Majlis Anugerah Latihan Personnel | u3kulele

After practicing for few weeks, we finally had a chance to perform at the Majlis Anugerah Latihan Personnel which was organized by PPD Petaling Perdana. The award giving ceremony was held in our beloved hall, Dewan Baiduri, SK Jalan U3. 

The ceremony was attended by large numbers of headmasters and principals coming from various schools within the Petaling Perdana district. It somehow gave me pressure due to the crowds were no ordinary person. If we messed up the performance it somehow tarnished our school's pride in front of other school's delegates. But in the end, my worries faded when these kids nailed their performance especially during the second song, Tanya Sama Itu Hud-Hud (M. Nasir). The slight problem was during the first song where they tend to slow down the tempo which made the singers struggle with their breath and pitch. Still, we had received good feedbacks from the audience and most importantly, our headmistress, Pn Hajah Nafisah enjoyed the performance.

It was actually the third times that the kids were performing, and this time they had given a very exceptional performance compared to previous two performances. Most probably due to enough practice session that these kids managed to give all their best. Frankly speaking, I was quite amazed to see their quick ability in learning different chords for different songs. 

Our next plan is to perform at Pn Rogiah's retirement party with a special song personally chosen by her. Hopefully, they will do tremendously better in other coming performances. InsyaAllah. | ͰM

Farewell The Pioneers...

It is time for me to say goodbye to The Pioneers - the nickname that I gave to nine young lads from year 6 who founded the u3kulele group. The group was founded just around 2 months ago, and we were having such a great time practicing and learning new songs and styles. There were so many memories made ever since. It's quite sad to say goodbye so very soon.

But still, as the saying goes, our lives wonder but the memories remain. Working with this boys gave me thousand of memories that will forever cherish in my heart. This would be the sweetest memory for this 2016 and hope that the incoming year of 2017 would bring even sweeter memories. InsyaAllah. 

I wish these boys the very best in their future endeavours. May they have great memories and experiences for their secondary school life. It is time to say goodbye boys. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 😊 | MHM

The Pioneers - The Chapters End

U3kulele @unitar

Today we had an opportunity to perform at Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (Unitar) for the kindergarten graduation day. We were performing due to an invitation by the founder of the kindergarten, Puan Suzi. 

Frankly speaking I had mixed emotions where at first, I was quite proud and happy as they were performing for an invitation, out of the school. But at the same time I was quite sad to realize that it was their last ever performance as a U3kulele group. OMG this is supersad man! 😔

Anyway, the boys really made it though their performance did not as good as their 2nd performance at school. The only mistake was that they played the songs in slow tempo, which in turn makes the performance a bit dull. Overall they had done a good job. | MHM

Acoustic Nasheed @MAC

Today, the u3kulele group joined by school's nasheed team had successfully performed an acoustic nasheed, first ever kind of performance in our school or perhaps first ever in primary school 😋. 

The idea of combining nasheed and ukelele came during the practicing session where some of u3kulele boys were nasheed group members, like Haziq and Kuchai. The problem happened when both team had the same practice time. U3kulele need to practice for Majlis Anugerah Kokurikulum and nasheed team need to practice as well for Majlis Anugerah Cemerlang which happened to be on the next 2 weeks.

So, instead of causing more trouble I suggested why not these u3kulele boys together with the nasheed team members perform an acoustic nasheed. I volunteerly offered to train these kids. Ustazah Zulaiha, the nasheed teacher agreed and she helped me a lot for the nasheed performance, especially in preparing the costumes for these boys.

Ustazah Zulaiha suggested the Ya Badrotim song and I suggested the evergreen song of Hukum Tuhan, made popular by Al-Mizan group, for the second song. It was hard for me to find the uke chord for these two songs, so instead I made up the chord myself. The boys were talented, Alhamdulillah, so they were able to grab and played well withuin the period of two weeks. 

Being a nasheed lover myself, my intuition of making these u3kulele boys performed some nasheed songs was to ensure that these boys appreciate some islamic songs which will in turn nurture their hearts and soul. These kind of songs also will somehow reminds them of Allah SWT, the Prophet SAW and their religion. This also at the same time give message to others that these kids were not just able to play some usual songs but rather they could play some nasheeds as well. 

Alhamdulillah, everything went fine and these boys nailed it! I had received some good comments from others as well. The boys even said that our ustazs and ustazahs were enjoing the performance.  So now, everybody is happy. I am so glad that they were able to perform the nasheed songs. May this small act of da'wa brings goodness to others and these boys as well. InsyaAllah 😊 | MHM

Ya Badrotim

Hukum Tuhan

U3kulele's First Performance

Today my U3kulele group had an opportunity to showcase their talent by performing for their very first time ever. The performance was made in conjunction of Majlis Anugerah Kokurikulum. They did the cover of Count on Me, which is made popular by Bruno Mars and the evergreen song of Tanya Sama Itu Hud-Hud.

The young gentlemen of U3kulele

We got some overwhelming feedback from the teachers, parents, and most importantly our Mdm. Headmistress had given two thumbs up to our performance. To my surprise, one of the parents came and approached me soon after we had finished our performance. They were interested in inviting the team to make a performance for a preschool graduation day in Unitar, on 27th November. I was like "Wow, this is your first job guys!". The boys were extremely excited. So I told them that I was so delighted by the invitation and asked the parent to seek permission from our Mdm Headmistress. Hope that she will let us go. 

U3kulele stage crew

As for the performance, there are still many rooms for improvement. I hope that we can do our best for the upcoming event. InsyaAllah.

Establishing The U3kulele Group

It all started when I see this video of talented young gentlemen. The song, the sounds of ukulele, their voice, their style were all perfect. Then I started to talk to myself, Okay, I am going to do this with my students. But firstly I must have a ukulele and start learning to play it myself.

Then just months away before UPSR, I told one of my students. I wish that I can do this in this school. He then replied, let's do this. Jokingly I said, "Okey, then. You should buy a ukulele first of all." On the coming Monday, he came to see me with a ukulele in his hand, saying,"Mr. Hafiz, I bought this last weekend." OMG! I did not think that he take my words seriously. 

The next day I went searching all around Subang Jaya and The Curve, just to find that the ukulele needed was sold out. It was then I realized that there was a ukulele shop in One Utama. The name of the shop is SHAKA. My plan of buying RM100 something priced of ukulele failed when I ended up buying RM300 something ukulele.

From the day, I practiced playing ukulele on my own with the help of Youtube videos like Ukulele Teacher. Besides that, my colleague, Cikgu Saiful also showed my on how to have a good strumming pattern and teaching me the importance of knowing the basic chords like C, Em, Am, F and G. 

Back at school, the ukulele was becoming hot issues among the students as they kept on seeing their seniors bringing around the bag of ukulele every day. Some of them told me that they were going to save their Raya money just to buy the ukulele. Then, to my surprise, four boys started to buy the ukuleles, either from the shop or through Lazada. 

I had a meet up with these boys, teaching them the basic chord that they need to memorize Then, I gave them the chord of Count on Me and Tanya Sama Itu Hud-Hud. Since the first day of practicing, now after one week, they had made a lot of improvement. They will be having their first ever performance in coming Majlis Anugerah Kokurikulum. I really hoped that they will do their best.