A ROCK N ROLL BAND WITH UKES & GUITARS, BASS, DRUMS, FLUTE, VIOLIN, HARMONICA, KEYBOARDS & VOCALS.
BRAIN PLASTICITY
UKULELE COLLECTIVE
Brain Plasticity Ukulele Collective (BPUC) is a rock n roll band with a WHOLE LOTTA UKES - and every other instrument that finds it’s way to our door. BPUC has been making music for over 10 years. Formed, in part, to keep the neurons firing - through the process of making music ‘in real time with real people’. Neurogenesis is the result. Watch the videos:
no good never was GET IT HERE
Waiting for the lights to change GET IT HERE
Learning Curve GET IT HERE
Jimmy Hoffa’s What It Is GET IT HERE
Live@The Ark: 4/30/26
Join Brain Plasticity Ukulele Collective and special guests for an evening in support of Big Brothers Big Sisters. April 30. Tickets available from The Ark. Call The Ark office at (734) 761-1800 during business hours or email info@theark.org for ticketing assistance and questions. ticket link: https://mutotix.umich.edu/6338
ALBUMS
HAPPY LANDING
HAPPY LANDING is the Uke Collective’s 2nd album. GET IT HERE.
It features 14 tracks. 12 original and 2 covers. One of the cover tracks is Syrinx. Listen HERE to the band’s alternative take on this classic flute piece. SYRINX was written by DEBUSSY in 1913 (we love all the modern stuff).
Our interpretation (video below) features Ellie on the flute, but this time, instead of ‘solo’, the flute is accompanied by a textural soundscape and piano crafted and played by Mike Brooks, the Director of the Collective. Get the track HERE.
SYRINX (alt)
STRUM INTO COGNITION
STRUM INTO COGNITION was the Uke Collective’s 1st album. GET IT HERE.
The goal of the album was to get the ukulele players, who had taken up the uke for any number of reasons, including the love of the instrument, to improve cognition (hence the title of the album) and to benefit from the love and laughter that the community engenders - used to working in a recording studio.
For some of the musicians in the Collective, the recording studio and the stage has been a lifelong environment, but for others, not so much. The recording of our first album helped us to get a handle on the recording process - if you’ve been a Doctor, an Engineer, a Psychiatrist, or any of the other many professions that our ukulele players held down in their previous / still present life - you don’t tend to spend too much time in a recording studio.
It fires the neurons. All new environments do. When we recorded STRUM INTO COGNITION, we were a new band, strumming new neural pathways via the firing of new neurons.
The goal of BPUC is to keep us all learning all of the time. Musicians never arrive. The goal is always just out of reach - that’s what makes the growth happens. Stop moving and you die - musically.
The Collective’s rehearsals are always about musical growth and understanding - that’s what makes them both fun and challenging simultaneously.
Watch some uke instruction from the collective director Mike Brooks HERE, as he plays and talks about the uke for UMS.
