Where do they go?

One thing that I am interested in is how many people who start out playing the ukulele stick with it. How many stay with it a month, two months, a year, two years? A neighbor got inspired to play the ukulele, ran out and bought one right away, then played it for all of two weeks before she lost interest in it. I gave my sister-in-law a Waterman because she wanted to play the ukulele and I don't think that she ever picked it up after she got it home. Her daughter got all excited about learning to play it this summer. That lasted for about three or four day, then she found other things that she wanted to do this summer. I would have to say that everyone who I have introduced to the ukulele has quit. So kudos to everyone here who has stayed with it. I suppose that is why we are all still here.

Anyway, on the same note, whenever a tread gets resurrected from the beginner forum or uke talk, and I do not recognize the name of the OP, I go back and see when was the last time they posted anything. More often than not, they post for a month or two and then they are gone. I wonder where they go? Do they lose interest in the ukulele and quit? Do they just lose interest in UU but continue to play their ukuleles? Are they just passing through and are they still on their journey? Are they still here, lurking and reading, just not participating? I just wonder about it. I'm actually surprised that I'm still playing it.

Interesting and good idea for a thread Rollie!

I dunno what happens with the drive-by forum users - maybe they get distracted by something shiny and are pulled away from here?

As far as the short-lived hands-on interest, I think with kids, everything is variable when they are young, and tenacity might be a quality that they do not yet possess...whereas with adults, I could speculate wildly, but I think we just have SO MANY distractions, that it's a miracle any of us are able to make a habit of anything at all past a certain age (I'll be 49 next yr if that means anything)...

I stick with it because I've played guitar in one form or other, nearly my whole life since I've been 7 yrs old, and then started ukulele in 2013, and these fretted intruments have been my therapy and my touchstone that have kept me relatively sane, especially lately, even if only to keep me inside the eye of the storm while the chaos around me spirals out of control...

What I often wonder and am dismayed about, is that when I started here on UU, there were already some 'old-timers' in terms of being on UU for years before me, and in 4 yrs, many of them are no longer posting here nor making YT videos...likely some of them as 'elders' have moved on to the Rainbow Road, but what of those that are still ticking?

Where are they? Why are they no longer active? A quandry indeed.

Well, the ukulele did become fashionable for a while - but I think most just don't participate on the forum once they have learned how to play it.

I have no problem with that, they are free to do what they like.

Myself, my interest in my harmonicas over whelmed my uke interest, & I've been away mostly learning to play them just these last few months, but I'm still around in the forum, though I haven't participated in the Seasons as much as I was doing, hopefully I can do both once I'm comfortable with my harmonicas.

I guess that over a lifetime I have started any number of things only to find out that I wasn't really as interested in them as I thought that I would be. Or it leads to something else. That's why I say that I'm surprised that I've kept up with the ukulele for as long as I have. I mean, I'm not blaming anyone for moving on to something else. But I agree with Booli, when I first came here there were some big time posters who had been at it for a long time, and several of them have disappeared. But with them, I figure that they just out grew us? I know that there is not way to even determine a statistic for the number of beginners who don't get past the beginner phase before they give it up?

Almost 6 years now, since I got my first uke and 5 years in a club. The club environment really got me into playing, just by jamming with the group. Now, jamming once a week with my original Sun City Ukulele Club and playing my U-bass once a week with another casual group. Can't imagine quitting...

BTW, welcome back Booli! Where have you been?

The beautiful wife and I decided to try ukuleles about 5 1/2 yrs ago when we gave up on guitar. Not only have we stuck with it, our frequent "ukulele happy hour" is the highlight of many of our days. The old familiar songs and a frosty malted beverage or two make for many smiles and a brief respite from the many challenges of the " golden years". I think this time spent with our ukes does alot more for our health than all the Rx drug that our Doctors prescribe.

I can respond based on my own personal experience.

I started coming here to find used ukes. After a bit, I came across the Seasons, and spent a couple of years making videos every week. During that time, I came to know some of the Seasonistas personally, which enhanced my interactions here.

After maybe 3 years, the Seasons weren't doing it for me any more. They mainly got me good at getting a video out of a song in a couple of days. I felt like I had that down and wanted to do more, so I curtailed my participation there.

I still check in occasionally, but, like so many other things, it is sometimes surprising how easy it is to give up something. A couple of decades ago, I was an extremely dedicated baseball fan. My friends at the time all knew this and assumed it would never changed. It did. My team got lousy, the game deteriorated (in my mind), I had less free time, and now I could not even tell you what place my longtime team is.

It does take a bit of a commitment to participate here, and there are any number of things that drive people away. So people cycle in and out. BTW, I asked a similar question in a thread about four years ago, so this is nothing more than a cycle.

And Booli, "relatively sane"? It's all in the eyes of the beholder now, isn't it? :drool: Seriously, good to see you here again.

I have my one and only ukulele student that I talk about here on occasion. Her mother asked me how many hours a week, or how many minutes a day, she should be practicing. I told her that if she is practicing to the hands on a clock, maybe she isn't as interested in playing the ukulele as we are in making her play the ukulele. Perhaps we should just see if she will pick it up and play it on her own. She has been at it for three months now, but I think mom and dad are pushing her a lot.

greenie44 said:

I can respond based on my own personal experience.

I started coming here to find used ukes. After a bit, I came across the Seasons, and spent a couple of years making videos every week. During that time, I came to know some of the Seasonistas personally, which enhanced my interactions here.

After maybe 3 years, the Seasons weren't doing it for me any more. They mainly got me good at getting a video out of a song in a couple of days. I felt like I had that down and wanted to do more, so I curtailed my participation there.

I still check in occasionally, but, like so many other things, it is sometimes surprising how easy it is to give up something. A couple of decades ago, I was an extremely dedicated baseball fan. My friends at the time all knew this and assumed it would never changed. It did. My team got lousy, the game deteriorated (in my mind), I had less free time, and now I could not even tell you what place my longtime team is.

It does take a bit of a commitment to participate here, and there are any number of things that drive people away. So people cycle in and out. BTW, I asked a similar question in a thread about four years ago, so this is nothing more than a cycle.
.

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Everything cycles through. There are only so many questions to ask, and only so many topic to discuss. I had a year or so that I was the same as you with football. I think that it is just human nature to get tired of something and move on. My friend got interested in woodworking thirty years ago. He is still woodworking. It is his life and the only thing he talks about. He is stuck in woodworking and can't seem to escape. He is anomaly. But I used to only have time for one thing. The rest of the time I was working and raising kids. Now I'm retired and I have plenty of time, so I share my time with with various other activities. Maybe that is why I haven't lost interest.

I am told some "old timers" have moved to Facebook

I've been playing the uke for 5+ years and just bought a new uke so my plans are to stick with it. I still really enjoy playing it and there still things I want to do and learn on the ukulele. I'd like to learn finger- picking. I'd like make videos and join in on the seasons. I think it might be fun to be part of a ukulele group though my one time participating in one was a mixed bag. My playing time waxes and wanes from 2-3 times a month on the low end to almost daily on the high end.

Participation or non-participation here could be due to almost anything and may or may not reflect on if or how often someone plays their uke. I used to be an active participant on a jazz forum for several years which corresponded with the many years I was collecting jazz CDs. After many years, I amassed over 1000 jazz CDs and it got to the point (finally!) that I wasn't really interested in acquiring any more. I had more than I could listen to and if I discovered someone new or new to me, I almost certainly already had many CDs of the same or very similar music. I still participated in the forum and listened to jazz but I wasn't really buying CDs any more. After a while, the forum became a lot of samey-ness. The same topics would keep rolling around, older members would leave, some always seemed to be a regular source of irritation and the influx of new members would inevitably bring in the same kind of questions without fail. My leaving the forum was a combination of boredom with the same old thing again and again and a loss of burning passion when I reached a saturation point. I wasn't getting much out of it any more and I didn't have a lot of desire for seeking out opportunities and imparting the wisdom I had acquired on a regular basis so my participation waned and eventually died out. There are probably many people out there who experience something similar with the ukulele.

Rllink said:

One thing that I am interested in is how many people who start out playing the ukulele stick with it. How many stay with it a month, two months, a year, two years? A neighbor got inspired to play the ukulele, ran out and bought one right away, then played it for all of two weeks before she lost interest in it. I gave my sister-in-law a Waterman because she wanted to play the ukulele and I don't think that she ever picked it up after she got it home. Her daughter got all excited about learning to play it this summer. That lasted for about three or four day, then she found other things that she wanted to do this summer. I would have to say that everyone who I have introduced to the ukulele has quit. So kudos to everyone here who has stayed with it. I suppose that is why we are all still here.

Anyway, on the same note, whenever a tread gets resurrected from the beginner forum or uke talk, and I do not recognize the name of the OP, I go back and see when was the last time they posted anything. More often than not, they post for a month or two and then they are gone. I wonder where they go? Do they lose interest in the ukulele and quit? Do they just lose interest in UU but continue to play their ukuleles? Are they just passing through and are they still on their journey? Are they still here, lurking and reading, just not participating? I just wonder about it. I'm actually surprised that I'm still playing it.

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All of the above. Other reasons are:

1. One must be passionate about music in order to stick with it. Believe it or not, not everyone is passionate about music. Some see a ukulele as a novelty, and quickly lose interest.
2. There are very few musical heroes for today's generation. In the 60's and 70's, we had an explosion of musical heroes to give us inspiration.

I'm still here, but I don't play ukulele much any more. I'm an ol' dog, and I just couldn't easily learn the new tricks. I'm mostly a melody guy and always have been. I was struggling mostly with the chords and tabs. Trying to read the tabs and play the correct chords correctly and read the words just stopped being fun, and that's what I was after.

And then I tried playing the banjo--voila!--problems solved. Irish banjo and mandolin is chordless, and I just read the music but don't sing. Folk banjo has easy chords, few keys, and I can handle the tabs. I haven't sung with it yet, but I will and play my harps too. However, I do still noodle around with my ukes and sing a few songs that was able to learn well enough.

I still struggle some and get down when I'm not making enough progress but playing now is mostly fun. ld:

I don't post nearly as often as I once did, mainly because I don't have the downtime that I formerly had and when I do have downtime now, I'd prefer to use it either to play, or to get outdoors. I don't see myself ever going away from UU entirely - I continue to learn things from peoples' posts and I like that once in a while I have some insight that I can share to help a beginner out.

As for the notion of going away after "learning to play" - I've played steadily for 8 years now, taken lessons nearly all of that time, and *still* don't feel as if I've "learned" to play. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think "learning" an instrument has an actual end point. There's always more to learn!

I regret I didn't get an uke decades ago, now it happened in april. Would be surprised if I'm not here 10 years from now. Not always playing and posting, but it IS there.

Then there is the time when your progress plateaus, some people give up then, others struggle on, me, I try something new, by that I mean something uke oriented.
I may not be good but I try, then when I am not progressing, I try something else.

My main interest is the melody, the main interest of people on here seems to be singing with uke as accompaniment, so I give that a go now & again.

I was 'challenged' to write a song for one of the Seasons, now I will occasionally write some words, throw some chords at it, record it, & make the Seasonistas suffer it, (or not, their choice to listen or avoid).

I actually came to music in my retirement as a challenge to learn to play an instrument, the uke has helped me achieve that goal, (but it was my third choice instrument).
Now I'm transferring what I have learned here over to my harmonicas, & am also progressing with learning to read music (from the page).
It will all gel together & increase my enjoyment.

I don't post as often as I did, nor do I do the weekly Seasons video all the time - Life got in the way. It has also kept me from getting to my monthly uke groups on occasion, or from the monthly Open Mic I attend.

But I still play at home, have a few Farmers market gigs (every 4-6 weeks in the summer, and every 6-8 in the winter), try to get together with friends, and play at special events at my wife's yarn shop - and played recently at the Celebration of my late Mother-in-law's life. (Only fitting - my first Public Performance was at my late Father-in-law's memorial service...)

My friend Carrie, who I met here on UU and told me about the local uke group, hasn't been picking up her uke too often, because she's picking up textbooks, and working two jobs. her son Adam, a tremendous violinist, has started to play, however, and while not on UU, he has just gotten ukulele #3. His older brother used to play with me at Farmers' Markets (on guitar); I'm going to see if Adam wants to join me on Uke, Violin, and possibly guitar & vocals soon... Of course, then I'll have to learn the music that a 17 year-old wants to play (which is not necessarily a bad thing, just... different.)

Carrie looks forward to playing more when her stress levels drop down to Nuclear range...

lfoo6952 said:

All of the above. Other reasons are:

1. One must be passionate about music in order to stick with it. Believe it or not, not everyone is passionate about music. Some see a ukulele as a novelty, and quickly lose interest.
2. There are very few musical heroes for today's generation. In the 60's and 70's, we had an explosion of musical heroes to give us inspiration.

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I was going to argue with you as far as the passionate about music, because I don't consider myself passionate about music. But after I thought about it a little, I got to thinking that I really enjoy singing and entertaining people with music, so I guess that I am.

Before I begin, let me say that I assume that player who leaves UU quits was seeking to advance on the uke. There are so many reasons an individual may cease to participate in a forum, but this limit allows me to develop a response more fully.

Furthermore, I assume that the student in question was hoping to perform instrumental music beyond comping cyclic chord progressions before they quit. If you are a UUer who primarily plays accompaniment while singing or who is content to strum along at ukulele society meetings, I apologize for this post's potentially condescending tone. Please know that this is not intended by design but merely a product of my grievances about the general state of music in popular society.

As a lifelong musician (mostly woodinds, ukulele in the last two years), I've watched many of my peers begin to learn an instrument only to quit before reaching a level of proficiency which they found intrinsically rewarding. I don't have good statistics on this, but I'd venture a guess that perhaps 60% to 80% of people who begin to learn an instrument either drop it completely or play so infrequently as to sabotage their chances for improvement. I suspect yet more people who purchase an instrument with the intent to play never acquire even basic facility. DISCLAIMER: I don't believe the numbers above apply to all instruments. I'm sure many less popular instruments boast lower attrition rates.

I definitely agree that passion plays a role; however, I think of passion as the product of intelligent commitment that arises in the wake of initial excitement, for I can't think of single seemingly innate interest of mine that lasted for more than a few months without intensive nurturing on my part.

I'll try to summarize why I think players quit. The ukulele, with its shallow initial learning curve and relative mechanical simplicity, offers ways to circumvent many of these reasons, but its approachable nature can also lead many players to run headlong into their first wall without the proper equipment to scale it.

1. Poor instrument quality and setup. Many instruments marketed to beginners receive inadequate setup and/or are constructed from substandard materials with shoddy workmanship, and many self-taught ukulele players are unlikely to even realize the need for a proper setup.

2. Lack of training (mostly in how to practice and listen). Few ukulele beginners outside of Hawai'i (and perhaps Canada?) are members of dynastic musical traditions. These self-taught players sometimes attempt to cobble together practice and listening habits drawn from a variety of sources on their own, resulting in inefficient, possibly even detrimental, habits in their approach to and practice of music.

3. Long hiatuses away from the instrument. I'm guilty of this one on occasion. Whether for a summer or a week, one quick way to undermine your progress is to fail to reinforce the (good) habits gained through practice. The occasional and earned sabbatical can be a wonderful respite which resolves bad habits by allowing them to fall into disuse before before offering a fresh perspective, but the discipline that should be exercised when resuming play is often absent.

4. Inappropriate repertoire. I feel that this is a big one on the ukulele. Graded repertoires with clear learning objectives are rare (at least in the United States), and tools like these can be invaluable for self-learners.

5. Too few performances (whether private or public). Few of us are tossed into the crucible of performance or rehearsal often. This creates a lack of discipline which can in turn breed a (sometimes subtle) lack of confidence. Preparation for performance (and the implied reward upon finishing a good performance) are important for the development of competent students in any endeavor, and music is no exception.

6. Plateaus, particularly the one separating advanced beginners from intermediate players. Without formal musical instruction (not so much uke-specific as pertaining to music in general), relatively few people are equipped to overcome this hurdle. See 2, 4, and 5.

7. Pain and general aggravation. Poor technique, lack of physical conditioning, and vagaries of biology can all cause this one. In addition to discouraging regular practice, they can also limit a player's potential. The ukulele is less susceptible to this than most instruments, but when present, these issues can disinvest new ukers.

@bacchettadavid -

I think you've made some good points above, I'm not sure if I agree exactly with everything you said, and maybe I'm not qualified to offer a meaningful counterpoint, but at least for me, you've provided fertile food for thought.

Mahalo and shaka.