Adventures with the Ukulele.

Many moons ago I bought a guitar. It was a nice guitar: an acoustic/electric Takamine, and it set me back about five hundred dollars. I played it rarely and a few years later sold it for three hundred.

After the guitar I decided I preferred the Bass. It only has four strings and I only have four fingers this works out well. Trouble is you typically have the choice between a stand up bass and an electric one, both of which are way out of my price rang. In addition the stand up bass is very large and hard to move while the electric has a ton of extras that you have to have with it. I chalked it up as a lost dream and left it at that.

Not as long ago I stumbled across a video of somebody playing a ukulele version of Jonathan Coulton's Code Monkey. (available at Jonathancoulton.com)This amazed me, and my music dreams were alive again. With a uke, I have the benefit of four strings and it's also very portable. After some shopping online I determined that the price range was also much more reasonable as well.

I boasted to my friends of how I was going to learn to play the uke, and was mostly met with a dismissive attitude of "that's cool, whatever." But I was to prove them wrong. Not days before I left for Twin Arrows I walked into Guitar Center with about two hundred dollars in my grubby pocket, with the sole intention of walking out with a brand new ukulele. I spent what seemed like fifteen minutes standing next to the ukes, admiring them and not a single soul approached me to sell me one. Come on! Don't these people work on commission? Somebody must want to sell me an instrument. but no luck. I returned shortly with my mother in tow, hoping she would lend an air of credibility to my shopping, but still no salesperson appeared. We left, downtrodden but not beaten. Later that day we called another Guitar Center and asked about ukes for sale. I was told that there were a number in stock, and that when I arrived at the store and ask for David (name changed because I can't remember it.) With David's name in hand we entered the store...

More to come later, I'm tired of typing.  ¶ 8/15/2007 10:07:00 PM