Spring into Uke

Saturday, May 12

All Day Ukulele Intensive: Workshops, Open Mic, and Sat. Evening Concert with Lil Rev, Nemo, Mark Menard and Ron Gordon.

Includes a Ticket to the Lil Rev Concert on Friday, May 11 at 7:30 pm

All for $50

Or call Old Songs to reserve: (518) 765-2815.

Refunds are not available for this event.

Saturday Schedule:

10:30—Registration
11:00—Uke Emporium (until 5)
11:00—Workshops/Classes, Session 1
- Novelty Songs for Ukulele with Lil Rev (Upstairs)
  This popular class is a fun, well-rounded workshop that provides background on the evolution of the novelty number, featuring bawdy, naughty and double-entendre examples in blues, rock, Tin Pan Alley, Borscht Belt, Irish, and sailor songs. You’ll find a good variety of simple two-, three- and four-chord tunes along with some cool circle of 5th stuff and a few Tin Pan Alley numbers for ukulele. Techniques include many cool novelty strokes including the fan stroke, the zig-zag stroke, the figure eight stroke, as well as all of the silly ukulele tricks.
- Beginning Ukulele with Ron Gordon (Downstairs)
  Strums, chords , and 2 songs to leave singing! Get a great foundation of skills and concepts to have a focus for your future ukulele endeavors.We’ll learn and practice the right hand rhythms that make the ukulele so bouncy, and accessible to so many genres of music.
12:00—Lunch, netukework, and jam
1:00—Workshops/Classes, Session 2
- Key of Bb with Mark Menard (Upstairs)
  The key that unlocks the whole fretboard – You know your C, F, G and Am chords. You probably know a few closed chord shapes now take it to a new level and master the whole fretboard. If you struggle with the closed E and Em chord shapes, using the key of Bb we can practice and learn these shapes thereby unlocking the whole fretboard for your playing pleasure. I don’t offer any secrets or silver bullets, but this class can lead to a practice routine and songs that lend themselves to playing these shapes so you master the whole fretboard.
- Blues Ukulele (Downstairs)
  How can a uke, which is so glad, be sad? We’ll answer that question and many more about the blues forms, scales, chord progressions, and strum – finger picking tools. We’ll cover two blues classics: “Every Day I Got The Blues” and “Freight Train”.
2:30—Workshops/Classes, Session 3
- Claw-Hammer Style Ukulele with Lil Rev (Upstairs)
  This workshop takes an in-depth approach to learning the banjo-derived claw-hammer stroke on the ukulele. After breaking this stroke down into three, easy to understand steps; we’ll try them out on a tune that is typically played claw-hammer style.
- The Classical Approach to Ukulele with Nemo
  Classical guitar basics as applied to the uke , including holding and positioning the instrument, hand position, picking techniques, and learning a few “classics”.
3:30—Open Mic and Jamming
5:00—Pot Luck Dinner: bring a dish, and/or drink.
6:30—Evening Concert, Raffle, and than jamming!