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I’ve been asked to play at a one year olds birthday party.
Any good song recommendations?
Been learning the gorgeous ‘You are my sunshine’ in the lessons here. And the baby loves Uptown Girl 😅 so getting that down too!
But I get a little bit of stage fright when playing in front of an audience of people (particularly with the more finger-style pieces we love here) and sadly it won’t just be babies but their parents watching too. So I’ll probably need to go more for strumming and singalong pieces. But my singing is ropey 😅😅😅
So in short I need:
– Recommendations for good songs for a baby’s birthday party
– advice on minor stage fright with fingerstyle (is it a case of practice til you can’t get it wrong/can quickly bounce from any flubs?)Sounds fun 🙂 Songs/Singing I can’t help you with but here is what helped me with stage fright.
1. Record yourself with the view to posting it. This definitely helps build confidence and helps with playing under pressure.
2. Play more when people are around. This may sound silly but if people are at my home friends/cleaner/builders just play. I don’t mean sit them down and make them listen. But just grab your Uke and play along in the background…
3. This really helped me and I think I got this from here.. Change the way you think about your performance. You’re not there to be judged for greatness/mistakes but to bring beautiful songs to life 🙂 Enjoy the performance, bring the songs to life get lost in the music, relax.
4. Learn music theory. If you asked me to play a song which someone else wrote/tabbed out I’m going to make a mistake. However, I can play you 20 minutes of Justin Biebers “Peaches” on my loop pedal, with percussion , bass, melody, chords without making a mistake.. the only reason I can do this is because I know it’s in C major and I’m improvising a lot of the melody (based on the C Major Scale) . You can’t make a mistake if it’s improvised.
Not sure this is helpful but that’s what works for me 🙂
Great advice, @surferjay!
@henri0 – my kids loved Caspar Babypants when they were little (he’s Chris Ballew, former lead singer for Presidents of the United States of America). He has some awesome, catchy tunes, including a couple of birthday ones:Light It Up (My personal favourite – I think it would sound great on a uke!):
Birthday (Not familiar with this one):
Best part is, all the chords/lyrics are on his website! His music/CDs would make a great gift. We owned his first 6 albums (2009-2012) and loved them all.
No advice on live performances — I get nervous, clammy, and make plenty of mistakes no matter how much I’ve practiced. But surferjay’s #3 is quite good: think about bringing fun and joy to the gathering. It’s the thought that counts! 🙂
Good luck!
~NathalieC —————–G
Happy Birthday to you.G——————-C
Happy Birthday to you.C——————–F (one strum for every syllable of name)
Happy Birthday to (name).C—————G—C
Happy Birthday to you.All down strums for every word except “Happy” where you do a down-up strum on the two syllables of “Happy”
For Rickey Mike:
Not sure this is the place to post but just want to say thank you, again, for “We’ll Meet Again” you sang for me when my husband passed. Next week will be three years. I still listen to your gift often & appreciate your kindness.
Gratefully,
Anne GodfreyHey thanks veryone who gave advice here, really appreciate this. I have a couple months still before baby’s big day!
I’ve just started doing some spoken word live performance again and remembered just how fun it is to be on stage!
@rickeymike I think I would have forgotten about Happy Birthday if you didn’t list it here 😅 will get on that!!
@nthibode Caspar Babypants is awesome 😎 used to love a bit of Presidents of the USA back in the day. So cool the chord charts available on the site. I’m going to accept I’ll get nervous and make mistakes I think.
@surferjay this advice really helps. I used to busk and I’m ok worh people passing by but a bit overwhelmed with a fixed audience. Will be taking on the music theory advice as know its limiting me not pushing my knowledge. I think watching others perform too helps. Have really enjoyed watching some of your YouTube live performance recordings…they are so strong.
@annefgodfrey it’s a perfect place to post about that performance. Sounds really beautiful and would love to hear @rickeymike playing his We’ll Meet Again take in memory of your husband. Sending best wishes to you for the third year since his passing
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