Every year I try to select songs to fit the annual occasions, such as love songs for Valentine’s, Irish songs for St Patrick’s, nature songs for Earth Day, etc. In my deep dive Beatles songs for my ukulele classes in Zoom, it makes sense to select love songs for the second course in this series of pluck, strum, and riffs, a.k.a. authentic replication.
The Beatles songs for ukulele is a new series of classes in Zoom. Ukulele song sheets usually capture only the chords, in other words, the harmonic component with strum accompaniment. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear interesting introductions, repetitive melodic riffs, repeating bass line, ostinati, and other musical elements.
In the first 7-week Beatles class (Autumn 2021), I first sent out a pre-course two-page handout riffs as a guessing game. What’s the title of the song? Which album did it come from? Which year was it released? No one got all 13 riffs. The purpose was not to gauge how well everyone knew the Beatles songs but the ukulele playing skill level I’d aim for my arrangements. The songs for this first Beatles class included Eight Days a Week, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da*, Imagine*, In My Life*, and Here Comes the Sun*. (Asterisked songs are student requests.)
For the second Beatles online course in Zoom, we will choose from the following list of love songs.
- All My Loving
- And I Love Her
- From Me to You
- Here, There, and Everywhere
- I Want to Hold Your Hand
- I Will
- I’ve Just Seen a Face
- If I Fell
- Love Me Do
- PS I Love You
- Real Love
- Something
- The Long and Winding Road
As with the first Beatles offering, registered participants get to choose and request songs. In that regard, why not a group piano class for the same songs? Here’s Imagine for Easy Piano, four different skill levels.