Uke Jam - A New Take on Some Old Favorites

Those of us who attended Jim D'Ville's Oct. 7 workshop came away inspired to play familiar songs without sheet music. It's do-able, and a great way to learn why chord progressions work the way they do!

At this meeting, we'll play through some of our favorite three- and four- chord songs from our repertoire ... without sheet music. No, I'm not going to pick the songs in advance, because then we could practice. ;-) Don't worry about lyrics; we'll sing what we can and hum the rest.

For beginners, this is a great way to jump start your playing!

We'll stick with familiar keys - C, D and G - and you'll only need four chords in each key, the I, IV, V7 and VI. (Don't worry if you don't know what those Roman numerals represent.)

In the key of C, a common progression with those chords looks like this: C, Am, F, G7, C.
In D, it's D, Bm, G, A7, D.
In G it's G, Em, C, D7, G.

Memorize and practice those three progressions and you'll be all set. (I like to practice them at two beats per chord.) If you're a beginner, stick with the chords in the key of C. We'll play each song in each key.

Finally, let's spend the final portion of the meeting exploring new songs. PLEASE SEND SUGGESTIONS!!!