Your family and friends know you and if they are interrupting your playing, it is because you sound bad and they are embarrassed or you are using the uke as an excuse to avoid your domestic responsibilities. If you want to avoid interruptions in your house, be inclusive and take the time to become a better player and share the ukulele fun with your family and friends. If they wont play along, help them feel like singing along without being self conscious, or help them learn another instrument. If time is the issue, set up an agreed routine practice time that fits in with the other domestic activities and include playing back tapes of yourself in the routine.
If you want to make money from your playing, don't take your work home, set out a working routine and workplace like any other job and learn how to play well enough so you can pay yourself to practice.
One of the great things about the recent ukulele movement is that it is inclusive and welcoming and generally has avoided the sometimes negative and obnoxious baggage that seems to accompany "serious" guitar playing and jamming. It would be good to keep it that way.
I try to stay as nice as possible during internet interactions to avoid conflict. But this really irritated me, so here is my best attempt.
I am not a bad player, I am not amazing, but I am not bad either. That insulted me.
Not everyone is musical, so not everyone understands that people don't like to be interrupted when playing music. I know this, this does not however stop me from making a fun thread to talk about something we all share...
I play in my free time, and I am always open to lend a hand, but most people can often wait 1 minute for you to finish playing before you go clean gutters or whatever it may be.
Take a look at my youtube, I don't exactly play play typical happy strummy singing songs, in fact, I don't really know any. I might know 2, if I thought hard about it. Also, many people around me are not musical, or do not play instruments. I would love to have someone to play with, but it is their choice to start up an instrument, and I will not impose music on anyone, I think that defeats the purpose.
I agree that the ukulele has a wonderful community and is open to all people, but I find here in fact that you contradict yourself and come off as quite the jerk. One of the things I like most about the ukulele is that it can be completely silly, completely serious, and all colors in between. You are degrading the image of the ukulele by treating it as
just a toy and not respecting it as a versatile instrument.
We'll be up on stage playing and folks will come up to talk right in the middle of a song. Sometimes it's hard enough to remember the chords, licks, words, rhythm, etc. without carrying on a conversation too. I have a friend that does that all the time. He has no idea how hard it is, I think we must make look playing real easy so I guess that's a good thing. He asked me for a pencil/pen while we were playing on stage last week.
"Mele Kalikimaka the pen's over there, right next to the beer on this fine cool winter day. I have a blue one that writes real good that I can give to you, from the land where the pens are made. There they know that pens must write clean and bright so your words can be read at day or night. Mele Kalikmaka is Hawaii's way to say get you pen and go away."
Actually I just smiled and kept playing.
"Mele Kalikmaka is Hawaii's way to say get you pen and go away."
That would have been truly great though.
Yeah I often do the smile and the nod. Or shift my eyes between my instrument and them, hoping they will get the hint haha
