Tag Archives: Ukulele Players

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

 

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~

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

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~

 

Annoucement: Travel back to Singapore (10th – 14th November)
4
Nov

Hi everyone,

I presume that everyone is coincidentially busy, like what Kenny said. It so happens that I am required to work from the 10th till 14th of November in Singapore. I’d like to take this rare chance to meet up with the guys and gals from Singapore, who have supported this site so far.

Let us discuss and try to agree on a good day and time (preferably after 7pm, unless its the weekend of that week)..

The itenary? Dinner, chit chat, photo-taking sessions and ukulele playing. I don’t know if there’s a place whereby we can have food and play around there at the same time (won’t wanna disturb others)… I’m up for suggestions~!

Appreciate everyone’s response.

Take care~

Dominator’s Spruce Top Tenor Ukulele
28
Sep

Hi folks,

Been rather busy with other activities recently. So I apologize for not posting up any playing/listening/tabbed material on ukulabu.com. However, I did do my usual YouTube surfing, and I found out that Mr Dominator has completed his Spruce Top Tenor ukulele, for his coming stage performance for 7th Annual Ukulele Festival in Southern California! Well done Dominator! Let’s give him a round of applause~

Check out his video below:

It sounds really great. Dominator has been making many quite a number of ukuleles for others and himself. I’d love to meet him to look at those ukuleles! For those of you who don’t know who Dominator is, check him out by looking through his tabs library here.

Young Ukulele Virtuosos
17
Sep

I came across some young ukulele players while surfing around YouTube for ukulele players, and these 2 young players are definitely worth watching.

First up is young Ryan Imamura. He has also jammed with Jake Shimabukuro before. Here he is, playing Jake’s Me and Shirley T.

Next up is Ryo Natoyama. He is playing an improvised version of Jake’s song named Blue Roses Falling. His video had a lower quality sound, which I feel that it just doesn’t do him any justice!

Both are already playing at professional level! I really hope they make a name for themselves soon. The world needs such talent!

Ryan and Ryo, all the best to the both of you!

Annoucement: Looking for Ukulele Mates
24
Aug

To any ukulele players out there in Singapore / Malaysia…

Thank you for visiting www.ukulabu.com!

If you happen to read this, please drop me an email or comment, so that we can keep in contact. For those of you who are new to ukuleles, you may also ask any questions, to which I will answer and help out to the best I can.

Once again, thank you.. Take care, and hope to chat with you all soon~

Cheers,
Alan