wake up!

evangeline
Originally uploaded by xian

she is the queen of make-believe

my new electric uke (hollowbody tenor ukulele with pickup)

i think i'm getting the hang of this fretted instrument thing.

also, anyone speak french? some ukulele guy wrote something on his blog. jeff? annie?

I'm still way a beginner, with incredibly amateurish chops, and yet look at how I am able to amuse myself already:

The Reuben Kincaid: Fire on the Mountain, take 2, basic uke feel track

In New Orleans, thanks to syrup, I was reunited with my tenor ukulele, Helena, last seen in an Austin, TX motel.

Our hosts there, S and E, run d-fly designs using photography and digital image manipulation and high quality printing with pigments to decorate linen pillow and handbags and other craft objects. The results are stunning.

Long story short, Steve snapped a photo of the uke, and sent me this photo of a pillow decorated with my ukulele's classic look a few weeks ago (I've been on deadline looking forward to posting it here but seeing it every day on the homepad of my voodoopad):

My grandfather had a ukulele. I loved it as a little boy. When he died, I was nine and I inherited the uke. I never learned to play it but I bashed it up pretty good. They even got me a new ukulele because I really wanted on. I loved the way the both looked. They were made with blond wood, probably soprano ukes. I don't know what happened to the second one.

It turns out, someone in everybody's family played the ukulele. I bought my new tenor ukulele on Tuesday and it gets warm looks everywhere I go. When I take it out and practice people come up to me and say "My aunt played the ukulele," or "I just bought a ukulele for my son," and so on. They look happy and they want to talk. It's a happy instrument.

So far I've fallen into this habit of learning a new song on the uke every day. On Wednesday I got the hang of Yellow Submarine, a song I remember my kindergarten teacher playing on guitar and illustrated with large construction-paper collages on an easel. Yesterday I looked up the tab for Evervescing Elephant on the web, wrote out the ukulele chords, and then figured it out. My fingers are really starting to hurt now.

Today, I hit looked up Uncle John's band and I've been playing that all day. Not the weird bridge stuff in seven, just the verse chorus verse chorus variations. Almost all the chords in those parts of the song (G C D Amin Emin) are easy to play on the ukulele. It's such a revelation to hear the song start taking shape in the changes and to start to get a feel for the inevitable sound of the instrument. I never realized how easy music is if you don't try so hard to be good.