Different strokes for different folks. What got me started on the ukulele may not work for you. Let me share what got me started. And let’s figure out how to get you started.
The person who got me started on the ukulele told me that he could get one for me at a very good price. He also said that I should get a very good instrument. What he said mattered a lot because I’ve seen him perform on ukulele, guitar, piano, and vocals. He was not anybody.
He was surprised that I had not picked up a ukulele. I had many reasons not to.
That was ten years ago.
That Christmas in 2015, I bought my first ukulele. Daniel Ho also threw in ukulele books that he had written and published. He included a ukulele strap in the package he sent by Fedex.
Upon learning that I was buying a high end instrument, my colleague at the college said, “If you can learn the three most important chords, then you can enroll in my intermediate ukulele course in January.”
At the same time, one of my students who was leaving the island gave me a ukulele stand he had made out of tropical hardwood.
My other colleague was teaching an online course called “History of Hawaiian Music.” I decided to take that course, together with another online course on music therapy, and the intermediate ukulele course. I didn’t have to pay for these three semester-long (16-week) courses, for I was teaching in the music department.
All this happened in the last six months on the island.
I had resisted the ukulele for five and a half years. My next door neighbor built ukuleles in his garage. The Hawaiian ukulele festival took place every year, near where I lived and worked. It was free to participate.
There was a ukulele store at the end of my street. Not any music store, but one dedicated to selling only ukuleles. I visited it once, just before I left Maui.
Why did I resist? Why was I not interested in learning when I had so many opportunities?
If someone had told me that the ukulele was not like any other musical instrument that I had played and that it would change the way I experience music, I would have listened.
Instead, I thought the ukulele was just another instrument that I’d learn and get frustrated with, because I’d be able to read the notes but not produce the sound I wanted. I had gone down that road with the violin, harp, saxophone, tuba, Chinese flute, ….. Sure it had helped me compose for those instruments, but I knew the drill. It was a solitary one. And it was frustrating to give up after investing in the learning and practice.
What made me continue to play the ukulele was participating in jam sessions. Through word of mouth, I learned of a weekly Hawaiian song session in North Kihei (on Maui). Even as a beginner, I could participate and play the three chords I knew with others while barefooted hula dancers gestured to the lyrics.
Once I left Maui, I visited ukulele jam sessions in Boston, London and Amsterdam. These sessions opened my eyes to songs I had never heard of before. They also gave me access to communities and an ease of being with strangers like long-time friends.
It was definitely a different way to experience music.
It was a paradox on many levels.
It’s the only instrument I practiced by playing with others. All other instruments I had to study and practice by myself.
It didn’t take long to be able to play with others. It was easy. Almost too easy to immediately be able to accompany myself and explore all those songs I learned as a child and in my teens. And learn new songs, too.
Two years after I embraced the ukulele in my travels, I wrote about the paradox in my master’s thesis on the ukulele.
The ukulele is a social instrument. For those who already play another instrument, picking up the ukulele is even easier.
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