If you know me, you know I like to incorporate French music into my classes as often as I can. One of my current obsessions has been collecting and recording songs from my grandmother, that she always sang to us. I hope to have a songbook and accompanying recordings ready for her 100th birthday coming up in June. Unfortunately, I’m not certain the party will actually be happening now with her residence being on lockdown at this time. Bless everyone who is looking after our elders right now and guarding them from this pandemic. I recorded this on Easter Sunday with she and Elaine and Claire on my mind as well as everyone else who is currently isolated from their loved ones in nursing and assisted living homes.

“Il y a longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.” means: I have loved you for so long, never will I forget you.

Play along with this traditional French folk melody that uses notes only from the C major Pentatonic scale. As an added challenge, try accompanying with C & G7 chords at the 3rd fret instead of the first position chords in the video. Download sheet music options here and sing along, en français.  Nana Mouskouri recorded a version with a different set of lyrics in 1973. 

I had just gotten into a great groove. I had a few private students coming for lessons regularly and I even got to use a perfect meeting space in our condo for my small group. I was also travelling once a week to a private home to teach a wonderful group of women. I had been really busy and inspired after starting to teach ukulele again this past winter. Until the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in North America, that is. Like all teachers, our in-person lessons and music making came to an abrupt end about a month ago.

I can’t believe almost a month has gone by. At first it was so stressful and living with 2 people who travel for a living means I will have to self-isolate indefinitely. We’re still taking extra care not to leave except for food every couple of weeks. But like everyone else, despite job insecurity and the huge changes in our daily lives, life in general keeps coming at us, and even death in our own family and others. This has awakened a heightened sense of the fragility of everything around us. But also the importance of making time for the things you love to do, every day, like an Instagram workout or a remote yoga session. But the saving grace has really been music, for me. For others around me, it’s online video games with family or diving into crafts and hobbies and that’s also great. I’m really thankful for a few people who I can continue to connect with creatively to play, arrange and share music.

By now I’ve gotten all of my students (and family!) using conference platforms like Zoom and Skype and FaceTime and even Snapchat! We’ve managed to connect somewhat and I’ve enjoyed seeing their faces and playing for them and with them, taking questions and teaching them a little. One thing that is really helping is I’ve also started creating some play-along videos for them to practice with.

Also seemed like a good time to revive the teaching blog, so here we go…

Originally intended as a play-along for my Book 3 students, this solo arrangement of Streets of Laredo is from James Hill’s The Ukulele Way, Book 3, Lesson 5, which is also the lesson of the month over at Uketropolis for April 2020.

Creating and curating pre-recorded lesson material is actually James’ advice for dealing with the new reality that we’ve been thrust into and avoiding teacher burnout so that’s exactly what I’ll try and keep doing then.

Here are two more play along videos with accompanying arrangements I created for students during the March madness of 2020. I guess this is the new teaching format for now. I’ll try and keep updating the blog too, if that helps spread the joy of music a little.