Avondale library offers free monthly ukulele lessons

On the first Saturday of each month, the Avondale branch of the Birmingham Public Library hosts a free Ukulele 101 lesson for all ages, taught by Eve Parker, an outreach storyteller and decades-long employee at the Avondale branch.

Recently, Parker said, a library patron learned the ukulele at one of her 45-minute lessons and proceeded to play a Beatles song at his wedding the next week. The instrument is easy to learn, she said, and she loves seeing people use it in their lives afterwards.

“I consider it to be the gateway instrument. It only has four strings; the cords are easy. It’s small, so it’s accessible to children, but it’s also really portable, so it’s really fun for adults,” she said. 

On Jan. 5, at 9:30 a.m., Parker will teach her first lesson of the new year. 

She originally proposed the idea to the library because of how much kids loved it when she used the ukulele during story time. She said a couple of years ago, Homewood Musical Instruments donated 13 ukuleles, 12 of which they still use, to the library so the community would be able to check out and rent them. She first started teaching the classes after the donation, she said, and they  also performed a flash mob at Pepper Place “to kick it off, which was great.”

Although the class is open to all ages, it is recommended the children be at least 6 or 7 years old in order to participate. She said the lesson she teaches is an introductory lesson from a booklet she created to cover the basics on how to play some simple songs and read a chord chart. With a little direction and practice, she said, students can play almost all types of music.

“You can play jazz .You can play classical. You can play folk, rock, just about anything depending on how into it you want to get,” Parker said.

Some people attend more than one month to make sure they fully learned the material, while others only come once, she said. Anywhere from only a few people to about a dozen come for each lesson. 

“It’s a lot of information to process. They come, and they take the lesson and then they get home and they practice, and they come back, and do it again just because its fun. It’s laidback,” she said

Parker said to make sure to register for the class beforehand and indicate if they will need to check out a ukulele. Each instrument can be checked out for three weeks with a library card.

Register online at bplonline.org.