In conjunction with visitors of www.ukulabu.com, Ukulele Movement in Singapore will be holding a jam session on Saturday, 28th February 2009 at 7pm.

In addition to a huge group jamming and sing-along session, this is also a great chance to meet up with new ukulele players, meeting an ukulele teacher from Singapore, watching individual player performances, as well as a possibility of buying a new Kala ukulele, which will be sold at the event location.

So grab your ukulele and head down to the event location on the day itself. You may click on the link below to get details on how to get to the event location.

CLICK HERE for details to event location.

Looking forward to see you all there~!

When I first learn how to play the ukulele, I came across this thought of whether or not to leave fingernails on my right (strumming and hand plucking) hand. Maybe I’ll share my thoughts with you all now.

Initially I kept a certain nail length, about 2mm.. And I found that my playing was kinda ‘picky’ sounding. As the nails were hard and they created a more ‘picked’ sound. My nail length was about the same as the picture below:

And my playing sounded like this:

 

So I switched and cut my fingernails, to minimize the chances of any part of my nails from touching the strings. After that, my playing sound changed, and sounded like this..

Basically, playing without fingernails gives a softer sound, which is more suitable for slow and soft sounding songs. So depending on what kind of music / song you’re playing, you should experiment around with having longer or shorter nails, and eventually develop into your own style….

Well, there are a lot of other factors which needs to considered. For example, if you are a female, as females tend to leave longer nails, due to fashion or beauty reasons, you might be reluctant to cut your nails. Also, if you play more strumming of chords, rather than finger picking, nails would help you sound louder.

If you have any questions, pop me a comment, and I’ll try my best to answer your question.

Have fun!

Ukulabu’s 3rd meeting session took place at ‘The Ukulele Music Co.’ on Friday, 16th of January 2009, and it was a huge success. The members from Ukulabu.com and The Ukulele Music Co. came together for a night of fun ukulele strumming and learning~!

Although I was unable to make it to the meeting session, due to last minute work commitments, I do feel a sense of accomplishment, as I see that Singapore is slowly showing signs of having an ukulele community. And with the help from the friendly folks at ‘The Ukulele Music Co.’, I’m sure the community has a great future ahead, and will continue to grow~!

With that, I will end this blog entry with some pictures of the event. You may view the other pictures on Facebook by clicking here. For videos, click here. Pictures from Glyn and Simon, from ‘The Ukulele Music Co.’

After Chinese New Year, I will be going back to Kuala Lumpur, and probably won’t be able to take part in any meetings in Singapore for quite some time. However, I will try to make time and come back. Hope to see you all soon! Take care everyone!

 - Alan Soo

For those of you who would like to try out some new ukuleles within Singapore (apart from Maestro from Esplanade and Peninsula Plaza), you’re in luck! Our latest visitor, Glyn & Simon, are from The Ukulele Music Co. Ukulele Movement and they have opened a shop which carries Kala ukuleles!

Well done Glyn & Simon!

They are located in Little India. Their address are as follows:

20A Beatty Road,

Singapore 209947

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, I’ve looked up on the address on streetdirectory.com, and here’s the direct link to the place.

http://www.streetdirectory.com/asia_travel/travel/travel_id_1/travel_site_18652/

For those of you who don’t drive, you can take the bus, after getting off from Bugis MRT. Below is a URL from SBS Transit to get to the nearby bus stop from Bugis’s Victoria Street.

Click here to view bus route

Alternatively, you can also go to www.sbstransit.com.sg and look up on the route for bus service number 130, to see which stop is convenient for you to board from.

Be sure to check out The Ukulele Music Co.’s Ukulele Movement’s newly built website at:

http://www.ukulelemovement.com

I’m planning to check out the place, before Chinese New Year, and before going back to Kuala Lumpur. Anyone wants to join? Drop a comment, and perhaps we can go together!

Cheers!

Hi everyone,

I’d like to wish everybody a very Happy New Year for 2009~!

May everyone stay happy, healthy and improve on the ukulele~ Do make ‘improve on the ukulele’ as one of your new year’s resolutions, if there’s still space to squeeze into the list!

Just for your info, I’m still in Singapore, all the way until the Chinese New year. So we should be able to meet up for the third jamming session!

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you all with a nice video lesson by Aldrine Guerrero. It’s Alicia Key’s - Ain’t Got You. Very nice song. Hope you guys enjoy learning it, as much as I did. You can also visit his ukulele website at www.ukuleleunderground.com. Have fun~

Hi all,

Ralph has offered to let us jam at his place for the next jamming session. His house is located 5 minutes away from Tanah Merah MRT Station. A total of about 17 minutes from City Hall, where we would originally jam at.

Any objections?

Lets’ discuss on a date to meet up then…

I heard Jake’s version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller few weeks back, but it was in audio format. I’ve been waiting for a video version of it to come on YouTube. So here it is!

Jake’s an absolute genius!

Hi everyone,

I’ve been getting some small responses from various sources (emails, friends, comments on the site..) about beginner ukulele, how to get started, where to get lessons etc….

There’s only so much that I can help out with ‘where to get lessons’, as I have limited contacts for ukulele lessons in Singapore. So I’ve decided to post some content with relation to ‘Ukulele for Beginners’. This way, beginners can learn the basics from this site, before venturing off further.

So lets start off with tuning the ukulele.

Musical Notes:

Standard ukulele tuning is tuned to a High G Tuning. This means that the notes from the 4th string till the first string, is G C E A respectively, with the G note being a higher note than the rest (Thanks Richard, for pointing that out) with the A note being the highest note. There are basically 2 ways to tune your ukulele. One is by ear (with reference notes of course) and the other is by using a tuner. You may tune your ukulele by ear by referencing notes from this website. They have a good ukulele tuner online. For a physical tuner, you may purchase one from your nearby musical instruments shop.

Just for your reference, this is the one I personally use. You only need to clip it onto your ukulele headstock, and pluck the strings while tuning accordingly.

Once you have your ukulele in tune, you are ready for some ukulele playing~!

Stay tuned for the next lesson~

Hi everyone!

Here’s the official blog post for the 2nd Ukulabu Meeting event.

The 12th of December 2008 marks another milestone for www.ukulabu.com, for we have managed to meet up for the second time within a short period of time, and we have new faces as well. I would like to introduce the 2 new faces…. Wongyy and Celine~

This time around, Kenny booked the jamming studio at Peninsula’s Guitar 77. The time was from 7pm till 10pm. I only arrived at 730pm, as my work only ended at 630pm. Everyone else reached on time (Sorry guys, but I really don’t have a choice)..

The new comers Celine and Wongyy were a bit shy at first, but it was really soon that they got into the mood and started volunteering to sing.

Both Ralph and Wongyy brought along their song books and there were many songs~! We were just flipping through the pages and playing the all time favourites. Some songs that we played were Imagine, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, You’re Beautiful, Stand By Me, Hey Jude and much more~!

Ralph showed us some of his skills with the keyboards, and I was quite surprised that he could play the keyboards. Way to go Ralph~!

I was surprised to see songs like “The Final Countdown” in Wongyy’s songbook. Perhaps we need to bring in the electric guitars from the jamming studio to really rock that song~ Haha…

To sum up, here are the group photos of the people who attended~

Many thanks again to you all, (Kenny, Celine, Ralph, Wongyy) for coming to the meeting. It really means a lot to me, having setup Ukulabu.com and meeting all you nice people through there. And whats best is that we all share the same love for the ukulele. I sure did have a fun time, singing more than I usually would..

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all~!

Until the next meeting then~~
For now, take care~!

-Alan