The Uke

I've heard that Kingaroy is a nice town - worth visiting. I actually spent an hour there recently, but it must be said that I have no idea what the town is like.

I meant to spend that hour traipsing up and down the main street and having a look around.

I got as far as the music shop across the road from where I parked.

An hour later I came out again with a ukulele.

This was, to be honest, a little unexpected. Buying a mandolin or a mountain dulcimer was entirely on the cards, but the ukulele kind of came out of the blue. Much like the pocket trumpet I bought in Tasmania.

By the way, does anyone know someone who wants a second hand pocket trumpet? It turns out I have great difficulty playing any trumpet (the mouthpiece is too small for my lips), and a pocket version doesn't really help with that...

But anyway - a ukulele was something I really didn't expect to buy - and partly because I had an anti-ukulele at home.

Many years ago I was given one of those cheap $20 soprano ukuleles as a Christmas present (you know, the ones you see everywhere and assume are fully functional ukuleles), and it was possibly the worst thing that could have happened.

The fact that it existed and I owned it meant I kept trying to play it in one way or another (there were several attempts to retune it and treat it like another instrument). The fact that it was truly terrible meant I kept giving it up and deciding I'd never play a ukulele again.

And, of course, I wouldn't think of buying a better ukulele because I already owned one I never played...

It was (and still is) a horrible, horrible thing - not really worthy of the word "instrument". The strings simply will not tune so that they agree with each other on more than one note at a time. It's terribly frustrating - all chords sound foul and wrong and finger picking melodies can only be done on one string. I suspect the frets are actually in the wrong positions.

Truly, it is an anti-ukulele. It doesn't not perform as a ukulele should, and it encourages you to avoid ukuleles for fear of similar bad experiences.

So, why did I buy a ukulele? Because the mandolin didn't have a hard case.

Seriously, that was my sole reason.

I may be pretty rubbish as a musician, but I'm addicted to playing music, sadly. I get itchy fingers when I don't have an instrument to pluck or strum lying around the place. The banjo didn't have a case and isn't really suitable to travelling light, so I don't take it with me when I go anywhere.

I'd been thinking for some time that I needed a smaller, more travel-friendly stringed instrument, and I wanted to get a proper hard case so I could throw it in with my luggage without worrying.

The mandolin seemed logical - same tuning as the banjo so I could play the same songs the same way... but it was actually a bit uncomfortable to play and didn't come with a hard case.

After thinking long and hard about how much I really needed the mandolin, I looked a little more closely at the ukuleles that were next to it on the display. The concert sized ukes looked strangely appealing - and they had a hard case that would fit, and a book of ukulele chords that would slip into the case along with the instrument...

So I bought a uke - and, you know what? They're actually pretty sweet to play, if you get a real one. I've been playing it a lot lately, as my banjo strings react badly to rainy weather, and it's just lovely.

So, my unintentional quest to own the world's most annoying instruments appears to be continuing unabated.

Oh, and never ever buy anyone one of those cheap $20 ukuleles. They're only suitable as props for people who don't actually intend to try strumming the strings.