Christmas Jamming!

Festive greetings. If you fancy playing a few seasonal numbers over the break along with other players, here are a few of this year’s Xmas jams available on replay.

Happy strumming! Jeanette

Craig Chee & Sarah Maisel’s Holiday Jam 2021 (free jam packet download):

Cynthia Lin’s Beginner Holiday Jam 2021 (free songbook download):

Stu Fuchs’ Holiday Jam Along Party 2021 (free songbook):

UkeTok Step Into Christmas Jam 2021:

 

Twelve Days Of Ukemas – Day One

Happy Christmas to everyone who reads this blog!

At this time of year you might like to consider supporting others who use their ukulele-playing to help or give pleasure to others.

I’m always keen to promote Laurie Kallevig & the excellent work she does in travelling out to places like Mumbai & Kolkata every year, where she teaches ukulele to young survivors of human trafficking with her Survivor Girl Ukulele Band Project. They are currently seeking donations to fund the 2018 – 19 project – either directly or by downloading the Kickstarter CD that was made recently.

If that’s not your thing, why not support one of the many uke sites who work hard to provide excellent free songsheets or YouTube tutorials by giving them a tip or buying some of their e-books or other merchandise?

And if you want a little fingerstyle workout for today, here’s Helmut Bickel, who has over two hundred lessons on his YouTube channel.  Here is his rendition of Wham’s Last Christmas (tutorial: part one & part two):

 

December 2017 Club Nights

Please note the following arrangements for our club nights around Christmas:

Tue 12 Dec & Tue 19 Dec – We’re at the Lewes Club, as usual. We’ll be sticking with playing our regular numbers but I’ve copied Mele Kalikimaka to the 2017 Xmas Songs folder in Box, as we usually play that as our traditional Hawaiian festive number during December.

Tue 26 Dec Boxing Day – XMAS BREAK.

We return to the Lewis Club on Tue 2 Jan 2018. New members welcome.

For those of you wanting a Christmas strumalong, do have a look at Cynthia Lin’s Beginner Holiday Ukulele Jam from last year – a free songbook of thirteen numbers & you can play along with the recorded webcast. Here she is with one of the numbers, All I Want For Christmas Is You:

 

Sweary Steve’s Christmas Message

This year it falls to Sweary Steve to give PLUC’s festive message. I’m sure everybody who knows him will appreciate the card he sent us all:

 

Ding Dong Ukuleles On High

Deck Your Uke For Xmas – see how at The Instructables website

At this time of year, some folk rejoice in the sound of Christmas tunes gaily ringing out from every store & the rest of us do our best to avoid even going to the shops from mid-October, when the Xmas season now appears to start!

 

PLUC Xmas Weekend Workout

Ukulele Club Christmas (Photo credit: Simon Scarfe)

As a Christmas treat, we offer you two festive fun quizzes for the price of one:

1) Guess from which songs do the ‘Christmases’ come (NB If you get enough questions right you’ll win a surprise that can make any song into a Christmas tune!). I managed 10/12, so see if you can better that.

2) And here’s Ukulele Hunt’s annual puzzler – the Ukulele Christmas Quiz 2012 – which I’m just about to enjoy doing. There are also links to previous year’s quizzes.

Jeanette

Other quizzes include: PLUC Weekend Workout – EarMaster; PLUC Weekend Workout – On-line Ear Trainer; PLUC Weekend Workout – Speak Ukulele Challenge!; PLUC Weekend Workout – memrise on-line courses; PLUC Weekend Workout – Theta Music Trainer;  PLUC Weekend Workout – Flashcard Machine; PLUC Weekend Workout – Music Reading Knowledge; A Question Of Uke – TV & Movie Themes; PLUC Weekend Workout – Fretboard Master Game; PLUC Weekend Workout – Guitarator Chord Quiz; PLUC Weekend Workout – Vocal Match Game

 

Christmas Strumalong 2

The final club night of the year was our annual Christmas Strumalong at the Jolly Farmers pub, attended by Andrew, Brendan, Chris, Colin, Daniel, James, Jeanette, Mary, Ron, Rufus & Simon.

We played a selection of our current songllist, raced through Sing-A-Long-A-PLUC & finished with a number of seasonal tunes from popular sources such as Doctor Uke’s Christmas Medleys 1 & 2; Ukuke’s Christmas Ukulele Songbook & some PLUC Xmas arrangements.

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And we left with our traditional Hawaiian farewell – this time, the festive Mele Kalikimaka.