We warmed up with Jamaica Farewell and End of the Line – our two “performance” pieces – and then moved on to Fly Me to the Moon (links to a PDF from Richard G’s Uke Songs). Fly Me to the Moon uses a lot of unfamiliar chords (Gm7, Bbmaj7, C9), but they’re not overly complex chords and they have a wonderful jazzy sound. The ukulele is really suited to jazz chords and I’d like to dig out some more jazz standards for us to learn over the coming months.

We played a couple of songs from the most recent BUMS meeting – Scarborough Fair (links to a PDF from BUMS) and Whiskey in the Jar (links to a PDF from BUMS), and then took a look at Pretty Woman (links to a PDF from Richard G’s Uke Songs). My personal challenge for the next month is learning to play the riff from Pretty Woman at a reasonable sort of speed.

Our first meeting in our new venue – Col Ferguson Cottage in the Logan Village Community Centre. It’s great to have a bit more room, and have the playground nearby for kids. This is not a photo of the new venue, obviously – it’s George Harrison with a uke.

We warmed up with Jamaica Farewell, and then played Hotel California (The Eagles), Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Revival), Flame Trees (Cold Chisel), and No Reply (The Beatles). Marg did a fantastic job with the “Oh, who needs that sentimental bullshit anyway” line in Flame Trees.

New member Michael, Marge, and Christine and King all played us something for Show & Tell. Michael also showed us a chord solo for Goodnight Ladies, which is a good challenge – a stretch for the fingers!

Logan Ukulele Club - photo by Anton Thompson

The Logan Ukulele Club performed two songs in the intermission at Freedom Train’s Winter Grace concert on Sunday 7 August 2011 – End of the Line by the Traveling Wilburys, and Jamaica Farewell by, probably, Irving Burgie (accordingly to Wikipedia, source of all knowledge).

We tried to put together some interesting arrangements of the songs, and I think we succeeded. On End of the Line we all sang the choruses with improvised harmonies, and had solo singers (Marg, Celia and Jay) singing the verses. Celia didn’t forget to sing a line and swear like she did in rehearsal, for which we are thankful.

We all joined in again for the final double chorus, stopping for the first two lines of the final chorus and singing against the bass line before bring the ukuleles back in. I thought the intro and outro were nice and clean with good rhythmic strumming from everyone. It had a bit of a pub-sing-along vibe to it, but in a good way. (Although is there ever anything bad about a pub-sing-along vibe, I ask? No, of course there isn’t.)

We varied the vocals in Jamaica Farewell in a similar way, with everyone singing the chorus with harmonies again. This time, we had the women singing the first verse, the men singing the second verse, and then Cath and John harmonising on the third verse. We also broke up the song with a whistled verse, but on reflection I don’t think that comes across particularly well on stage – it sounded better in our lounge room rehearsal.

Jamaica Farewell is a bit of a cliched song for ukulele, but with good reason. It sounds fresh and pretty and light hearted when played on uke – it went over well with the audience and lots of people sang along.

We had a record turnout, and had to readjust some of the some arrangement – it turns out that solo singing mostly doesn’t work against a significant number of strumming ukuleles, unless you have a great belting voice. We readjusted to have specific groups of people singing different verses (to keep that variation in the arrangement), and where we do have some solo verses in End of the Line, significantly reducing the volume of our playing to allow the vocals to ring out.

We’re looking forward to going back to a normal meeting structure in September, and trying a few new songs.

We decided on:

1. Jamaica Farewell (C, F, G7)

2. End of the Line (G, D, A)

We were down a few people, and we worked out some arrangements with solo singers. We found that End of the Line particularly needed some variety in the vocals so that it didn’t sound too repetitive. The Traveling Wilburys clearly realised as well, given that they alternate vocal lines in the original. How clever of them!

And then it starts again at the beginning.

That reads as:
 - 4 counts of the first chord
 - 2 counts of the fourth chord, 2 counts of the first chord
 - 1 count of the fifth chord, 1 count of the fourth chord, 1 count of the first chord, and 1 count of the fifth chord to finish it off.

On Saturday, we were playing blues in A. So the progression went:

A A A A
D D A A
E D A E

As Jay was saying, you can make all or any of those chords 7s (which sound nice and bluesy). So most of us were playing A, D and E7 – but you could also play A7, D7, and E7, or any combination of those.

[Just a reminder to beginners about chords that are 7s - for example, if a song goes from C to C7 and back to C, if you find that too difficult you can just ignore the C7 and play C all the way through. It reduces your chord changes, and will sound just fine.]

By way of example, if at the next meeting we decide to play blues in C, the progression would go:

C C C C
F F C C
G F C G

You repeat the progression over and over again, until a) you get sick of it, or b) your fingers hurt too much to play any more. And then over each couple of progressions, someone gets a chance to improvise a solo. Or if you don’t want to solo on the ukulele, you could do some improvised singing (I know all you choir members are good at that).

Some of the great things about 12 bar blues are:

1. repeating the same chords over and over is a good way to practice smooth chord changes;
2. it helps you work on your strumming;
3. it gives you the chance to listen to everyone else, and hear how the sound you’re making mixes together;
4. it helps you practice timing, and learning to hear where the next chord change will be coming up (hot tip – listen to the bass!);
5. playing the same progression in different keys helps you learn what chords are in each key; and
6. it gives everyone the chance to have a solo (or you can just keep playing the chords, if you prefer).

We played the following songs:

1. Take on Me
2. Fisherman’s Blues
3. Let It Be
4. Country Roads
5. Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World (also has Em, E7)

This is easier than you think! For example, the keys of C and A minor actually have the same chords in them – they just start in different places. The key of C starts on C, the key of A minor starts on A. This is why A minor is called the “relative minor” of C major. Other keys also have relative minors, but I have no idea what they are. This is because I play ukulele, and the key of C is our all important key. (You could read the Wikipedia page on relative keys if you want to make your brain melt.)

A minor and C major are related because they share the same key signature. In this case, C major and A minor have no sharps or flats in their key signatures. They are the only keys to have no sharps of flats in the key signature, so they are classed as rellies.

The way to discover the relative minor key to any major key is to count the notes and find the sixth note in the scale.  The relative minor is always the 6th note in that major scale.

So what is the 6th note in the scale of C major?  C D E F G A B C – why it’s A of course!   This rule applies to every major key – they all have a relative minor.

Conversely, the relative major key to any minor key is always the 3rd note in the minor scale.  So in the A minor scale A B C D E F G A – yes it’s C! Every minor key has a relative major key.

Common chord progressions involve the first, fourth and fifth chords in a key. For the key of C major, these are C (the first chord), F (the fourth chord) and G (the fifth chord). As all these chords are quite easy on ukulele (on soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles, anyway!) many songs for ukulele are written or transposed into the key of C.

Do you know Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah (more famously covered by Jeff Buckley and kd lang)? Well, in the first verse, he sings “I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord – but you don’t really care for music, do you? It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift…” If the song is being played in C major, when he’s singing “the fourth, the fifth”, the chords go from F to G (the fourth, then the fifth chords). When he sings “the minor fall”, the chord goes to A minor, and then the “major lift” it goes back to F. Isn’t that cool? “Yes, Celia, very cool – please stop talking about chords now.”

I know sometimes music theory can sound a bit nonsensical (don’t let Chris start talking you about modes), but when you’re starting to play an instrument, I think that learning a teensy bit of theory can make the whole structure of songs much more understandable. For example, if you’re trying to remember the chords for a song, and you know it has a C, F and G in it, you’ll say to yourself, “Well, it’s fairly likely that this other chord will be an Am, because, like, Am is totally the relative minor of C major. Dude. Also, there’s 20 billion songs with C, F, G and Am in them, because I learnt them all at uke club.” (I know you all talk like that in private.) And you will probably be right! That’s always a nice feeling.

If you have read all of that, you can now make yourself a little badge that says “Music Theorist” and wear it out when you go grocery shopping. This will be a wonderful boost for your social life. I promise.

We played:
 - Amazing Grace (in the key of C)
 - End of the Line (D, G, A)
 - Handle Me With Care (G, G7, C, F Am, E7)
 - Fisherman’s Blues (G, F, Am, C)
 - Take On Me (F, G, C, Am)
 - the Smoke on the Water riff (G, B flat… something or other. You don’t play the full chords anyway)

In our new Show and Tell section, Celia played a new song she learnt called Tanglewood Tree (which both Chris and Cath thought sounded very familiar… hmmm), and John played a new song he wrote on his ukulele called From the Head to the Heart.

We began practicing the change between G and G7 and a basic strumming pattern. At the end of a couple of hours, we had worked up to playing Hotel California together (albeit in a ukulele friendly key).

Here’s a list of the songs we did, and the chords we used:

Morningtown Ride (G, G7, D, Em, C, Am)
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (C, G, G7, D)
Amazing Grace (in the key of G – G, C, D or D7, Em, and then in the key of C – C, F, G7, Am)
Don’t Worry, Be Happy (Dm, F, C)
Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What a Wonderful World (C, F, G, Am, E7)
Take Me Home, Country Roads (C, Am, G, F, G7)
Hotel California (Am, Dm, G, F, E7, C, D)