Playing the ukulele

I knew that most people who spends time reading about the ukulele on blogs like this one probably spend a lot of time playing the ukulele as well. The last poll pretty much confirmed that though. While there are a couple of you who just hang your ukes on the wall (nothing wrong with that, they look cool ;-) ), three-fourth of you play the ukulele daily. I am definitely in that group of daily players. Since taking up the ukulele in February of 2007, I have rarely gone a day without playing it.

So what do I do when I pickup my uke everyday? I mostly play the few instrumentals I know over and over. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but after playing "Gently Weeps" for probably thousands of times, I still can't get enough of playing it. The thing is, when I'm playing I'm mostly doing it to entertain myself, so I'm not really practicing hard and consequently I'm not really improving much. But I have fun with it and to me that's what matters the most. When my two daughters go to bed, a lot of times I play the ukulele in their room as they fall asleep. My younger daughter sometimes would cry when I put her into her crib, but if I stay in the room and play the uke, she's quiet and falls a sleep fairly quickly. My older daughter demands that I sleep next to her on her bed and I usually do it while playing the ukulele. This may explain why she fell asleep during the Jake Shimabukuro concert I recently took her to. :-P

These days the songs I play the most are an alternate version of "Blue Roses Falling" from Jake's "Live" CD, "Gently Weeps", "Thriller", "Me & Shirley T", and a couple other random songs. It's hard to tally how much time I play the ukulele a day because a lot of times I'm playing it while doing other things or in between other things. But when I'm at home, and even at work, a uke is usually within an arm's reach so I can scratch the ukulele playing itch when the urge comes. Once in a while, I would try to learn a new song, and that requires a little more concentration and practice. Right now I would like to learn "Gossip" and "Misty". Both tunes are extremely challenging for me and I'm dragging my feet on learning them right now, but hopefully I'll be able to learn them someday.

Anyway, playing the ukulele is very relaxing and enjoyable. It's good to see that many of you are strumming away on a daily basis. Hopefully this is a passion we can all share for the rest of our lives.

*Poll results are moved to the bottom of the page and will be deleted some time in the future*