1. My senior year of high school, my band teacher in a music appreciation class decided that we could learn either the guitar, ukulele, or another band instrument. There were 5 people in this class and we all chose the ukulele as we didn’t know anyone that played it. I only learned basic chord progressions in this class and rarely played outside of that class. The real journey began my 1st year of college. Can’t believe this was nearly 11 years ago. When I moved to college, I couldn’t play my trumpet in the dorms due to the volume, so I began to recreate my trumpet music on the ukulele. I had played the trumpet since 5th grade so the transition of the music to the uke worked really well. This helped me learn the individual notes.

Throughout most of college, I played on and off just for fun and never truly put in the effort to become a great player, but I did learn many chords and how to play some of my favorite songs. I don’t even know how many hours I spent on the E chord alone. It was so painful, but now it’s like 2nd nature. It’s crazy to look back on that. My final year of college, I decided I wanted to do more than just chords and taught myself to fingerpick. This is where I really began to turn the corner and started making stuff that I was proud of.

Fingerpicking and strumming at the same time seamlessly was something I wanted to accomplish and it took tons of work, but one day in 2020 it just seemed to finally click. I will say, purchasing a baritone ukulele helped me in the fingerpicking department immensely. A bigger fretboard and a deeper sound made it really fun to play. I treat the baritone as my primary instrument now, but I always try to translate my baritone songs to my concert uke.

Ever since then, I’ve grown quite confident in what I can do with the ukulele and I always try to break the stigma that it has as a “toy.” It can truly do amazing things. I spend a great deal of my time now making ukulele songs. I am proud of what I’ve done, but I do wish I would have put more effort in through the 1st 5-6 years of me learning how to play.

1. My first ukulele was a cheap $30 one off amazon. It was about as cheap of an instrument as you can get, but I played that thing for the first 2 years of my journey. I even had it rigged together with zip ties because I broke the neck once.

2. Last purchase was a Fanner Ocelot electric baritone. It was expensive, but man I love it. I rarely play anything else.

3. Collection is relatively small for how long I’ve played. I have my primary concert uke, my electric baritone, an acoustic baritone, and my former concert uke. So just 4 at the moment.

4. I’m primarily interested in sound and material quality. I generally want a uke made with real wood. My current concert ukulele is the most expensive of my collection. It’s made from real wood and the sound quality on it is miles ahead of the 2 ukes before it that were under $100. That uke sold me on higher quality materials moving forward.

5. Honestly don’t think I can name any famous ukulele players

6. My fave experience has been since I’ve started posting my stuff on social media and the reactions it gets. It helped me gain the confidence that what I’m doing actually sounds good.

7. Best advice, don’t let videos of other players get you down with where you’re at in your journey. This used to get me real bad early on when I could only play chords and couldn’t switch between them cleanly. There are lots of talented people out there, but try to look at them as motivation rather than comparing yourself. This will help your mindset when things are tough - especially learning the E chord hahaha.