Tip jar for musicians

Increasingly people ask if I have a tip jar and if I would accept a monetary contribution for my teaching, song sessions, and all that I do. I was particularly grateful to read the kind words thanking me for giving the two workshops at the recent two-day virtual ukulele festival and leading the weekly Three Chord Thursday song sessions. Support 3 Chord Thursday @ 3, donate any amount you’d like.

These days my top priority is to deliver quality teaching to my students enrolled in my music classes. If I run out of time and energy to prepare for my ukulele classes in Zoom, I skip all unrelated activities so that I can still give my students the best music education they deserve.

Lately I have had to skip or postpone tasks involving downloading and editing video recordings for viewing and sharing. It is by far the most time consuming because I have much to learn about producing videos.

Next is researching and arranging song sheets to simplify them for free song sessions and taster workshops. Mind you, I love researching sheet music and arranging them for ukulele. If I had more time, I’d do more of it.

Some activities that cannot be avoided can be made more efficient. Batch processing is how I blast out emails and use social media to announce upcoming courses and thematic song sessions. This means maintaining an updated e-mail list. The website Meetup.com doesn’t give out e-mail addresses. Besides, not everyone wants to join it.

Then there’s the administration of answering queries, getting Zoom info to new participants, etc. Someone suggested that I outsource or hire an administrator.

What does a tip jar do for musicians? It shows appreciation. It may one day amount to enough funding to afford me to outsource all those activities that someone else can do faster and better thus freeing up my time to do what I’m best at and what I love: developing new curriculum and arranging song sheets. And maybe even writing my second book for the ukulele.

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Beginning Ukulele is an excellent course for those just starting on their ukulele journey. You will learn Anne’s marvelous techniques and exercises right from the beginning, but you will always have the fun of applying these techniques to song. You will find that Anne is a wonderful, encouraging, yet logical and precise teacher. You will be amazed at how much you will learn in this course! —Dr. Andrea B. Reiter

If you want to play music and go beyond the kazoo, try ukulele with Anne Ku. While taking your beginner class- you can also attend her online music jams and sing along without being heard on Zoom. It’s a wonderful way to enhance one’s love of music.

Below is a lovely piece by Mary Ann van Beuren, Hartland, Vermont (USA)

Day 50

I have fallen in love. It’s not what you might think. Years ago, in anticipation of my grand, O’s first solo visit, I bought a cheap ukulele at the local guitar shop. It looked like a uke, it sounded like a uke. Unlike guitars, which all have their own unique voice, a uke was a uke. Plus, it was cute, with scroll work around the body and a ring of etched triangles around the sound hole. I picked up an instruction book of kids songs and a slim volume of chords with the title that was something like, ‘Yes, Even You Can Play the Uke.’ 

O’s visit was short and we spent most of our days swimming in the pond with Zuzu. (Hoss felt it was his job to save O, even though she wasn’t drowning, and Joe stood on the edge telling Hoss how to do it. Too many lifeguards. We sent them off to supervise Mike.) After we swam, we ate. After we ate, we napped. It was the perfect summer camp routine minus the kumbaya around the fire pit. 

The uke lived in the corner, beside the desk, next to the foam roller and gathered dust. Once in a while I could hear a muffled, ‘play meeee,’ but it was quiet enough to ignore.  Sometimes I’d give in and pick it up, pull it out of its case and noodle around with it, but the chords were so different from guitar that playing wasn’t intuitive. There was always something more pressing to do than play the uke, like tidying my sock drawer or counting how many different kinds of vinegar we have in the pantry. I figured that the next time the grands came, we’d explore the uke together, but we haven’t, yet.  The uke has stayed in its bag, in the corner for years. 

In mid-March, just before quarantine, our neighbors and their wee daughter came over for lunch. They asked if I would mind giving Lily a lesson. Out came the uke and the books and we sat on the floor attempting to pluck out Happy Birthday. Lily got it very quickly. I offered to loan her the uke since it was going to be a while before the grands could visit, but her parents said no, that they were going to get one of their own. My cute little uke went back into its flimsy bag, into the corner next to the foam roller. 

In late spring, I asked my neighbors how the uke was coming along. I was expecting to hear that Lily had graduated from Happy Birthday to Twinkle-Twinkle, but, no. Now, they were a two uke family and playing contemporary songs like, ‘Hallelujah’. Hallelujah – on the uke? My uke had been holding out on me. 

A couple of weeks ago, I decided Mike and I needed a lot more music around here. The news hasn’t been getting any better, nor has it been any easier to take. It was time to turn it off and turn the music up. I searched online for contemporary folk and found that Club Passim, in Boston was streaming concerts of some of my favorite musicians: Catie Curtis, Peter Mulvey, Christine Lavin for starters. There were concerts from a whole new generation of musicians whose music I have yet to explore. 

Poking around the website, I saw a link that said, ‘School of Music.’ I thought, ‘Club Passim has a school of music?’ It turns out that you can take virtual lessons in banjo, fiddle, fingerstyle guitar, voice – and even the ukulele! The ukulele instructor, Anne Ku has been putting on a free jam since quarantine began called, Three Chord Thursdays at Three. Anne posts a theme for the week. Some of the themes were music from the 60’s, the 70’s, the 80’s, the British Invasion and on and on. Each song is to have only three chords. That sounded easy enough, so I tuned in and it was so much fun, that I tuned in the following Thursday, as well. 

I thought I’d be intimidated, because most people have been on Zoom with this since April, but the group was welcoming. Their abilities ran the gamut from beginners to seasoned, no one took themselves too seriously. People chose a song to play, and everyone else is muted, so, unless you’ve teamed up with someone, you are doing a solo. I’m working up the courage to not take myself so seriously, and play a three-chord song some Thursday at Three. 

The beauty of Zoom uke classes, is the mute button. I bet my middle school guitar teacher, Mr. Butts, wished he had a mute button when he shouted his hoarse instructions over the cacophony of hormonal middle schoolers, all hammering out different songs at the same time, seldom in tune. While I’m watching the performances of Three Chord Thursday, I can see in the little Zoom squares, that aside from the color of our hair, the wrinkles, and the probablity that everyone is in tune, a lot things have not changed. 

Now my uke sits in a stand in the living room, where I can grab it easily. There are times that I am doing dishes at 9:30 at night, (past my bedtime,) because I got lost playing the uke. I have found the music of Bernadette (I don’t know her last name) Teaches Music and her rendition of the Jason Maraz song, “I’m Yours.” I googled, ‘Fly Me to The Moon,’ and found an exciting and accessible tutorial by Aldrine Guerrero of the Ukulele Underground. Songs I have never been able to play on the guitar are now within my reach on the ukulele. I asked Mike if this was disturbing his genealogy research and if he wanted me to go in the other room to play. He said no, that he liked the sound of my noodling around. 

Even Mike is singing and whistling more since we turned the music up. He will begin a song, and I finish it, changing the lyrics on the fly. 

“Poodles need to eat,
It is our favorite time of day. 
We love eating treats more than
We-ee like to play.
In other words, we love food. 
In other words, more than you.” 

Yesterday, there was a virtual Ukulele Fest, and when I read that Bernadette Teaches Music was teaching, ‘Moon River,’ I signed up. That song is the bomb for me. It takes me all the way back to the 33RPMs spinning on my parents stereo, and to my mom singing along. My parents loved Henry Mancini. Boy, would they have busted a gut laughing, if I told them I was learning to play that classic on a ukulele. 

The last session of Ukulele Fest was a concert given by the instructors. It was late, for me, and I’d done nothing but play the uku all day long. I almost did the dishes and went to bed instead. Boy, am I glad I stayed parked in front of Zoom. All the performers were terrific, vibrant, fresh and inspiring. It was when Robbie Rittman played, ‘The Nearness of You,’ by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Ned Washington, that my heart fully opened up to that place where breath flows without a hitch.  

When the grands come to visit, we are going to skip the kids songs and go for the classics. We’ll sit around the fire pit singing, ‘Fly Me to The Moon,’ and ‘Hallelujah,’ and whatever else comes to mind. We will let our joyful noise rise up in sparks and zoom round the stars for safekeeping.