Rllink
Well-known member
I met a fellow a few years back who had been a guitar player since the sixties. He also plays the ukulele and the banjo, and I don't know how long he has played them, but he is quite good. But he does not spend a lot of time on the internet, like I do. He learned everything the old way, whatever the old way was before the internet. He still tunes off a pitch pipe, or off his piano, or sometimes he just tunes off whoever he is playing with. I'm quite sure he is self taught. I think that he is one of those people who has been playing a stringed instrument for so long, it is as natural to him as whistling. But most interesting is that I come up with some very basic stuff off the internet and run it by him, and it is like he has never heard of it before. It seems to me that some how he just went to being really good without any of the basics. Or maybe he is so far beyond basics that they are insignificant to him. Or maybe he does understand the basics, but just doesn't know them as basics. Anyway, I talk to him about things and ask him questions, and he just shrugs his shoulders and says something like, "we don't need to analyze it, let's just play it." It is like no one told him he had to know this or that to be proficient. I find that approach very interesting. Maybe there are some old timers here that might want to tell us a little bit about how it was before we had the internet and youtube videos to explain to us the most intricate details of ukulele playing.
Last edited: