UKULELE SOUP
Website:http://ukulelesoup.co.uk/
S.O.U.P. ukulele club has been based in Enfield Town, north London since 2010. We meet every other Tuesday from 20:00-22:00 at St Andrew’s Parish Centre, 36 Silver Street, Enfield. EN1 3EG.
The basis of the club is simple :
* Membership : There’s nothing formal – just turn up with your uke and pay the modest £3 subs towards the hire of the room.
* Beginners – Please note : while you are welcome to come along (after all we all had to start somewhere), to get the best enjoyment from the sessions you need to be a fairly confident player – chord knowledge, basic strumming rhythms and probably most importantly the ability to manage a tune and its chord changes at a confident speed.
That doesn’t mean you need to know lots of songs but without these basic skills you may feel out of your depth and struggle. This is not a class.
* What we do : We often have theme evenings, e.g. a Beatles evening or songs with ‘Blue’ in the title etc. The idea is to just stretch our imagination when looking for new songs to try out together. Some songs work, some don’t! Each session always includes a few songs from our own repertoire to keep them fresh for any performances coming up. Sometimes members perform a solo they’ve been working on – don’t panic, this isn’t obligatory, but it’s amazing what it does to your confidence when you do have a go.
* Our members : Have a wide range of ukulele knowledge and can give tips on which ukulele to buy, repairs, tuners, useful websites etc. We all approach the ukulele from a slightly different angle. We are happy to support newer players but don’t expect too much hand-holding during the sessions as we’re all there to play.
Performances
We also often get asked to appear at local events and play for between 30 minutes and 2 hrs. We do ask that you are a reasonably confident player before you join us in a performance as the stage can get rather crowded. You certainly don’t have to be perfect though – part of the fun is making mistakes and having a laugh about it while part of the enjoyment is performing as well as you can.
There is no pressure to perform and it’s fine to attend SOUP meetings without joining any SOUP performances. However, it’s a lot of fun and we meet some lovely people out there.