Saturday, May 9 starting at 10:00 am
with Lil Rev, Ron Gordon & Glenn Weiser
All-day Ukulele Intensive. Open to ALL LEVELS of player — beginner to advanced!
Lil Rev is an award-winning Wisconsin folksinger, poet, storyteller and author of over 15 ukulele and harmonica books. He’s the 1996 National Blues Harmonica Champ at Avoca and he was Voted Best Folksinger in WI-2004 by the WAMI association. For over 25 years Lil Rev has criss crossed North America and racked up over a million miles; today is often referred to as the Johnny Appleseed of the Ukulele.
When Ron Gordon discovered that a uke is a small guitar ; that was it! More portable, much easier on the hands, adaptable, and fun in groups. Luckily, he quickly started `a monthly jam, got hired for many uke events, and so got to hear lots of new sounds and make uke friends from all over. That was the inspiration to start Spring Into Uke here in the Cap District.That was well over a decade ago, and I’m happy to say…”Uke Can Do It”!
Glenn Weiser is the author of 18 books on the guitar and the harmonica. He has also written for Acoustic Guitar and Sing Out! magazines. Now based in Connecticut, Glenn has taught students of all ages and levels how to play guitar, ukulele. banjo, mandolin, harmonica, fiddle, and electric bass for over 40 years. The styles he teaches include folk, bluegrass, blues, Celtic music, old-time string band music, classical guitar, fingerstyle guitar, and classic rock. He is on harmonica.com’s 100 Top Musicians list. He is also the admin of Facebook’s Celtic Guitar Group and the Bluegrass, Country and Old-Time Harmonica group.
Register
The workshop will be held in person at the Old Songs building (37 S Main in Voorheesville).
Workshops
Crucial Chord Progressions with Lil Rev: Join Lil Rev for a fascinating deep dive into the world of common chord progressions where we’ll learn how to recognize them, what to add to them, how to write songs with common sequences, how to listen for them in paperless jams, playing by numbers, basic chord theory, how to transpose them, fun popular song examples, and how to add cool strum-hand techniques like tremolo, rolls and triplets to them. This class is open to all levels, all you need to know is some basic chords. PDF of class material provided for students to print ahead of the class or download to a device ahead of the festival.
The Music of Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly For Uke with Lil Rev: Join Lil Rev for a heartfelt exploration of the music from two of America’s greatest songsters. We’ll learn repertoire, a few cool new strums to accompany the songs, incredible music history, and even some boogie woogie styles and techniques to go with the Leadbelly songs. 12 great songs in one class! Open to all levels. PDF of music provided for the student to print or download ahead of the festival.
Counting and Rhythm with Ron Gordon: great for beginners, and those wanting to expand their rhythm tools on the uke. Improve your counting beats, up beats, and syncopations to better understand and play your strum patterns. We’ll use some classic songs to learn and review the basic one finger strum, the thumb drag and roll, damping strum, syncopation, and the triplet. Your creative part? Combining these into your own patterns!
Fingerpicking with Ron Gordon: The secret is…. Educate your thumb! That’s what keeps the beat, and as it becomes natural, different patterns and rhythms can add a lot to a song or instrumental. We’ll go through the steps and songs so you can have an organized way to progress in your playing.We’ll cover double thumbing, arpeggio, and alternating thumb.
An Introduction to the diatonic harmonica with Glenn Weiser: This class is designed to give the beginner on harmonica a quick start on this popular instrument. We’ll begin with the easiest technique: chord-melody. This is a way of playing a song with three-note chords while always keeping the melody note on top. From there we’ll learn how to play single note tunes using both the pucker technique and tongue blocking. We’ll learn note bending for bluesy effects, chord shuffles, the hand tremolo to give a song with long notes that classic cowboy warble, and more. You’ll need to bring a C-scale 10-hole diatonic harmonica with you for this class-any make and model will do.
Transpose Songs on Ukulele with the Nashville Number System with Glenn Weiser: Suppose you learn a song on ukulele only to find you need to sing it in a different key, or you show up at a jam and hear a song you know being played in an unfamiliar key. With a smidgen of music theory, you can easily shift a song into any key and be back in the saddle. The Nashville Number System is a way to learn the proper sequence of chords in any key by number, and with that knowledge play any song in the key you need. In this class we will study examples of songs transposed into the keys of A, C, D, F and G going the stages of songs with the I, IV, and V chords, song with major and minor chords (chords (I-VII), songs with secondary dominants, and songs with out-of key chords.
Schedule
- 9:30 am — Doors open, participant check-in.
- 10:15 am — Introductions
- 10:30 am — Workshops — Session 1
- 11:30 am — Lunch Out (of the building)
- 1:00 pm — Workshops — Session 2
- 2:45 pm — Workshops — Session 3
- 4:15 pm — Concert: A brief sampler from each teacher/performer
- 5:30 pm — Everybody go home and practice!