Blog: Ukulabu’s 3rd Meeting Session
18
Jan

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

 

New Ukulele Shop in Singapore!
1
Jan

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:

38, Dunlop Street,

Check out their website at http://www.ukulelemovement.com too!

Happy New Year 2009~
1
Jan

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~

Lessons: Ukulele Tuners
16
Dec

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~

Blog: 2nd Ukulabu Meeting in Singapore
15
Dec

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

Next Ukulabu Meeting’s Jam List
24
Nov

I’d like to post a small shoutout to everyone~

I was playing my ukulele when I suddenly thought of the next Ukulabu meeting (I can’t wait to see everyone and other new folks too). The next thing which came to my mind was the jam session. It’ll be a good idea if we could start planning for the jam session, as in what songs we are going to play.

All in favour? I came across this song from Dominator’s site, and I hope we can jam to it. Dominator has got tabs for it as well. You can download it here. Although I have not gone through his tab, but I feel the rhythm of the songs should be quite manageable. There are lead parts and solos as well. I can take on those parts.

Here’s the video of the song. Do let me know how you all feel about it. Lyrics can be obtained here:

Please feel free to suggest any songs which you all wish to include in the next jam session.

Blog: Our First Ukulabu.com Meeting
17
Nov

Hi everyone!

Here’s the official blog post of our first ukulabu.com meeting, which took place on Friday, 14th November 2008. Once again, I can’t thank everyone enough for taking time off to come to this meeting. Now, I’d like to introduce the people who attended the group meeting!

 

 

As for details on the meeting, read on~

We met up at Peninsula Shopping Center at around 7:30pm. Ralph and Shermin reached early, while Kenny and I were stuck in the ‘rather bad after work hours’ traffic. Nevertheless, we were not that hungry, and decided to have food after the jam session.

It has been years since I last stepped into a jam studio, the feeling of having a drumset, 2 guitar amps, 1 bass amp and the microphone just brought me back to my old days, when I was in a band and jamming away. But hey! This is different now. It’s the very first time I entered the studio with not one, but many ukuleles, as well as people who play it!

Most excellent~!

We didn’t plan anything before hand, and we ran out of ideas of what to do within a short period of time. Being an ukulele player myself, I didn’t really play much ‘strum and sing’ songs…. Shermin was quite a new player… In the end, it was Ralph who saved the day! He started recalling songs from his song book and with just a few chords, we were able to jam songs such as ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’, as well as other Beatles songs. Ralph is also a good singer, and we had a good laugh when he started playing ‘Rock Around the Clock’, one of Elvis Presley’s rock songs. Very soon, we were back on track and having more fun!

Very soon, it came to 9pm, and we had to leave the studio. Ralph and Michael had to go elsewhere to pick someone up. Kenny, Shermin and I wanted to go for some food. So we all exchanged contact numbers and bid each other goodbye. We also agreed to meet up next time!

All in all, we all had fun. New friendship, bonded together with music and ukuleles!

 

I’d like to end this post with 2 seperate group pictures, taken inside the studio. As for videos, I will post them up, as soon as I get them from Ralph. So stay tuned~