A flash in the pan: my ukulele

I was passing a local charity shop the other day when I spotted a nice-looking ukulele in the window. I couldn't help myself. I went in, asked to look at it, and bought the thing. It seemed to be nearly new. The price was £40. I was told there was a carrying case for it, which they fetched and chucked in. I walked out feeling that (a) I'd given in to an impulse, but it might prove to be a Good Thing; (b) the price paid was on par with what I might pay for a good lunch, and I'd hardly notice it, taking the month as a whole.   

Once home, I examined the thing closely and couldn't find a flaw. The carrying case proved to have numerous small accessories in its zip-up pocket - spare strings, a variety of picks, a clip-on electronic tuner and so on. 

It was a cute little thing, well-made and attractive.

Quick research on the Internet established that I had bought a soprano ukulele (the usual sort) from a midrange maker (Eastrock), and had paid about half what a new model would cost. The thing about ukes is that you can buy a half-decent one for very little. And you can get started on them - strumming with just a few chords - pretty well at once. So they are very suitable for schoolchildren and adults with little musical background, who want to get to grips with a real instrument. I guessed that this one had been bought for a child who gave up after only a term or two. 

Well, it was now mine. But for how long? The first flush of enthusiasm didn't last. 

I began properly. Having done that Internet research, I tuned the strings accurately, using my laptop and a website I found, looked up the basic chords, then tried them out. No great issues there. A lovely, bright, ringing sound that lasted. I could see why the ukulele was so popular with people wanting to express themselves musically, yet wanting something simple to play. But I could see already that going beyond strumming with three chords would take serious application, time and effort. 

I wasn't new to musical instruments. In my time, from the early 1970s, I had bought and tried my hand with a Spanish guitar, a folk guitar - both of which have languished in my attic for many years, and could still be got out, tuned up, and used if I wished - a harmonica, a flute, and a series of recorders. All had been a challenge. I'd been initially enthusiastic, only to discover that none of these instruments really spoke to me. They were all in any case surprisingly difficult to play. 

The main problem was my lack of any genuine talent for music. Nor was I driven to succeed: merely curious. Although it had been a compulsory subject in my first two years at grammar school, I'd given music up as soon as I could. (This was, for one thing, a way of avoiding a role in the school's ghastly annual operatic performances) The academic side continued to have some allure, however. At some point in my twenties - I think somewhere around 1981, give or take a year or two - I became intrigued by 'early music', and the acquisition of several recorders stemmed from that. During this phase I visited the Dolmetsch recorder factory near Haslemere in Surrey. I enjoyed an impromptu tour of the workshops, and found myself discussing with a certain Doctor Blood the possibility of having an expensive wooden recorder made for me. Doctor Brian Blood had had a post-graduate career in medical research, but had left that role to help his wife's family (she was a Dolmetsch) preserve and develop their recorder manufacture and seminal teaching. 

By the time I met him, this Doctor Blood was a force in the musical world. (It's amazing whom I get to meet!) The Blood family worked with several recording artists and bands at the Abbey Road studios, including of course The Beatles, who had a definite penchant for the sound of woodwind instruments in their later productions. I have a copy of Linda McCartney's book Sixties: Portrait of an Era. Photos of Paul Blood (a younger brother?) when a very serious seventeen year old appear on pages 156 and 157. Linda was an internationally-known photographer, and also Paul McCartney's first wife. She thought Paul Blood had beautiful fingers. These things - having Linda McCartney's book and later on meeting Doctor Blood - constitute my two personal but very tenuous links with The Beatles. 

Nothing came of that Dolmetsch recorder purchase. Just as well. It would have been a lot of money wasted.

My family, incidentally, hadn't been musical. Mum could occasionally be heard singing in the kitchen, but otherwise revealed no musical talent. Dad liked playing records; and he had fun with an electronic organ acquired from my Uncle Laurie, who was a whizz at anything electrical. Here's Dad at the keyboard in 1976. (He couldn't really play: the organ provided a nice background tempo, and all one had to do was touch the odd key now and then. But it looked good)

It was only a temporary novelty. I wasn't much tempted to have a go myself.

My younger brother Wayne was the only one who displayed any obvious musical talent. In his mid-teens he began learning Spanish guitar at the local Baptist church. Unlike the rest of us, Wayne was strongly drawn to Christianity. He had a spiritual side that we hadn't, and appreciated the things that came with being an active member of a congregation, music included. Later, when living in London, he migrated to Church of England, and was a much-loved lay reader for his local church in Sydenham. The musicians in that congregation got him interested in the violin, and had he not been killed I am sure he would have become quite accomplished. Anyway, it was he who spurred me on to try the guitar myself.  

But I realised soon enough that although I liked listening to music, and enjoyed handling musical instruments, I was no musician. Like mathematics, it was all fascinating but nevertheless beyond my personal capability. I wasn't wired up to make music, nor really to listen with any discernment. Of course I relished much of the pop music of the 1960s and 1970s - it's now on my phone - and much earlier and later stuff too. And of course, I can appreciate a lot of the classical repertoire. But I'd be the last to claim any significant feeling for music. I don't think that anyone who knows my taste would disagree.

So why had I now invested a little money in a ukulele? Was it a final fling? Well, it seemed a friendly instrument that even a rank amateur might get on with. And I knew two people - my friend Angie, and my cousin Rosemary - who had taken it up and found lasting pleasure in playing their ukuleles, especially from the social side of it. Of all instruments, the ukulele was the one most likely to involve you in frolicsome local happenings, and the one least requiring virtuoso skill. It was light-hearted and strictly amateur.

But hold on: I was not a person who ever joined groups or societies. I was never going to attend any Tuesday evening meetups, nor entertain passers-by on a sunny Saturday morning by strumming happy tunes with twenty others. For me, it was a solitary personal challenge, like learning a foreign language on my own. Or proving to myself that I could design and make a rag rug, as I did a few years back. In short, once I'd achieved a certain standard, this new fad would go nowhere else. 

A complete contrast with my lifelong love of photography. My camera got me out and about. It got me moving. And the taking of photos (also the later processing of them) was highly creative. The motivation wasn't to produce art: it was more to to preserve memories and build an historical record, in particular to chronicle the events of my life. But I have always been eager to take pictures, feeling deprived if opportunities to shoot were lacking, or thwarted whenever photography was forbidden. Photography involved exercise, excitements, personal vision and personal skill, with something worthwhile and possibly precious to show for the effort, and always with the scope for ongoing development. Every day, I looked forward to taking pictures and studying the results - and publishing some of them: I had many online viewers. My easily-accessible and well-organised Photo Archive had grown, becoming a most useful asset, often mined for the information it held. I had turned photography into more than a hobby - it was a way of life. 

It was a never-ending joy to me, and I could keep it up for the remainder of my life, regardless of my state of health, or my mobility.  

Not so playing a musical instrument, even a ukulele. Arthritic fingers, for instance, would curb the pleasure of playing, or even stop it in its tracks. And, not wanting to perform, there would always be something sterile about it.

The crunch came quickly. I'd had a busy day, and only a couple of hours to throw at either processing some shots I badly wanted to examine, or put in some time training my sore fingers on a new ukulele chord. It was one or the other. The uke lost. And, I reflected, would always lose. I put it in its case, and decided to pass it on to Rosemary, who had seen it the day before and had told me that it was better than the one she had. If ever I wanted to get rid of it, could she have it? Indeed she could. 

I won't see Rosemary until next week at the earliest, and so my ukulele still has time in which to make me change my mind. But I don't think I will. Making pictures is my thing - not making sounds, however sweet they might be.

In any case, ukuleles can't beat a good thrash with an air guitar. The shot below is proof.

Sequel

Rosemary now has the uke, and is delighted with it. 

As for myself, I have no regrets. All musical instruments worth playing need to be in the right hands, and mine were not the right hands. Even as wall decoration, that little ukulele would have been inappropriate because I have no musical background. It would imply a way with music that I don't possess: it would be a lie.

So what about the two guitars in my attic, and all the printed music for them? They are never likely to be used. Their personal significance and associations are actually quite weak: I could let them go. I'd better see whether my niece or nephew, or their spouses, might want them first.