Happy to be here

Post Reply New Topic

Well I suppose this is as good a place as any to begin my foray into the Wrong Planet forum.

I'm a composer, performer and nonprofit consultant. I received my Asperger's diagnosis within the past 4 months after spending the past 49 years wondering what the hell was wrong with me. It's good to know there is a place where people understand.

hiya, Ukelele Tom
welcome to our cool cool club
ukes are the most friendly-sounding instrument
can you tell me if tiny tim really was very good at it? i would love to learn how to play but my last attempt at a stringed instrument [acoustic guitar] ended badly mostly because my fingertips would not properly callous. do ukes have softer strings similar to a gut-stringed classical guitar? honestly, i wish i had been told about those before i tried to learn, i only know about them decades later.

Last edited by auntblabby on 02 Jun 2012, 3:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's nice when everything suddenly makes sense, right?

Welcome to WP, enjoy your time here.

Hello and welcome!

You sound like a very interesting person. I hope you like it here.

Thanks for the welcome!

Let me see if I can answer everybody--

Hi AuntBlabby! Great to meet you! I completely agree that it is a very friendly instrument--not too fussy, and a breeze to play.

I don't think Tiny Tim was a virtuoso uke player, but he was a terrific performer. You might want to try the ukulele if guitar didn't fly for you. The strings are nylon and are at a very low tension, so it's not hard on your fingers at all. Additionally, the you can pick up a decent uke for under $100. After performing as a professional classical bass player for nearly 40 years, it's been great to discover an instrument that is astonishingly easy to play. I'd say go for it!



Thanks, Iggy64! Yeah, no kidding. It's taking me a while to wrap my brain around the whole concept, though.



Thanks so much, SluvsK! I'm looking forward to my experience at WP.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

here is pretty Zooey Deschanel playing a pretty little ditty on her uke-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSq1cez_flQ&feature=endscreen&NR=1[/youtube]
AND-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkg4W-k3eUA[/youtube]

Very nice!

yes, those are some talented people. i wish i had some of that kind of talent. anyways, is there much difference between a "regular" uke and a baritone uke? just curious, i am drawn towards lower-pitched instruments, must be something about the way my hearing mechanism is constructed.

After teaching music for many, many years I can say with some authority that talent is vastly overrated. I'm sure you do have talent, but you haven't found the best avenue for yourself (or the right teacher).

There are several sizes of ukuleles, but they are, for all intents and purposes, tuned the same. The standard size is the soprano, slightly larger is the concert, and larger still is the tenor. The baritone is tuned much differently, and is the least common. If you're interested in starting, I would consider with either a tenor or a soprano. There are also a surprising number of ukulele clubs that have sprung up over the past few years. You might want to check in your local area to see if one is active nearby.

Most people seem to be drawn to either higher or lower-pitched instruments. If you listen to composers or song writers you can usually tell where their ears lie. Johannes Brahms, for example, was a low-pitch guy.

For myself, I'm a professional bass player. No guesswork needed there

what about your own talent? i'm sure THAT is not overrated, is it? my only discernable talent is that i can discern talent in other people, and also i used to have perfect pitch [matching the old-fashioned tubed pitch correction machine which could resolve to an eighth of a tone], but that has deteriorated in my old age, by approx. 3 chromatic steps, which bothers the hell out of me when i am reminded of it, which is anytime i listen to any sound with a discernable pitch. i can compensate for it a bit, though, so not all is lost.

out of curiosity, is the baritone that much harder to learn upon? i have a long body/long arms, large hands/long fingers- and the baritone [from the pics i've seen just now] superficially seems to be a better fit for this giant economy sized person. when you say the tuning is different, is it harder in terms of intervals? higher string tension? i know, questions, questions. no local uke clubs here, the closest is quite a distance away [seattle].

i played the contralto clarinet through high school and the tuba in college. poorly. i could never learn to sightread worth beans, so i just memorized things at a playing. but i also could tune the tympanist's kettles for him and also the string bass. since you are bassist, can you tell me if the concert [orchestral] basses to low C/B have a fifth string or is that just for electric basses? i am a deep bass [subwoofer lovin'] freak, the deeper the better. wurlitzer pipe organs are the kings of deep bass [down to 8 cycles [resultant 64' stop] for the organ stop wurlitzer in mesa, AZ], so i have a collection of those recordings.

Talent is like an engine's spark plug--it ignites the gas, but doesn't do any real work. The rest of it is practice and perseverance. What you say about perfect pitch is very interesting. I once had a teacher tell me that her perfect pitch--which, by the way, only occurs in about 10% of professional musicians--starts to erode in middle age. For me, at age 48, it's starting to go.

If you have large fingers, I would start with a tenor instead of a baritone. The vast majority of books, sheet music and tabulature are geared to the G-C-E-A tuning (older versions are A-D-F#-B), but there's not a lot out there for baritone. Since ukuleles have had a major resurgence over the past few years, most music stores carry a pretty good supply so you can try them out pretty easily.

As for basses, most symphonic professionals in the U.S. have C-extensions put on their instruments to handle the lower notes. It's a mechanical device that goes beyond the fingerboard and over the scroll to give us the extra notes behind the standard low E. There are 5-string basses out there, but the extra tension the 5th string places on the instrument generally makes them unresponsive.

I also enjoy the 64' organ stops. My wife is a big theater organ fan, so we've heard some fabulous instruments.

Welkome to WP

Mick

you are fortunate to live in a place with actual wurlitzer organs in working condition and open to the public. when i lived in tacoma [washington] there was only 1, the 2/9 wurlitzer installed at the temple theatre, and it was only open on special occasions for high-muckety-mucks only, no common folk need apply. i got to see and hear it in performance exactly one time, in 1982 when somebody thought it would be a good idea to bring out of retirement an actual 20s silent theatrical organist, to perform a pre-show before the big movie ["Star Trek- The Wrath of Khan"], and she put it through its paces and showed off the "toy counter" novelties. i remember the sound was much clearer up in the balcony. but since then i've not gotten to hear anything like that in person. the closest similar installations are way up north of seattle. too far to drive.