Proposal
Get together with folks who are learning to play an instrument and once a month play together in a non-threatening, light hearted environment.
The idea
Provide a place where people, who are learning to play musical instruments, can play together and learn to play music in a group. This will support learning the instrument by keeping things interesting and enjoyable and by providing a monthly target. It will give purpose to practicing.
The details
When & where
Meet once a month on the second Thursday from 3:00 to 4:00. At the Davis Senior Center Lounge?
Instruments
All instruments are welcome from ukulele, mandolin, guitar, violin, drums, keyboard to tuba, sax, clarinet, flute, voice, kazoo, harmonica. Nearly anything.
Skill level
There are no skill level requirements just a desire to learn, improve, and have fun.
Songs & genres
Pretty much all genrees. The Great American Songbook, jazz, folk, rock, Irish, classical, etc. There are thousands of song we can play of the nearly 1 billion songs written. I have a partial, tentative list we can start from. See: Possible Songs below.
How we’ll do it
We‘ll select 10 or 12 songs to learn and play two, three of them each meeting. The idea is to get good at playing the songs so that making music is fun and playing together is easy. This is not a serious endeavor. We want to have fun making music together. We can start a new song each meeting or whenever we feel like we need something new. Eventually we will have a repertoire that we can play anytime (alone or together) with little effort.
Possible songs
Actual choices to be made by the group.
“As Time Goes By”
“Annie's Song”
“Country Roads”
“Bye, Bye Blackbird”
“Wild Mountain Thyme”
“Sway (Qien Sera)”
“Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
“Summertime”
“The Water Is Wide”
“Out of Nowhere”
“Misty”
“Autumn Leaves”
“Europa”
“Blue Moon”
“Tenderly”
“Scarborough Faire”
What’s next?
- Announce
- Press release to Davis Enterprise
- Contact friends who play instruments
- Article in NextDoor
- Flyers
- Before the first meeting contact all interested folks
- Write & distribute a “How to” for new members”
- Ask for songs they want to play
- Establish an email group or Gmail group so we can all talk to each other
