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I bought a ukulele exactly three months ago today, and now that I’ve been noodling around with it for a bit, I thought I’d let you see how far I’ve gotten. (Though if you watch the video below, perhaps you’ll instead think of it as how far I haven’t gotten.)
I’ve been tempted by the uke for awhile now, and boingboing has been goosing me along, first with its write-up of Sophie Madeleine’s project to record 30 uke songs in 30 days, and then with its review of the extremely tempting Firefly banjolele. But what finally pushed me over the edge and made decide that yes, I must have one, was Amanda Palmer’s performance of “The Ukulele Anthem” at Occupy Boston. And so, when those Black Friday sales rolled around, I jumped, and bought a Mitchell MU-70 concert ukulele.
Surprisingly, when I asked the sales guy which books I should pick up to teach myself the ukulele, he shook his head and simply said, “YouTube.” And amazingly, there do seem to be tens of thousands of videos online from which you can learn almost any song you wish. And so that’s what I did, tracking down songs that spoke to me and clumsily following along with those YouTube teachers to learn some basic chords. But I soon realized I needed a kick in the pants in the form of someone who could critique my progress, and so I found a local teacher from whom I’ve taken four lessons so far.
Since he has to suffer, and my wife has to suffer, I figure it’s time you did some suffering, too. So here’s a sample of how I’ve been entertaining myself these days.
And so, with great trepidation, welcome to the “Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”
Be gentle.
You’re making me dizzy with semantics here. Are you really saying that someone singing while playing a musical instrument ISN’T playing a musical instrument after all? So Peter Seeger DOESN’T play the banjo, Bob Dylan DOESN’T play the guitar and so on? Most would disagree on your parsing of the terminology. Using the word “playing” to refer only to performances with no vocals feels like a usage few would recognize, at least IMHO.
It’s interesting you should say I’m singing louder than I’m playing, because to my ears, the ukulele seems waaaay too loud compared to my voice, so much so I was thinking a separate microphone might be needed to balance things out. I’m hopeful my singing will improve as I go on, because I feel my voice immediately deteriorates as soon as I pick up the uke, due to split concentration. It’s like trying to sing while patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. Fingers crossed it improves as time goes on.
Hey, keep practicing.
Sorry you don’t get my parsing. Maybe I’m just getting to technical. Accompaniment is playing, just a particular form of playing .
Well I love it! Sometimes the sound goes a little wonky, but I enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing it!
James
it’s not bad, really! This falls into the pleasant surprise category.
I think it is necessary to point out that you are *not* playing a ukulele in this video. You are singing a song while trying to accompany yourself with a ukulele. Since you are singing louder then you are playing it’s hard to tell much about how you are playing. To me this shows that, at least subconsciously, you care more about the words then the music. There were no obvious gaffs in the playing. I think you weren’t in tune with the singing though.
Which brings me to — I would think that singing would hold your attention more then playing. After all, people sing words, they don’t strum words. I would encourage you to take, at least a few, singing lessons. It is one of my huge, screaming, panting and occasionally drooling pet peeves that waaaaaayyyyyy to many people think that you need to learn to play a musical instrument but you are born knowing how to sing. As you prove, a few months doodling on an instrument and you can really learn to play something. Singing is no harder.
Keep up the good work!