What do you “Play Along” with?

DanUke!

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Another beautiful Sunday morning here in Maine... 28 degrees and threatening to snow... please come spring!

Anyway, the reason for the post. When I was a boy I would play my bass with records (yes vinyl). Spent hours doing this. With my uke I spend most of my time playing with “the band in my head”.

What/who are you people playing along with? What motivates you to continue to practice and get better?
 
Blues. I'm concentrating on blues. I'm working through Fred Sokolow's CD. It is pretty easy to just play the three chords in the 12 bar blues, but throwing in all the extras and keeping the rhythm isn't. I've been playing along with some blues that I listen to on the internet and trying to get fancy with them. Eight bar blues is next.
 
I learned how to play ukulele for the first 4 months by playing along with YouTube. All of the ones that maki66 mentioned above plus a few others. I’d also look up music on Ultimate Guitar for popular songs. Chordify is also great resource. It shows ukulele chords along with the music playing.
 
I'm a member of a group that meets twice a week. For each day, the leader sends us a set list of about 6-10 songs from our master list of about 200. I also record each song when we meet and put them on my web site for everyone to practice to at home. I also put the recordings on my iPad Pro 12.9" and practice to those. For me that's great motivation to play all kinds of music on a regular basis, both on uke and bass uke.


8 tenor cutaway ukes, 3 acoustic bass ukes, 8 solid body bass ukes, 8 mini electric bass guitars

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children's hospital music therapy programs. http://www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: https://www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/videos
 
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I love to play all sorts of songs with Alexa. “Alexa, play Bye Bye Love,” “Alexa, play The Glory of Love.” Since I have Amazon prime and a large collection of music purchased on Amazon, I have tons of stuff one request away. The only problem, is that I don’t know whose listening ;)
 
I love blues as well!

Munson’s “City of New Orleans” was one of the first songs I learned with the ukulele.

Ubulele, It seems the same with me with one in one out. Only room for so many penguins on the iceberg!

Do any of you participate in a local group?
 
Do any of you participate in a local group?

Yes. After 4 months of playing I found a local ukulele group that has a monthly jam. The leader posts the music & jam info via Meetup. Through that group I got hooked up with a weekly ukulele workshop with a great teacher. There's always a particular theme & skill to learn each week. I just recently joined another monthly uke jam that's led by another very good teacher. He communicates via emails & uses The Daily Uke book plus other music for the jam. Then there's my church worship band that I joined a few months ago. I was hesitant to approach them about joining, since I was a novice & wasn't sure how a ukulele would be accepted. They were super welcoming & the band has stretched my learning in new directions (public performance, playing with a group, working with guitar chord song sheets, etc.). With all of those things, my head is full of music. But I still try to carve out some time to work on things that are just for me. Chord melodies from the Mike Lynch books are my current favorites. In a few weeks I'll be spending 6 days kayaking on the Colorado River in Canyonlands Nat. Park. I will bring along my ukulele, some music, and some good friends to entertain. That will be a nice break from the jams, and workshops, and church band to just groove with my uke in a beautiful place.
 
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Our group meets weekly on Sat. Mornings. There is generally a playlist but sometimes we play a song that someone happens to bring. We do practice songs at length if we have a gig coming up. We do in a couple of weeks at an animal shelter benefit. We are doing some dog and cat songs as well as a few others.
 
My brother visited from Michigan last summer. He brought his acoustic bass and some Blue Grass recordings that we played with. That was a lot of fun. Uke’s sound good in Blue Grass! He’s the only person I’ve played with. I keep finding ways to miss a local group’s Thursday meeting. I think it would be fun, I just haven’t done it. I play nearly every day but having people to stretch me, I think, would be a good thing.

My grandson (one year old) was here earlier today and I played for him. He’s a music lover!
 
Addict with a Pen - Twenty One Pilots
Hallelujah - Leanord Cohen
Hurt -NIN
Guaranteed - Eddie Vedder
Rise - Eddie Vedder
Heart of Glass - Blondie (realized how awesome it was when I heard a Toadies cover)
Passion - The Nixons
Nothing Compares 2 U - Prince/Sinead O'Conner (Chris Cornell performs a near-perfect acoustic rendition of this song on YouTube)
I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
Can’t Help Falling In Love - Elvis

I'm sure there are a couple I'm missing. There's also some jams on the Toadies Heretic and Eddie Vedder Ukulele Songs albums that are serious candidates. I'm an oddball regarding my musical tastes.
 
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