Ha! Letting a tax return get in the way of guitar playing - that has to be about the most un-rock and roll thing I have ever heard! Keith Richards would set fire to you. Guitar playing is not an expensive hobby, when you can set yourself up with some nice equipment for the price of a Termi exhaust. And then all it's going to cost are a few picks and a couple of strings. I started aged 49. I come from a family which just "doesn't do music". No one in it is an instrument player. But even as a teenager I was interested in the different sorts of guitars and the distinctive tones they had. I think it was at a ZZ Top concert not so long ago, as Billy Gibbons soloed away for an age in a Tex-Mex blues-rock stylee, I just thought to myself, "my God, imagine the fun he must be having doing that. He could go on forever. I have to learn how to do that". So a couple of years later, I spoke to some friends, ordered the guitar and amp and a learning course on CD (needn't have bothered with that) and somewhat bemusedly thought, "OK, now what happens?". And off I went. Definitely the best thing I have done in the past decade and one of the best things ever.
I started on the ukulele this year, joining a local group who meet weekly and bash out a few tunes - if you struggle with the guitar, ukes are pretty simple, portable and inexpensive. We've called ourselves "The Sad Pluckers" Sad, being an acronym for Stainland and District of course).
i was in a music shop in Bath about three weeks ago, impressive array of Ukuleles, very nearly bought one- may well do so and srick it under the xmas tree - £20 - bargain!
inspirational, JFDI i guess! i remember asking my mum for a guitar a few moons back when i was young(er), something about money/cost got me a firm 'no'. Always been fascinated by music- will have to get on with it , i guess- tax return on the fire - to appease Keith Richards ( does he still party like keith, or more Wendy these days..?)
just be aware that if you buy the cheapest one, you may find it goes out of tune quicker than a fat man can visit a free buffet. As with most things, the more you spend, the better the quality 5 Best Ukuleles to Buy for Beginners
Great advice! Took me many many years for me to figure this out. After spending half a life loving music, but never playing a single note I finally got around to it last year. The first time you put a few notes together to make something that resembles music, is magic Highly recommend buying a half decent instrument, I started with a 150 quid cheap jobbie, but soon bought a second hand Mayones Setius and the experience is not comparable. View attachment 57764
I was going to say that if you decide you want to learn the ukelele - and why not? - then it helps if you are very keen on the sound that a ukelele makes. The whole point of playing music is to make a noise - an unnecessary noise. It is infinitely more motivating if you love the noise you are making, or think that you can get close to a noise you'd like to make. So you shouldn't chose your instrument just with cost in mind, or how easy it is to play. You should choose it with relation to the sound it makes and how much you want to make that sound. The ukelele may look like a little guitar, but I bet you can't bend notes on it, and that is half the point of playing a guitar, and most of the point of playing an electric guitar in my book. After all, if we all chose an instrument according to how easy it is to play, there would be a lot of triangle players in the world.
I love playing my Ukuleles,and try to play for at least an hour most days. (They are so popular round here that Ukulele societies are no longer taking accepting new members!). I've only been playing for a while,never really tried to learn to play anything else,but I keep improving,and that makes me feel good. Having said that,I bought a Yamaha semi-acoustic guitar off ebay a few months ago and now having a go at learning that. I'm sure playing the Uke first has made it easier to play the guitar,many of the chord shapes are the same and I think my ears are,"tuned",for a few of the chords as well. The guitar and the Uke are completely different instruments,shouldn't be compared to each other really. For people who've never played anything,a Ukulele is a good place to start their musical journey.
Not quite a ukelele, but an interesting vid never the less, especially hearing Brian May talking once you get past the guitar tech.
