The joy of being a beginner

...or all the reasons I embrace playing ukulele with joyful lack of skill

I’m part of a little ukulele band, here in my wee community. We’re not professionals by a long shot, but our wee group has some lifelong musicians in it along with people like me - ukulele beginners, essentially. We play with a strong sense of fun, and a deepening affection for each other.

But I’ll go back to that word ‘beginner’. I call myself a beginner, but in fact I’ve been part of this group for about two and a half years now. And about ten years before that I had a ukulele, which I’d tried to teach myself (and our daughter also got one and taught herself too, we used to have so much fun working out chords and tunes), but, when that ukulele got accidentally broken at the youth camp we volunteer at, I laid aside trying to learn for some years. And actually, away way back, when I was five or six I went to a small country school which had three classes and three teachers. One of those teachers - I think his name was Mr Bullock, and I recall he had a fine beard - played the ukulele, so the whole school got a chance to learn the ukulele along with the standard primary school instrument of the recorder.

The thing is, it’s not really a difficult instrument to learn. It’s small and easy to get your hands around. There are only four strings, and the basic chords are pretty simple. I can play a fair number of chords now, and can move from one chord to the next without too much difficulty most of the time. (And I do realise that these are fairly fundamental skills to acquire in order to be able to say I play the ukulele)

What I find trickier is that whole business of keeping time, whilst playing the chords, whilst singing the songs, whilst making it all sound like a coherent whole. I need to practice more, and I also need to learn to be in the moment of playing more. I’m most likely to make a mistake when I either think too much about what I’m playing and how, or when I think not quite enough about what I’m playing and how. It’s a conundrum. I’m not very good; I haven’t suddenly found that this particular niche of life is - finally - where my true talent has been hidden all these years, just waiting for discovery.

But oh the sheer joy of it! The sheer joy of belting out the words to Cotton Fields while we belt out the chords too; the joy of hearing everyone’s voices and strum patterns come together - and sometimes fall apart, usually with laughter. The strange joy of With Or Without You on ukulele, hearing Bono’s voice in my head while we try to create our own kind of magic. The nostalgic joy of Fisherman's Blues on ukulele, but remembering watching The Waterboys play and having Brian’s arms around my waist as we danced in the heaving audience, falling in love with each other to their soundtrack (along with All About Eve and many other nights of live music).

There is a special kind of abandonment available to the enthusiastic learner, when you finally know just enough to have a good time and to imagine yourself a bit better than you currently are. That kind of abandonment is a pure act of the imagination. Play loud! Close your eyes and really mean those words!

This is our girl playing her ukulele a long time ago, when she was maybe 7 or 8. If you’re not playing like this, are you even playing at all?!

We had a vocal coach come do a session with our ukulele group the other week, and she was fantastic. She took our half dozen raggedy voices and shook us out like dusty sheets; she made us feel like it was really possible for us to sound not just ok, but amazing. She gave us techniques to warm up our voices, and techniques to warm up our confidence too. It was like being part of a magician’s show where it turns out that you are the rabbit being pulled out of the hat. Ta da! You’re wonderful!!

That evening with the vocal coach filled me with joy; there was a strong resonance to her coaching, taking me back to learning and rehearsing with every choir I was ever part of. But there was something more too - being shepherded towards enjoyment, and surprise, and learning how to make something more beautiful, more delightful.

That, I think, is the joy of being a beginner. The joy of suddenly pulling something off that really wasn’t likely! The joy of not really caring too much, and just having fun. The joy of (like the little kid singing into a hairbrush on their bed in front of the wardrobe mirror) pretending you are in fact incredible.

Do you enjoy being a beginner? What are you joyfully incompetent at? (Come on, make me feel like it’s not just me!)