Summer Ukulele Course II — report
I held Ukulele Course II on 20 June. It was intended for players who were no longer complete beginners and already had the basic ukulele skills. The goal of Course II was to expand those foundations and, with some insight into music theory, help the chords start to “make sense”.
On 20 June 2021 — just as one week earlier on the day of Course I — we woke to another beautiful sunny Sunday morning . Together with my fellow ukulele player Evelin, we set off early for the venueso that we would arrive in good time at the Aranytíz Cultural Centreand could bring everything into the room. Again, thank you to her for helping with carrying and setting up. During Course I I had struggled — and at times completely failed — to compete with the volume of the students' ukuleles, so for Course II I brought a pair of powered speakers. With amplification it was much easier for me to lead the group playing.
The perhaps less exciting part of the course was our introduction to music theory, but I believe these fundamentals are worth learning because in the long term they provide extremely useful support when practical musical questions arise — for example when arranging songs independently or finding chords by ear. We also became familiar with barre-chord shapes through exercises that gave our forearms and wrists a proper workout.
For me the day flew by and I had a great time. I hope the participants felt the same.
At the end of the course, thanks to D'Addario — one of the world's largest manufacturers of strings and accessories — we raffled off several ukulele accessories. A huge thank-you to D'Addario!
And special thanks to the ukulele players who helped me pack up and carry my equipment downstairs after the course .
I am planning the next courses for the very end of summer or the beginning of autumn !
Many thanks to Gyuri for taking some photos:
I was also delighted that Nóri attended the course. In her small workshop she makes beautiful ukulele cases, and at my request she brought several along, so we were able to admire the wonderful one-of-a-kind cases she creates:
