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Online and real life ukulele lessons and jams for grown ups
Join us for our fun, inclusive online and real life lessons for grown ups with these ukulele classes from Becky at Beanstalk Arts! Born in lockdown, these sessions have moved to real life ‘bring a baby’ sessions now in the calendar, and keep your eyes peeled for some evening jams and lessons in SE London. All sessions our sessions use a variety of repertoire from George Michael to Dolly Parton, passing via George Ezra and Mark Ronson, plus a few classic kids songs and Beatles numbers in the mix! Song sheets and chord diagrams all included, for the zoom sessions, you’ll get recordings of the class to catch up on if you miss a session (or you can opt to get ‘recordings only’ and take the course in your own time!).
Currently booking:
Beginners course:
11.30am at Goldsmiths Community Centre, Catford SE6
starts on the 23rd January
Jammers group
11.30am on Fridays at the Ivy House Nunhead from the 26th January
(please note – you’re welcome to attend any of our uke groups without a babyBut just to note that we’ll run at a pace to accommodate parents and carers)
LESSONS FOR GROWN UPS:
Beginners Course:
This joyful, relaxed and energising course takes you from total ukulele newbie – with no musical or ukulele experienced required – to confidently playing at least 4 chords and together we’ll be strumming and singing some fab songs! You’ll have a chance to learn and play along with your teacher Becky, ask questions and we’ll cover different ways of strumming and playing, and a wide range of repertoire of music. All song and chord sheets are included, and you can join us live or catch up on the recordings after the live class each week.
Songs covered in this beginner course include rocking along to Faith by George Michael, the classic Blue Moon, a very useful arrangement Happy Birthday, the slightly dystopian ditty Bad Moon Rising and a joyful jam to Uptown Funk, among lots of others (and requests are very welcome)
If attending in real life, all course bookers are welcome to borrow a ukulele for the duration fo the course (£25 fully refundable cash deposit required) and you’ll be given a folder and print outs of all repertoire.
Improvers Course:
These sessions assume a little ukulele knowledge of basic chords and strums – it’s a good follow on from the beginner’s course OR you’re welcome to jump in straight at this level if you’ve played before/have other musical experience.
The first few weeks will be consolidating our C/F/G chords and working on faster, more confident chord changes, and then we’ll move onto more shapes, strums and develop singing whilst playing!
CPD for teachers: ‘Bright Sparks Ukulele’
Next courses:
No current courses planned, but we’ll be back soon! You can purchase recordings and song sheets from our last course here.
JAM SESSIONS
These are informal, fun ukulele playalongs. Some ukulele knowledge will be assumed, but we’ll include a few top tips and memory joggers on how to approach certain chords and strums, but most time will be spent playing through the songs together! The first ten minutes will be spent doing some learning, roughly following the plans of our improvers course, and in the last ten minutes we’ll aim to look at a bit more advanced or challenging techniques too!
Over the course of the term we’ll aim to build a confident repertoire of songs, adding new ones in as we go- song requests are VERY welcome!
I can honestly say the ukelele classes have been a revelation for me. My mood is always lifted for the rest of the day when I've had a class - they are such fun, and a real tonic from lockdown/childcare monotony. I have been truly amazed at how many great sounding tunes we have managed to learn in such a short time - that are fun for me to play and sing, but also entertaining for my little girl. Even from the very first day!