Blog
Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart
It’s been hard to get together for practice with COVID lockdowns, home visitor limits and travel restrictions.
She’s A Mystery To Me Video
It’s been hard to get together for practice with COVID lockdowns, home visitor limits and travel restrictions.
True Love Ways Video
Not everything goes to plan, but our Christmas video finally got made.
It’s a Wonderful Time of Year
Not everything goes to plan, but our Christmas video finally got made.
Synchronised Strumming
It’s not easy to create strumming patterns for ukulele combos, especially when playing skills are limited. Talented players, especially those who are proficient on guitar or mandolin can make the uke a rhythmic and melodic instrument, but the average group player is better off concentrating on rhythmic and percussive elements.
Our Halloween Lockdown
This is the first video we’ve made completely in lockdown.. Having some gear, instruments and a song is one thing. Getting five people 60 kilometres apart in stay-at-home lockdown mode to sing together is another. We’re a technically unsophisticated bunch.
One Way to Lose These COVID Blues
We love ragtime, jazz, blues and big band swing, though we could give them up if we had to. But we’ll never never hang up our rock and roll shoes.
Making a Music Video
We decided on ‘A Teenager In Love’ for our first music video because it was a song we all knew well. For the past couple of years it’s been a staple at SPUKES and one of the best group songs we have. Max has been singing it since it was a hit for Dion and The Belmonts in 1959!
Starting Over In The COVID World
We used to eagerly await Saturday afternoons and Monday mornings when the next SPUKES session would be held at the Rosebud Memorial Hall. Eighty uke players belting out their interpretations of classic folk, rock, blues and jazz favourites was inspiring. Skill was not important; it was enthusiasm that counted.
Life doesn’t stop because of one damn virus
Ukulele groups around Australia are at risk of closing. Without change many former members will see them as just too risky to attend. With change of course, they won’t be the same. Sometime there’ll be a ‘what’s next’, but today it remains elusive.