While Ken has been a singer, musician, and performer since his teenage years, he has also had a career in teaching and professional development (MS Education in Adult & Organizational Learning from Suffolk University). Recently, Ken has merged these two components to offer workshops on various aspects of music education and performance.
Here are some of the workshops Ken can offer. See the BeaconBeats Music Calendar for the next offering or Contact Ken about having this workshop at your next festival!
Ukulele Off The Page
Have you ever been at a group jam, and no one had any songsheets, and you were lost? This workshop will help ukulele players to use their ears to start to hear chord changes, and make an educated guess out how to survive in a jam. You’ll learn how to understand the three main chords in any key, what characteristics you should listen for, how to communicate with other people in the jam and to figure out which chord they are playing.
Song Selection for Ukulele Leading and Performing
In these days of online ukulele events, more people than ever are stepping up and leading songs online for groups or performing solo. While these might be seen as the same thing, the purpose of either leading others and giving a performance have quite different goals. This workshop will cover both how you can best support other people when you are leading songs, as well as keys for improving the chances that your performance will be as close as possible to your practice sessions.
We will be giving tips and sharing experiences as well as leading and performing for each other. If you’ve tried it and felt like you didn’t do as well as you hoped, this is the workshop for you.
Basic Music Theory for Ukulele Players
Ever wondered what the 7 on a G7 chord meant? Have you heard of the “Circle of 5ths” and not known what it means? Is there a song that is too high for you, but don’t know how to change the chords so that it’s easier for you to sing?
Many people start playing the ukulele as it is a very approachable and easy instrument to start playing songs. A lot of people start from a “string sides up” understanding of music, and start playing with others by being shown where to put your fingers for a C chord and brushing your fingers across the strings. While that’s a great introduction, people usually don’t know why they are putting their fingers in certain places.
This series is to help get a baseline of musical knowledge to start to understand why they are doing certain things and how they go together. The different levels of BMTU are:
- BMTU1: Chord Families – This starts at the basics:
- Scales and Keys
- Intervals vs Chords
- Chords Naming IV-V-I
- Extended Chords (e.g. C6 or G7)
- Circle of 5ths
- Changing Keys of Songs
- BMTU2: Minor Chords – This workshop builds upon BMTU1 and includes:
- Minor Chords
- Relative Minor Chords
- Chord Substitutions
- BMTU3: Changing Keys – This workshop introduces different ways of looking at chord possibilities:
- Chord Inversions
- Diminished Chords
- Augmented Chords
- Key Changes within songs
Performance Coaching for Ukulele Players (PCUP)
I’ve been a performer for most of my life, but for many people in the ukulele community, this might be the first time they’ve gotten the gumption up to actually do anything musical with other people around. As the ukulele community is very welcoming and encouraging of everyone, you might not get the input as to the things that you could do to improve.
This workshop series includes:
- Four (4) 90-minute sessions covering everything from song selection, vocal techniques, types of accompaniments, stage presence, as well as group critiques
- One (1) 30-minute one-on-one session with Ken to review particular needs
- Opportunity to perform a song at a “student” concert