Ukulele Thesis

JJ1726

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Hey everybody, I am being forced to write a thesis for the next 2 years of my life and i wanted to do it on something i wouldn't get bored with, so naturally i picked ukulele(actually it was drums, but i realized there are no good topics on that). So, if anybody has a good topic directly relating to ukulele, i would love to hear it. Any realm of the ukulele world is fine, like building or teaching, i dont know, just tell me your ideas.Thanks everyone.


-JJ
 
It might help to know what you are majoring in, if that is what it is for. Its no good writing, "Innovative Plates and Shell Theory Used to Predict the Performance Characteristics of Ukuleles," if you are majoring in Political Science.
 
Is this a Masters thesis project? First thing you'll need is a user-friendly professor.

My graduate thesis was about the old race tracks in southern California. A where they were vs what's there now look at land use effects. Turns out that more auto racing (in terms of venue numbers) has taken place in SoCal than any other place in the world. Check my HOPublishing link to see more. I published mine and have sold several thousand copies. But I digress.

If this is meant to be a history thesis, there is a lot of information available. The key will be to focus on as specific an aspect as you can. In my case, I was limited to race venue sites. No talk of drivers, cars, or technology that did not directly relate to why a given track opened where it did. But this is a good thing. It will cause you to focus and thus get done. I soon discovered a passion for the history of Los Angeles and was done inside of one year, before my coursework was complete. If you can hit on a similar passion for the ukulele, the work will go fast. Every time you learn something new, you will want to know something more. It's a great feeling. I wish you well.
 
Well, you guys will be suprised to know that i am still in high school, but it is a very legit thesis. We can assume that it'll be based off a music major, because thats what i plan on doing. By the way, if anyones interested, i go to academic magnet high school, a little fun fact.
 
By the way, thank you for the quick response, you guy are a big help.
 
By the way, thank you for the quick response, you guy are a big help.

For a high school thesis, you'll be limited to about 10 pages. Get to the point early. Then point to your point from a variety of angles. Keep your sentences short and declaritive.
 
No, we are required to range to about 50 pages or so in our thesis. Thats why i was saying its fairly legit. Sorry if that sounded a little blunt, couldnt think of another way to put it.
 
How about, "The Second Golden Age of the Ukulele." The first was in the 1920s-1940s. Why is it happening again, and what effect is it having on contemporary music, if any? Something like that would be interesting.
 
Thats a good idea, but i had something more in mind of actually playing it. I could explore the history of the ukulele and then from that make a song that explains the evolution. My friend is using a uke to show its use in all realms of music, so he s making like classical songs, so i kinda wanted to do something like that, but i definitely like your idea.
 
You could probably do 50 pages on how to pronounce the word. Get into etymology, the descriptive vs. prescriptive debate, the cultural effects of imperialism, etc.

JJ
 
online discourse about the ukulele! and you'd have thousands upon thousands of UU pages for your research
 
You could probably do 50 pages on how to pronounce the word. Get into etymology, the descriptive vs. prescriptive debate, the cultural effects of imperialism, etc.

JJ

We have the same name :D

I was thinkin about maybe doing a history of the ukulele, just in general and going through the 2 golden ages of it and maybe throwing together a song. i really want to relate it with something where i can play it a lot though. maybe its just wishful thinking...
 
How about the incredible brotherhood of the ukulele community? BTW, my economics senior thesis was on Lech Walessa and the rise of the labor unions in Poland. Ugh! A thesis on the ukulele sounds much more interesting.
 
I'm guessing that if you spend enough time around here you will figure out a unique-to-you thesis. Read the threads and see what's talked about. Check out some other sites (Ukulele Cosmos, UkeHunt -- there are tons) and you'll get a taste of this community. It's an incredible thing really. I have friends around the world because of the obsesion I have with this instrument. I'm not alone.
 
JJ,


I'm sure you know this but a thesis is a position or argument. The documented work will explain this position, your reasons for it (gaps in knowledge, literature, our understanding), and then work is done to explain or justify this position. In the sciences this work would be experiments and data analysis, in history it would be searching first sources of info, old books etc.

You shouldn't have a position straight away - you need to read around first; you'll be doing itterative loops of learning, and evaluation until you focus more and more narrowly on your actual hypo-thesis (your position clearly articulated in a series of statements you can evaluate).

So thesis could be:

The ukulele is the best stringed instrument to begin learing an instrument on.

Hypothesis

across students taking up stringed instuments, ukulele students achive better music test scores compaired to other stringed instruments.


6sc
 
If you don't know this site

http://www.nalu-music.com/

you should. John King, before his death, was one of the most active researchers into the ukulele and its predecessors. He actually found/was sent, a treatise on the playing of the Portuguese predecessor to the ukulele, the machete. If I had my PhD to do all over again, I think it would have to be my choice for topic. His widow, I believe, still has the Estudos, and not being a ukulele researcher, will be unable to do anything with them.

Thesis topics. Wow. The ukulele has a short and extremely murky history. Mike DaSilva, in Berkeley, CA, manufactures ukuleles according to the original model specifications used by the original Pokiki luthiers, Nunes and Dias.

The growth of ukulele as an educational tool, led in Hawaii, then Canada, growing in the UK.

Maybe a look at one of the old greats: I would choose Roy Smeck.

There's zillions. Have fun!
 
Irregardless of what you finally choose your subject to be, I think a trip to Hawaii should be negotiated with your parents. You know, for research...
 
No good topics on drums??? You're not looking hard enough - it's arguably the oldest musical instrument, and drums have played important cultural roles in many societies.
 
I would go a little deeper than another history of the uke - for example the apparent "fad" attraction of the uke and the subsequent backlash...

If you look at the two historical and sudden rises in international popularity for the instrument (‘20s and ‘50s), they were both followed by a severe backlash and negative stereotyping of the uke – in both cases lasting decades longer than the fad itself.

You could look at parallel fads (Hula Hoop comes to mind) for comparable patterns, and there is a wealth of easily attainable data on fads in general you could apply to the uke… Is it generational? Does it track to popular music? etc...

If I had to write a thesis, I would explore that fad/backlash cause and effect, and try to see if we can draw parallels to the current rapid rise in popularity of the uke yet again. Are we looking at another dramatic rejection of the uke, just like the last two?

The pattern would suggest yes, and backing that up or debunking it with research and data would make a fascinating dissertation in my opinion.
 
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