Ukulele Winter

Don't let the winter blues get you down. Just strum them away with "Ukulele Winter"! This mellow tune is easy to sing and a breeze to play. Your ukulele players will only need four chords – C6, F, Ami, and G7 (the G7 is only used in one spot and could be substituted with just plucking the G string to make it even easier). For measures 5 through 12, you can simply stay on the C6 as indicated on the part. But if you wanted to have a little extra challenge, your players can switch to the Ami chord in measures 6, 8, 10, and 12. As usual, we have provided a written ukulele part for your players (page 64), but we also encourage them to freely strum along and create their own rhythmic pattern. If singing and playing at the same time proves to be too difficult, consider having one group sing the song and another group play it. You can then have the groups switch tasks so that everyone gets a chance to sing and play. Of course, with our current situation, you may want to have everyone just play the ukulele along with the full performance track. If you are able to sing this song, remember that "ukulele" is pronounced "oo-koo-lay-lay" wherever it occurs.

While we were recording the vocals in the studio, we had a lot of fun slightly emphasizing beats 2, 3, and 4 in measure 9. Also, whenever we sang the words "think" and "pick" in the first and third verses and in the coda, we stopped the sound ever-so-briefly before singing the next word. It made for a neat effect. For a great example of this, listen to track 13.