Welcome to the Tulsa Ukulele Club Website

Welcome to the Tulsa Ukulele Club website. We are a group of people of all ages who enjoy playing the ukulele. We welcome every level of player from beginner to professional. We play a wide variety of music, as diverse as our membership. Right now, if you come to one of our meetings you are going to hear a lot of old time standards, country, folk and blues, possibly some Gospel, but we are welcome to new influences.

While our emphasis is on ukuleles, we welcome other instruments too. Bring your harmonica or guitar and of course, a kazoo is always welcome.

We are a family oriented organization and encourage the entire family to attend, even the little guys, so long as they do not disrupt the meeting. Watch this site for special announcements for meetings when we will be offering free beginner's ukulele lessons.

We have been evaluating several alternative sites for our meetings. Watch the blog postings below for the latest meeting place. At this time (10-17) we are meeting in the lobby of the Cancer Center of America in the first Thursday, have an Open Mike Night and jam on the second Thursday at Burgundy Place and the other Thursdays are jams at Burgundy Place or some other location. Check the blog, the web page or contact us for latest plans.

Thank you for visiting our Blog. You will also find a lot of useful links for songs and instruction material in the Handy Links section on the right side of the page.

We also have a web page that contains a lot of the songs in our song book -- see https://sites.google.com/site/tulsaukuleleclub/

We also have a YouTube channel and a Facebook page ("Tulsa Uke Club").

Please contact us if you have any questions at tulsaukes@gmail.com.







Thursday, April 12, 2012

"Cheater" music theory

Rex sends along this link for a short overview of music theory, produced by a Seattle based uke performer. Howlin' Hobbit.

Good stuff, here

.http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1125378/ukulele%20docs/cheater_theory_v2.pdf

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Meeting Notes for April 10th


Well, we certainly had a nice evening last night. It was good to see Jeff and Blayne as well as some of our local regulars. And it was very pleasant to greet a newcomer, Cinde Berkowitz, who not only has a nice Fender uke, but is also an accomplished musician with other instruments. She regularly meets with Mary at their family jams too. Another club asset.

We played a couple songs pretty tightly, probably because they were familiar to us. “Shady Grove” was particularly tight as was a new number to us suggested by Jeff, the Beetles tune “Your Sixteen”. We played a couple other Beetles numbers, but only one Hawaiian number “One Paddle, Two Paddle”.

We continue to think about getting a core group of songs that we really play well. Mr. Sandman, Shady Grove and Your Sixteen certainly seem to have appeal, but if you want some other, let's work on them.

I hope to see everyone on the 24th.

Circle of Fifths

Rex recommended this short instruction on the Circle of Fifths and song construction.

Here is the link.  It comes from a San Diego club.

http://files.meetup.com/1618566/HappyStrummers-Circle_of_Fifths_handout.pdf

Uncle Rod's Boot Camp

Here is a link to a somewhat different approach to learning to play the uke.  This Hawaiian wants you to learn to do all the open string positions first, in all the keys that fit the ukulele.  He recommends that you play each worksheet, slowly at first, building up speed as your muscle memory comes into play.  First with 4 beats per chord, then three, then two then one, as skills improve.

Mary has been using these sheets, along with a metronome, for some time and recommends them.

Now this won't give you anything on movable chords or using all the fretboard, but it is a great start.

http://files.meetup.com/2287271/ukulele%20boot%20camp%20rev%5B2%5D.pdf



Sunday, April 8, 2012

Rex is featured on our YouTube link

You can catch the latest videos by Rex in the YouTube link  on the right hand side of the page.

Friday, April 6, 2012

A little bit of fluff for the Easter Day



Enyoy, and share with your family.

Another MP3 site

I found this link via the UU forum and you might find it useful.

http://www.4shared.com/dir/gp-s7YJU/MP3s.html

There are a couple hundred songs, in MP3 format, at this link.  For those I checked, all were being played using a ukulele by a single person, so this is what you might sound like playing by yourself at  home.  It can be used for study too.

I did not try and download the songs to my computer but there is a link that suggests it can be done.  I just listened to a few to check out the site.

It is a little bit of a hassle to get the song playing.  Once you click on the triangle "go" button, an ad comes up.  It takes a keen eye to find the small X in the upper right hand corner to close the ad.

Otherwise, this can be a source for a wide variety of songs.

Let me know how you like it.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

April 10th is coming up soon

Tuesday will be here before we know it, so if you are able, please try and come up with a couple two or three chord songs that we might select on which to polish our skills.  I know Rex is planning on "Shady Grove" and I have several picked up, including "The MTA" song popularized by the Kingston Trio.

Hope you can make it.

Usual time, usual place.