Why did you start to play the ukulele?

Apologies if there's been threads like this before - I could not find one (yes, I did a search first ) but I am curious as to your motivations behind learning to play the ukulele .... Here's mine (sorry if it's lengthy):

When I was about 15, I decided I wanted to learn to play the bass guitar. My dad had always sang in bands, and he had an acoustic guitar so I got started on that first. Took some lessons, learned some chords .... Long story short: guitar was not for me. Fast forward to the age of 21 (I think) and a friend of a friend of mine said he had a bass for sale. It came cheap, and he gave me two "lessons": here's the fifth, here's the octave These actually proved to be quite good pointers!

So I got started on the bass, and joined a band pretty soon thereafter. Quit and joined several more, got into (electric) upright at one point because I had started a rockabilly band with some longtime friends of mine (any reason's valid for that GAS, right?), co-founded a blues rock band which started taking off like crazy in the local circuit and subsequently imploded due to personnel issues right before we made any sort of LASTING name / impact. Shame cos it was the best damned music I'd played up until that point!

I got a few offers to join different bands, but ended up auditioning for and getting offered the bass spot in a top 40 / dance cover band after that - or so I thought. Bad "management" from the band leader and a bad judgement call from my part (I never should have joined) led me to quit this band after an 18 months tenure and a handful of not-so-succesful gigs.

Suddenly, for the first time in over 12 years I was bandless. Bit scary!!! But I soon realized that what I really want to do is "work on my musical development." So I've devised a sort of "learning plan" that involves latin bass lines on upright bass, walking jazz lines on electric bass and assorted The Who and Iron Maiden licks in between

"EPB, what's all this got to do with ukulele, man?" I hear you ask. "This is a uke forum, not a bass forum." And right you are!

A few years ago my friends bought me a ukulele and a book with chords, for my birthday. While I liked the "joke" present, I never did anything with it and frankly, forgot all about it. Being "bandless" now, I wanted to ensure that I do not get "burnt out on bass" by getting in a certain routine mode. At the same time I've always felt that I would benefit from playing a "non-bass instrument." I never liked the guitar, so that was off the table. And the other day it hit me: I have a ukulele! It's a chordal instrument, but lends itself to finger picking. It's higher pitched than bass AND does not take up as much space!

So here I am. Spent my first hour strumming (and finger picking) some chords the day before yesterday and won't get any practice done before Sunday probably. But it's a first step, and it was both enjoyable AND humbling to have to start from scratch again. I may be in a weird position because (currently) I do not feel the need to learn any actual songs on the uke. I decided to start this journey as a way to expand my overall musical abilities and become a better bass player. I want to be able to play it (strum and fingerpick) and maybe record some "backing tracks" for me to play bass over. At the same time I am very "ambitious" because I do want to "master" the instrument and get chords and techniques under my belt and be able to play it in a group setting, should the occasion arise. After all, despite its size it's as valid an instrument as a bass guitar.

Now tell me, why did YOU start to play the ukulele?

I can relate to your story very well. I started on banjo many years ago, always like the instrument but couldn't sing with it. My range was just wrong for the standard tunings and I like to play with others, not have to retune every other song.

I took up the ukulele to give me more flexibilty in singing and playing along. The scale lengths are small enough for me to easily work up the neck so now there has been a qualitative improvement in my musicianship as well. What Joy!

I was very very bored....and sucked at all the other instruments....

About 10 months ago I was flipping channels on the TV and stumbled upon this documentaty called "The Mighty Uke". That was it, I was gobb smacked, in awe and completely smitten. Apparently this has happened to a lot of people after watching it.

I had played a little acoustic guitar but had not touched it in a long time. I made progress with the uke and I was making more music and better music than I ever did with the guitar. Playing at uke jams also filled the need to be able to play with others.

When I was 10 or 11 years old, I visited Hawaii with my family. Ukuleles were everywhere! I like musical instruments and I picked one up for 10 bucks. It wasn't my main instrument. I mostly messed around on it, learned the basics, a few songs until I was 16. Suddenly I was getting more into it and I got a nicer uke (from my parents for Christmas). I pretty much played nonstop for the next 4-5 months and the rest is history.

I started playing the uke when my 7 year old daughter joined a uke club at school. I have always played guitar and piano. I started to learn ukulele so thst I could help her. I fell in love with the instrument and now prefer ukuleke over guitar and piano.

I was self taught on guitar but never got very good at it and there were times that I wouldn't pick it up for months or even years. Over the years I started seeing a fair amount of celebrities playing the uke (Kate Micucci, Tony Danza, Zoey Deschanel, William H. Macy, George Harrison, Jason Mraz, etc.) and I started getting more and more intrigued. I always liked the happy sound it made. I then discovered how you could put a capo on the guitar and play the bottom 4 strings just like a ukulele. I gave it a go and almost instantly knew that I would really enjoy it. I bought a starter uke and fell in love with it totally abandoning the guitar. I enjoy and play the uke much more frequently than I ever did guitar.

I couldn't reach a lot of chords on guitar so I gave up for many years
When a friend showed me her ukulele , I thought how hard can it be with this four stings instrument ?
Now I can play almost all the songs I couldn't play on a guitar! Made me finally feel like I have accomplished something !

I retired and my friend, who had retired as well, was taking lessons and learning "classical guitar". So I started hanging around with him, thinking about playing the guitar, but they were just too serious about playing guitars, and about themselves in general. So along the way, I discovered the ukulele, and thought that it would be a lot less pretentious. Anyway that is why I decided to learn to play the uke.

Hey Eddie, are you catching an underlying theme, here?

Many of us played other instruments before picking up a uke...& the uke won us over, becoming the preferred instrument.

When I was in my early twenties, my mother bought my nephew a Ukulele because he was always wanting to play with my younger brother's guitars. I had a lot of fun messing around with it, but ultimately it did belong to my nephew. Almost 30 years later my partner and I were spending the day that the Musical Instrument Museum and he decides that he wants to take up guitar again. We find ourselves in Sam Ash later that afternoon, he's looking at guitars and I see a lot of Ukuleles and remembered how fun it was. A week later my partner decided to finally buy the guitar, and I decided to buy myself a Ukulele. It's been almost a year now. UAS has hit me big time since that first purchase. I'm getting better at playing it, but still have a long way to go. Oh, and that guitar... It hasn't been touched in months.

I have played other instruments but never a stringed one. (except piano) I met a fellow librarian at a library conference and she played uke during her storytimes. I got one on ebay for $10 (Mahalo) and liked it some. Then I had another friend buy one and when I tried hers I liked it much better. I went out and got a Kala and now I am hooked. I play occasionally for storytime but now I have joined a uke group and having a blast!

Although I play guitar, I've always been more of a fan of instruments with four strings such as bass, mandolin (OK, four COURSES of strings) and uke. I've got four fretting fingers so four strings seems right. Of course, the big factor that pushed me to buy one was George Harrison. Thanks, George.

I suppose I can roll it all into a phrase my Dad used to use a lot. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."

I played both ukulele and piano as a kid - briefly, and badly. I guess you could call it a midlife crisis when in my mid-40s I decided I needed to do something creative and non-computer-oriented to keep my brain from totally atrophying... since my house is too small for a piano, uke seemed a good starting point. That was almost 6 years ago - I think this time it's going to stick

Rllink said:

...they were just too serious about playing guitars, and about themselves in general. So along the way, I discovered the ukulele, and thought that it would be a lot less pretentious.

Click to expand...

I could have said the exact same thing. There is a whole different vibe with the ukulele.

I took piano and guitar lessons as a kid. Sucked at piano - mostly because my books had songs I had never heard of - and was marginally better at guitar because the nun that taught me was really cool. I also played guitar at mass every Sunday and playing in front of people hastened my advancement.

I lost the opportunity to play the piano once I left my parents house when I turned 19. I can't even tell you when I stopped taking the guitar out of the closet to play, but it was around the same time. My guitar then burned up in a house fire and I didn't replace it. Even though 2 of the kids took up guitar in high school and and to this day their guitars are still in their old bedrooms, I didn't get the urge.

Then Christmas 2013 I bought a plastic First Act ukulele as a back up Christmas gift, didn't end up gifting it, and opened it up and started playing on Christmas Eve. I learned 7 chords that night and played a Christmas carol the next day. What a great instrument!

My first Uke (a Ka-Lai Soprano Pineapple) hung on the.wall for 50 years. I tried to play it and sing once before, but my horrible first wife laughed so hard it's a wonder she didn't choke -- Ahhh, well . . . Anyway a year and a half ago I decided to give it another try, so I took it down from the wall and had at it. Then I accumulated more knowledge and more Ukes, and the rest is history. I'm still struggling but happy with the struggle; it keeps me humble.

Onward and upward! Go for it. ld:

I come from quite a musical family - guitar, clarinet, piano, drums, harmonica, organ, violin have all been represented. At school I got on well with the piano and the trombone, but as we didn't have a piano at home and my parents were mean and wouldn't buy me a trombone I never pursued playing either of them. I had a dabble with a guitar but I'm a small person and it seemed too big and complicated.

When I left home I acquired my dad's old acoustic guitar, which has been gathering dust for 10 years as I can only play one chord (I keep it in tune though, just in case). I bought a violin last year too, but I'm a bit scared of it to be honest. It's my plan to learn to play that this year.

Anyway, I guess I was getting a bit frustrated at not being able to actually play anything, and it was on my mind, because towards the end of last year I had the same dream, on two nights running, that I was a world class ukulele player. I'd never even considered buying a ukulele, and thought it was hilarious, so I bought one for the fun of it. I spend £18 on a Mahalo from Amazon, took it out the box, and have played it almost every day since. Sometimes dreams are useful things.

Played guitar for forty seven or eight years,had a
major illness,never touched any of my guitars for
over a year. One day was in my local music shop
chatting with the good bloke who ran it, and I saw
a collection of cheap painted Mahalo sopranos.
Picked one up and had a fiddle with it,and was
hooked! Bought one, gave away all my guitars,
and now own eight ukes of mostly soprano scale,
with two concert and one tenor. Have owned about
six others over the past few years but passed them
on to friends,as I prefer to play the ones I kept!