A guest post today from Joshua Waldman. As well as leading the Tigard Ukulele Group he has just released a book How to Start and Grow a Ukulele Group (available in digital and paper form (affiliate links)). It’s by far the most comprehensive and inspiring I know of. Highly recommended if you’re starting or running a ukulele group.

When I started the Tigard Ukulele Group (TUG), I had no interest in leadership. I work for myself in a home office. My business is online and I don’t have a team to manage, nor do I have a boss to worry about. I’m not trying to be a better boss or climb some corporate ladder. What does leadership have to do with me?

Turns out, I found an answer to that question very quickly! Running an ukulele group has been one of the greatest personal growth journeys I’ve ever undertaken.

What I learned is that being a leader requires you to find your self-confidence, own the room, make decisions and take risks. It also means potentially making public mistakes and embarrassing yourself. But it also means being someone that others can rely on, being the beacon that guides people, of taking the initiative on fun and inspiring projects.

You make the call

When I first started TUG, we went around in a song circle. Everyone brought their own songs and some extra copies to pass around. This worked fine for the first few weeks and when we had around seven people in my living room. However, as we grew, the song circle format fell apart. Songs bombed. We ran out of music to play.
So the next time we met, I told them what we were playing. “Here’s our song list.” I remember feeling totally surprised that everyone agreed to this. Looking back, this makes sense, they came to play music, not lead a group. That was my job. Even now, at potlucks and parties, when I ask the group what they want to play they look back at me and say, you tell us, we’ll follow.

A few years ago, we were preparing for our very first concert and used our jam sessions to practice songs on our setlist. Our focus was to get into songs and out of songs at the same time. For weeks, we played the same songs over and over again. The concert happened. It went great! And I kept up the practice of repeating songs that needed more work.

After a while of this new format, I checked in with the group to see if they were getting tired of this. To my surprise, everyone really appreciated it. This format continued naturally, even after the concert. In fact, to this day, if a song could have gone better, and I’m about to flip to the next one, members will ask to repeat it, “just one more time.”

You are the leader of your group. You make the calls. Stop looking for approval or consensus. It’s not you imposing your will on others. It’s you offering others the chance to relax and just follow along. Leadership is service to others.

Own your mistakes

We were working on a difficult and highly orchestrated song at TUG one time when a longtime member who hadn’t been for a while showed up. She hadn’t been there the previous two weeks while we were working on this. When she raised her hand and offered some suggestions that would have radically changed what we’d been doing for weeks, I shut her down. “It is the way it is. No more changes,” I said and then watched as she shut down, stopped playing and her body folded in on itself.

I immediately realized my mistake, having gotten so intensely focused on getting the song right that I forgot that we were there to have fun! After the session, I went up to her and apologized. Although she shook it off, said it was no problem and changed the subject, I could tell she appreciated the apology.
Leadership isn’t always easy. But it does make you a better human being as long as you learn from your mistakes.
What I learned from leadership

What I learned is that leadership is a very personal journey. It’s a mirror for your own limiting beliefs, low self-esteem, self-doubt and fears. One of the greatest benefits of having started this group has been the chance to face these parts of myself and deal with them and then grow as a person.

Leadership is an interesting thing. In an age that seems to value collaboration and groupthink as ultimate ideals, apparent leadership seems to be based on how rich you are or how many likes you get on social media posts. I think this is a sad waste. Everyone has leadership potential. Despite our media, human nature is human nature, and groups of humans seek out a leader to represent them. The world isn’t run on consensus or on who has the most likes.

Joshua Waldman is the founder of Tigard Ukulele Group and had just published a book called, How to Start an Ukulele Group where you can find more stories and thoughts on ukulele group leadership.

It’s the 20th anniversary of Radiohead’s OK Computer and they’re releasing an expanded version with outtakes including long-time fan favourite Lift. I had to write it up in anticipation. The chords are based on the incredible 1996 version rather than the dreary, and not in a good way, 2002 version.

Weirdly, between starting on this song and posting it I got stuck in a lift. I didn’t have an existential crisis but I did find out that button that’s supposed to call for help does nothing. Which is a metaphor of its own.

The song is in the key of B so I’ve made it more uke-friendly by putting a capo on the second fret.

Suggested Strumming

I like to use this as the main strum:

Intro: Main strum four times.

Verse: Main strum three times on A, twice on A7, once on F#m. On the D play the main strum once first time around and twice second time around in each verse.

Which goes like this:

Verse Strum

Chorus: There’s a bar of 2/4 in the chorus which makes the strum pattern a little tricky.

Play the main strum three times on A. Then the 2/4 which I play d – d – d u d u. After that it’s the same as the verse except the D is always played only once.

Which sounds like this:

Chorus Strum

Twiddly Bits

Here’s a tab of the little riff that pops up in the verses starting on the A7 chord. It’s tabbed without the capo.

Riff

Links

Buy/Preorder it on iTunes
More Radiohead tabs and chords

Full Playlist

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In the Movies
– Graham Jones’s film Sunshine Ukulele is about, “the impact of the internet upon music and movies.” Which makes the ukulele a perfect subject for it. You can watch the whole thing free on YouTube.
– Zarha Lowzley’s scene playing her uke in Trainspotting 2.

Window Shopping
– Lichty Archtop U121.
– Ko’olau 20 year anniversary tenor.
– A pair of vintage Washburn sopranos from 1922 and from 1930.
– KoAloha KSR-0000 soprano.

New Releases
– The Poor Boys of Worcester have a new album of spirited country, blues and hokum songs Hard Luck Songs for Hard Working People.

Follow Up
– The Art on a Ukulele campaign to raise money for The Hepatitis C Trust finishes at the end of today (Friday).
– Deaf ukulele player, Mandy Harvey has entered America’s Got Talent and won over Simon Cowell.

There’s a new alt-J album out. And very good it is too. To celebrate here’s a tab of my favourite alt-J song Fitzpleasure.

There’s a lot going on in this song (as with most alt-J songs). At first I thought I’d have to use multiple ukes to do it. But the melody, chords and riffs are all so strong and elegant they ended up working pretty well on just one uke. The only major part I had to cut was in the, “steepled fingers…” section. The descending riff in bars 59 and 60 should carry though there but I had to switch to chords to carry it off.

I use a capo on the second fret for my version. But that’s only because it makes it in the original key so it was easy for working it out. You can play it without the capo without causing any problems.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
alt-J – Ripe and Ruin (Tab)

Full Playlist
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What a brilliant song. And one that’s very popular with uke groups. It started life as a half-written Bob Dylan song called Rock Me, Mama before OCMS finished it up and launched their career with it. It’s been covered many times since with Darius Rucker‘s being the most popular.

Like the original, I’m using a capo on the second fret. It’s not essential but it does make the chords much easier and avoids the dreaded E chord.

Suggested Strumming

You can use this simple pattern all the way through:

d – d – d u d u

Use that once for every chord until the last C in the progression where you play it twice.

Here’s how it sounds:

Strumming pattern

Twiddley Bits

Here’s an arrangement of the violin part in the intro (which starts four bars into the song). Again, there’s a capo on the second fret.

The example finishes up with the violin lick in the outro.

Links

Buy it on iTunes

Full Playlist

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Petey Forrest’s completely useless ukulele tips: play the same note on all strings, dead G string wah-wah and Zombie Slides.

Window Shopping

– Hoffman ML style cedar/cocobolo tenor.
– 1930s heart-shaped Dayton.
– Fanned-fret Kukamae i.e. the bridge, nut and all the frets are diagonal. I’m a bit suspicious of the supposed advantages of this but it certainly looks cool.
– Hive Hornet tenor.
– Weird and possibly unplayable Asuka ukulele.
– The translation wasn’t much help identifying this ukulele.

Soundgarden – Spoonman

A post shared by @ukulelehunt on May 18, 2017 at 7:15am PDT

A typically off-kilter Soundgarden riff. It’s seven beats long so I’ve split it into a bar of 4/4 and a bar of 3/4.

I hope you’ve got a capo ready because a lot of these use a capo to get in the right key.

Buy it on iTunes

Temple of the Dog – Hunger Strike

A post shared by @ukulelehunt on May 18, 2017 at 7:54am PDT

From the album Chris Cornell made with what went on to be Pearl Jam in tribute to Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood.

The riff transfers very nicely to ukulele. I’m using thumb and two finger picking to play it.

Buy it on iTunes

Audioslave – Cochise

A post shared by @ukulelehunt on May 18, 2017 at 9:57am PDT

This one, on the other hand, sounds pretty ridiculous on ukulele. But fun to play all the same.

Buy it on iTunes

Soundgarden – Rusty Cage

A post shared by @ukulelehunt on May 24, 2017 at 6:02am PDT

The first Soundgarden song I ever heard thanks to MTV2’s 120 Minutes back in the day.

For this one I tuned the C-string down to A. Which is the point it starts to get wobbly and doesn’t hold the tuning well. An alternative is to use a low-G with the G tuned up to A. The move everything from the third string to the fourth.

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Soundgarden – Rhinosaur

A post shared by @ukulelehunt on May 24, 2017 at 6:00am PDT

From Soundgarden’s underrated Down on the Upside. It’s packed with great riffs and my favourite album of theirs. But it didn’t do anywhere near as well as Superunknown and the band (temporarily) broke up after it.

Buy it on iTunes