Your invitation to the Seasons of the Ukulele!

[GinnyT11]

.

This is an invitation to UU members (and lurkers!)
who have never posted a uking video,
but think you maybe...possibly...might like to try it.
​

All UU members are invited to post a video in a Seasons challenge. After one video post, you become a Seasonista, and the sky will be bluer and your cereal will taste better from that day forward!
If you post videos in subsequent weeks, you gradually develop performance confidence and a bunch of uking buddies who care how you're developing.
The Seasons' founding father is chrimess, who came up with the idea and who posts videos regularly.

Here's generally how it works:
+ Seasons of the Ukulele is a subforum under UU Contests.
+ The Seasons weeks are friendly challenges, not competitions! It's a community of ukers who play and encourage each other. Each Season is hosted by a volunteer Seasonista.
+ Each Season runs from early Sunday to midnight the following Sunday—you have 8 days to prepare and record a video for that week's theme.
+ Each theme is chosen by the volunteer host (you have to be a Seasonista to host) and announced when the Season launches so everyone has the same time to prepare.
+ The host offers some kind of judging, but it's not always based on skills—it may be the feeling you project. Sometimes it's a drawing. Once it was knife-throwing.
+ There are prizes, but they're generally just for fun.

The best things about participating:
1) It builds your confidence. Kindly people—who have all been beginners!—comment encouragingly.
2) It gives you a goal to get good at a song each week.
3) You get to know some UU members better by watching them and interacting on the thread.
4) You can hear a wide variety of songs and styles, many of which may be new to you.

Questions? Ask in this thread, ask any Seasonista, or ask Ralf (Theonlyukethatmatters), who is the Seasons' marvelous Volunteer Coordinator. He keeps the hosting sign-up list and has posted all the playlists in one thread.

Please join us in the Seasons—just one entry makes you a Seasonista!
You don't have to be perfect—you're good enough right now!​

—Ginny


Here's the omni-playlist link: http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/f...tting-together-all-the-seasons-of-the-Ukulele

Here are the themes we've done so far: http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?69035-Sign-up-for-future-Seasons

.

 

[Joko]

Plus, if you're an established, even professional ukulele player, participating in the Seasons of the Uke contest will gain you tens, if not dozens of new listeners!

 

[pabrizzer]

Plus, if you're an established, even professional ukulele player, participating in the Seasons of the Uke contest will gain you tens, if not dozens of new listeners!

It's not the numbers of new listeners but the quality of those new listeners that the professionals should be glad to have on board.

 

[Wongo]

Ginny is the person who got me to finally post a videos in the seasons. If it wasn't for people like Ginny, kind, encouraging, friendly, helpful(just to name a few) this site wouldn't be what it is. So don't be shy, jump on in.
There is no better time.

 

[23skidoo]

Hey moderators.....

We should take Ginny's first post in this thread and make it the basis for a locked sticky/announcement in the Seasons subforum with a title like "What exactly are the Seasons of the Ukulele?" Maybe a little editing to make it a general announcement with a little history of how Christian started the Seasons?

Just saw another thread where someone was asking what it's all about..... I can see the 'Seasosns' nomenclature being a little confusing to some folks, especially if English isn't their first language.....

 

[we tigers]

Great idea!

 

[GinnyT11]

Bump to spread the invitation.

 

[Hippie Dribble]

sticky alert!!!!!!!!!

 

[Dougf]

And here's a little history from another thread.

What everybody above said, plus, a little history...

"Contests" have a long history here at UU, far predating my arrival. (Such a long history that they already had their own forum.)

A little over a year ago Christian (chrimess) and a couple of others came up with an idea for a six week contest divided into "seasons" - each being a week long. Each season had it's own theme and people were only eligible to win if they participated in at least five (I think it was, maybe it was four) of the seasons. Some of the rules of those first seasons was that videos had to be new for the contest and they had to be done in a contiguous take (no overdubbing, multi-tracking, and so on). For some reason, the idea really appealed to a lot of people and when the six weeks were over there was a lot of momentum to keep doing. So we did.

It's been 58 contiguous weeks now without a single week being omitted. I believe people have "signed up" to host future seasons at least through the middle of this year Drew (ukuloonie) stepped up some months back and started coordinating some of the schedules so we know who is coming up on hosting and so on. Sometimes prizes have had some "real" value - other times they've had little economical value but great sentimental value. Judging has varied from "chicken bingo" (if you have to ask you probably don't want to know), to host-chosen, to participant vote (sometimes public, sometimes private). I personally took first place oen season when Dave (TCK) threw a knife at a board with hidden names (this after his chickens failed to perform their duty as expected - BTW, Dave, I thought of something, if you'd put the names on a freshly washed car I bet the chickens would have crapped all over it). The "golden egg" (an egg shaker with a handle - probably actually a baby rattle) that I won is right on the desk in front of me and it will always bring fond memories.

It's really not about prizes, though they do provide a little incentive to participate. It's very fun, supportive, and just generally a blast. I think we're averaging over 50 videos a week now, counting non-scored "bonus tracks" anyway. (I keep saying "we," even though for the last several weeks my job has kept me from having time to participate - this is a Sunday evening and honestly I should be working instead of contributing to this thread...)

Anyway, as others have said, come on over and check it out. We've had a lot of people produce their first-ever public video for the Seasons and, as far as I'm aware, not one single person has been eaten for lunch.

I've also been acquainted with artists I've never heard of, have heard some excellent originals by UU members (including one song by someone I'm guessing is a pro entertainer albeit unknown on these shores that just knocked my socks completely off).

In short, this little project conceived by Christian has become perhaps one of the most significant internet (largely) amateur music projects to date. Am I exaggerating? Not really, I can't think of anything else that rivals it, in any case.


John

 

[IZlives]

sorry but i'm a little confused.. do we post a link to our video on the thread for that week?

 

[bird's eye view of my ukelele]

sorry but i'm a little confused.. do we post a link to our video on the thread for that week?

swing by the current thread

absorb and digest the theme

create super awesome video of amazing performance

post said video on said thread - there is a snazzy film icon when you post an advanced reply - if you cut and paste your youtube video's URL into the dialogue box that opens when you click on the film icon, your video will show in an embedded player

et voila you will be a seasonista

yeah baby

 

[Marc_McPherson93]

A huge thank you to the positive support I've received after posting my first video this week to the Seasons! So happy that one Mr. Berni Armstrong got me involved, and I look to continue this for as long as I can!

 

[IamNoMan]

Well I have been seduced. Wendi, Jarvi, Booli (what's with all the i's) have convinced me to join the club. I have obtained a webcam it is operational. I am making some vids. They appear to be wmv format is that OK? I haven't a clue as to how upload them or what the other conventions are for the club. I would like to come on board asap but with xmas this week I don't have the time to search everything out. Can somebody assist me with these issues please?

 

[UkeCan1]

Well I have been seduced. Wendi, Jarvi, Booli (what's with all the i's) have convinced me to join the club. I have obtained a webcam it is operational. I am making some vids. They appear to be wmv format is that OK? I haven't a clue as to how upload them or what the other conventions are for the club. I would like to come on board asap but with xmas this week I don't have the time to search everything out. Can somebody assist me with these issues please?

My name has a 'y' ... no 'i's in my first name, but I think you meant me. Welcome, Tommy ... so happy you will be joining us!

WMV is fine - YouTube accepts pretty much any format of video.

Next thing to do, if you haven't yet, is to create a YouTube account ... that's where you'll upload your videos. Check the settings and make sure it's set so people can comment on your videos and so forth ... some new accounts have started out with weird defaults, and then we can't come by and tell you how much we love your entries!

Uploading a video to YouTube is super easy. Click the "Upload" button at upper right ... then you can just drag and drop your video file right onto the upload box, and YouTube handles the rest.

While it's uploading and processing (this takes some time ... how much depends on your internet speed and the weather and how YouTube is feeling today), you can edit the title and description you want to give your video, and any other settings you want to change. I always click on "Advanced Settings" and then click "Recording Date", which sets the date to today.

I generally wait until the video is fully uploaded and processed, and I have selected a thumbnail (more on that in a moment), before clicking "Publish". When you're ready, click "Publish", and voila! you have a video on YouTube.

It's generally recommended to set your videos to "Public" so everyone can see them, and others can find them on YouTube. If you feel you have reasons for it, some people do make their videos "Unlisted" ... I'm not a big fan of that, but it's an option you have. ("Private" will make it viewable only by you, so that setting won't work for a Seasons video.)

Re thumbnails: YouTube will select three random still shots from your video as possible thumbnails for your video, and will select one of them as your initial thumbnail. It takes a while for YT to process the thumbnails, so often you will have blank images in the thumbnail boxes (or no images / boxes at all) for a while until they appear. Once they appear, select the one you like best, wait until YouTube displays the one you picked in the thumbnail preview box at upper left (this can also take some time ... sometimes it's instantaneous, sometimes it takes ages, and occasionally doesn't work at all). Then click "Save" to save your changes. I find I get best results by waiting until my chosen thumbnail appears before clicking "Save" and or "Publish" ... YouTube is known to have occasional weird behavior around thumbnails.

So, now you have your video published on YouTube. The final step is to post it in the Seasons.

Go to the current Seasons thread on the forum. Click that link (http://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/forumdisplay.php?47-Seasons-of-the-Ukulele) (I highly recommend bookmarking it ... you will use it a lot) and look for the highest-numbered thread ... it will most likely appear near the top of the listing. Go to that thread, click "Reply to Thread", say whatever you want to say to introduce yourself and your video.

To put your video in your post, click the icon that looks like a bit of filmstrip, and copy/paste the link from YouTube into the dialog box that appears. And voila! your video will show up in your forum post in its full glory, hopefully displaying the lovely thumbnail you chose. Submit your comment to the post, and ... welcome, you have entered your first Season ... and you are now a Seasonista!


Looking forward to your entry, Tommy! Hopefully you will inspire some others out there to make their first entry ... we love and embrace new Seasonistas ... yes, you can ... you will love it. So come on, all you lurkers, now (whenever you're reading this) is an excellent time to dip your toe in the Seasons pool!

 

[xommen]

Having a youtube (http://www.youtube.com) account is the way to do this. You can just upload the wmv to youtube, they take care of converting it to a format they can show to anyone. When you have uploaded it to youtube you can use the filmstrip icon on the top of the edit screen to insert the video.

 

[UkeCan1]

Woohoo, Tommy - you did it! Well done, terrific Seasons entry, so much fun to see you "live".

One last bit of advice: check in to YouTube periodically, and respond to the comments you get on your videos. A simple "thank you" will suffice, or whatever you're moved to say. That encourages people to keep watching and commenting on future vids. Also, if and when you have time, go watch other people's (especially the folks who comment on yours) and comment on theirs. You are getting some lovely comments over there!

 

[actadh]

Thank you, Wendy - that was a very good description of the YouTube process.

 

[aspieman456]

The problem with me is I can only record two or three videos a year. That's because, usually, I wait for something for inspiration to strike me. Is that OK to place a video in a contest, even if I don't record one once a year?

 

[Debby]

The problem with me is I can only record two or three videos a year. That's because, usually, I wait for something for inspiration to strike me. Is that OK to place a video in a contest, even if I don't record one once a year?

Yep! Feel free to participate whenever you can!

 

[GinnyT11]

The problem with me is I can only record two or three videos a year. That's because, usually, I wait for something for inspiration to strike me. Is that OK to place a video in a contest, even if I don't record one once a year?

Hi, aspieman. The point of the weekly Seasons challenges is to prompt you to look into your songbooks and your memory for a song you can record for the specific Seasons theme that week. No need to post every week—if the theme doesn't interest you, just wait a bit. But no, you shouldn't place a video in a contest if it doesn't meet the contest guidelines.

If you record a song just once a year, when the inspiration hits you, post it as a freestanding thread under Links and Videos. But do keep any eye on the Seasons as each new one starts, usually late Saturday night in the US, and maybe that will be your inspiration.