electives Showcase

We finished our Electives for the term with a special showcase assembly.  The "Rainbow Ukuleles"played three songs and the audience sang along with us and gave us a huge cheer.  

I was very proud of the group for their performance - they were confident and sounded great!  I'm going to miss playing music with you each week :-(

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

It's hard to believe we are nearly at the final session for our electives.  The Ukulele group has been working so hard to learn the three chords, and two different strumming patterns, AND some new songs.  I think they're amazing!

The final song that we have learnt (the Lion Sleeps Tonight) uses the strumming pattern from the previous post:
C ... F... C ... G7

We have been working hard on this, but still sometimes get stuck changing between the chords.  We have decided that it's OK to just choose two chords to start with, then when we get better, we can play all three!

Another Awesome Session

We had another awesome session today, practising many of the songs we have already learnt, but also learning a new song; One Man Went to Mow.  This one includes G7, so is really tricky to start with.  We know that it just takes a little bit of time for our fingers to get used to the new chord before we'll be really good at it!

Our home learning this week is to keep working on how quickly we can change our fingers between the three chords, the pattern we want to practice is:

C     C     C     C

F     F      F     F

C     C     C     C

G7   G7   G7   G7

G7 Chord

We had a fabulous session yesterday, and did so well in changing between the C and F chords that Mrs Cavanagh even taught us the G7 chord:

Our home learning is to try and get our fingers to remember where they go to make this chord!

Check out this photo we took at the end of the session - now we need a name for our Ukulele Band - I wonder if anyone can think of a name before next week?

Here is the music for our new song "The Doggie Stole a Sausage"  We love this song because it gets faster at the end and we have to really concentrate to stay in time!

Putting the chords together...

Today in the ukulele group we were learning to:
~ Start and stop together;
~ Strum in time;
~ Remember where to put our fingers for the C and F chords.

 We also practised playing songs that had both chords in them: 

"I Caught a Baby Bumble Bee" 

"The Doggie Stole a Sausage" 

When we had nearly finished for the day Mrs Cavanagh let us all have a turn on her Kanua. It has 8 strings made of fishing line, and comes all the way from the Cook Islands. Even though you play it the same as a normal Ukulele, it sounds higher because it is tuned differently:

 Our home learning this week is to train our fingers to change between the C chord and the F chord as much as we can. We will have to practice over and over again until we get really good at it.
We also have to remember to bring a clearfile so that we can bring home the words to the new songs that we learn!

F Chord

The F Chord is another very common and easy to play chord.  To play "F" you put your first finger on the 2nd string in the 1st fret, and your middle finger on the 4th string in the 2nd fret.

"Frere Jacques" is a great song for learning the 'F' chord, because it is the only chord you need! ...

C Chord

The C chord is the easiest chord and is also one of the most commonly played chords.

All you need to do is place your ring finger on the 1st string, in the 3rd fret... You can play a few songs using only this chord. 

Play along with "Row Row Row your Boat"

In this YouTube clip, you can also learn how to play "Old MCDonald" using only the C Chord:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0piM1L3a9Rc

Have fun playing these two songs! 

Strumming

You can practise strumming your Ukulele without knowing any chords!  (If you hold the fingers of your fret hand lightly over all the strings it is much quieter).

Strumming a Ukulele is different than a guitar.  With a Ukulele you strum over the neck of the instrument, with a guitar you strum over the hole.  You can strum using your pointing finger, or your thumb, or both!

The two strums we will learn in our group is a "down, down, down..." strum, and a "down-up, down-up, down-up..." (think: "chinka, chinka, chinka").

Play this track to help you practise these two strums...

The Ukulele

Did you know that the proper way to say Ukulele is "oo-koo-lay-lay" ... there's no 'y' sound at the beginning!  The Ukulele was first made in Hawaii more than 130 years ago.  It was based on an instrument from Portugal called a "machete de braga." 

The Soprano Ukulele that we will be playing in our group has these parts: