Ukulele(s)

  I’ve never been very good with music. I mean, I do listen to it.  Listening to music has been a very big part of my life. But, I’m talking about, playing music, and understanding it. By the time I left school the only thing I knew about music was F-A-C-E,  Every Good Boy Deserves Favours and  the Doh, Rei, Me song. I often flirted with the idea of learning to play an instrument and I did, at one point, learn to play Amazing Grace (badly) on the harmonica but that was the extent of my ‘talent’ and I soon decided it was too difficult and gave up the harmonica. 

  But just a few short years ago, I heard Joe Brown speaking in an interview. He was talking about an album he had made that consisted of ukulele songs. During that interview he happened to mention that the ukulele is very easy to learn. That kind of struck a chord with me (pun intended), and I decided there and then to get me a ukulele.  I was dead keen and didn’t hang about. Very shortly I was the proud owner of my first ukulele. It cost me forty quid and came with a good quality hard case. I then started looking around for local ukulele tutors. I couldn’t find any. Not one! So I resorted to the internet and, Sheesh! There are loads of them. I would have preferred a local tutor but this would have to do.

  The first lesson I watched promised to teach me a few basic chords and a popular song ‘that everybody knows’. Hmm, it seems the ‘everybody’ he referred to didn’t include me. I’d never heard of a song called Riptide by someone called Vance Joy. Not only had I not heard of it or him but when  I heard it I didn’t particularly like the song. Oh well, there were other tutors…

  …Some weeks later I was making progress. I’d found several Youtube channels that were very good and I’d learned a few basic chords and even managed to play some tunes. But then I hit a block. I came across a chord that I couldn’t play. I physically could not get my fingers to reach the frets and strings that were needed to make the chord. I tried for a while but I  was never gonna be able to make it. I became quite despondent and decided that if I couldn’t make the chords then what was the point? So I gave it up. My ukulele went into the cupboard and there it stayed.

  Until, a while later I was visiting my sister and her husband (Penny & Graham). During the visit I happened to mention my short venture into the ukulele world along with my swift departure. Now, Graham plays guitar. Just as a hobby, but still, he’s pretty good. He plays for his own enjoyment and has done for years. So when I told him I had to give up playing the ukulele because I couldn’t make the chords, he said something that changed my outlook on the whole thing. He said ’If you’re only playing for yourself, it doesn’t matter if you miss a chord out here and there, who’s gonna know?’. 

  Wow! What an eye opener. And, of course, he was right. I could keep playing and when I hit a chord I  couldn’t achieve I’d just strum past it. That advice convinced me to dust off that ukulele and try again. And now, here we are nine years on and I’m still enjoying it. I’ve learned a lot in those years. About ukuleles, about music and about me. 

UKULELES: I’ve  learned that they can be cheap or ridiculously expensive, they come in many sizes and shapes and they each have their own distinctive sound. Oh, and they are very collectable.

MUSIC: I have progressed from Do rei me and Amazing Grace. I still can’t read music but I am now aware of such black arts as, keys; tabs; octaves; flats; sharps; arpeggios; vibratos …. And on and on. It’s a whole new world!

Me: I’ve learned that I’m addicted to this crazy little instrument they call the ukulele. I’ve learned that I can play loads of songs (even without the impossible chords). And, here’s the big one - I’ve learned that I can sing, kinda. Oh, and just recently, I’ve learned that I can write songs, also kinda.

  That then, is a little potted picture of my ukulele journey so far. I’ve skimmed the surface but it doesn’t tell the whole story, not by a long chalk… 

  … As I said, there were so many tutors to choose from and I flitted betwixt and between them, learning as I went. I soon learned a few basic chords, C F and G being the easiest to pick up. And here was my first surprise - with just those three chords I could play hundreds, if not thousands of songs! Some of the most popular songs consist of just those three chords. So even if I was a little slow and my fretting was a bit messy to start with I could at least play something. Getting that first song under my belt was a real confidence booster I can tell you. I can’t actually recall the first song I learned which surprises me as I can remember, vividly, how good I felt, knowing that I could play a whole song. 

   One of the tasks I had to learn in order to play a song, was how to read a tablature. A tab is simply the lyrics to a song but with the chords inserted so the player knows when to change chord. The thing is with tabs though, is that they don’t show you the tune, just the words and the chord changes. If you don’t know the tune you would find it hard to play just by reading a tab. You’d need sheet music for that. I’m lucky because although I can’t read sheet music I do know a vast selection of songs. All my family were and are music lovers going back to my mum  and dad and even my nan who lived with us back in the day. Also, I’m the youngest of five siblings each with our own tastes in music, so I have a very wide range of songs rattling around in my head from as far back as the fifties and through to today.

  While I was learning tabs and chords I also learned that there were  different sizes of ukulele out there. This led me to buy another,… and another  … and another… well you get the gist. I won’t go into the whys and wherefores but I will say that at present I have fifteen ukuleles to my name. That is a whole nother entry right there as it also includes amplifiers, mics, a mixing desk, and on, and on…

  My sister has also taken up the ukulele now, and so has my brother, Tony. So when we get together a few times a year we play together. We've leared a lot of songs and Penny's husband, Graham joins us too, sometimes on the guitar and sometimes on the ukulele. And in our most recent sessions Tony has begun playing bass. My sister and I have played in a couple of pubs and open mic sessions in Norfolk (Graham and Tony choosing to opt out), and we also play at our family bash that's held annually in the garden of my sister's house. When we play there, we call ourselves the Strumbums. The family bash will get its own entry at a later date, I'm sure. but I've babbled enough for now.

  You know, I still haven’t mastered that awkward chord that scuppered my playing all those years ago, in fact, I've found a few more challenging chords along the way. But I don’t mind now. There are loads of chords I can’t play, but there are also plenty that I can. I now have a catalogue of around five hundred songs and can play most of them to some degree or another. Some of them have tough chords and fast chord changes and I struggle with them but I leave them in my collection because I know I’m learning all the time and, who knows, I might just get those chords in the end. 

   All for now then.

  B. x