Notes from a Hula Girl

Okay, so I am not Hawaiian and my knowledge of luaus is limited to what I can pick up at my local party supply store. That said, with the summer reading theme “Libraries Rock,” I thought it might be a good time to try out a new instrument – the ukulele. The king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, played one in Blue Hawaii after all. When I expressed my interest in learning to play the ukulele, someone generously gave me one (thank you so much!). I can play piano, or at least play a decent version of Disney’s “Let it go,” so, since I already knew how to read music, I figured how hard can it be?

Well, there are a lot of differences between a piano and a ukulele. Obviously, one is a stringed instrument, and the other is not. Well, actually this is not entirely true. A piano is a stringed instrument, but when you hit the black and white piano keys everyone is familiar with, those keys activate miniature hammers inside the instrument that plays the strings. On a ukulele, my fingers interact directly with four strings instead of the 88 keys I am used to. These four strings have to make up all the notes in the musical alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F and G). Knowing what fret and which string corresponds with each note becomes extremely important to playing anything. I knew I was going to need some help to figure this all out.

Thankfully, the library has quite the assortment of sheet music and musical how-to books. I found Play Ukulele Today! A Complete Guide to the Basics at the Lawrence Headquarters Branch. The book was by the publisher Hal Leonard. This company has a very good reputation in the musical world, and I have found their music is usually easy to follow. (They reproduce music for most of the popular Broadway shows including Phantom of the Opera and Wicked).

When I opened up the book, I discovered that each of the strings has a corresponding note to start with: G, C, E and A. I decided to pluck the strings to see what the notes sounded like.

“Ow! My ears hurt. That was terrible! I’m just playing the basic notes. What am I doing wrong?” I thought.

I forgot to tune the ukulele. On the piano, you can usually get away with tuning the piano once every couple of years, unless you are constantly playing and need to tune it more often as a result. On the ukulele, it is quite a different matter. Apparently, for new ukuleles in particular, they need to be tuned almost on an hour-by-hour basis. Since I had not yet tuned my ukulele, it was in sore shape. Luckily my friend was willing to let me borrow her ukulele tuner as well (thanks again!) so I was able to tighten the strings until they started to feel like something other than lumpy spaghetti.

The book recommended starting with a few chords before moving on to notes, so I gave it a try. I played the C, F and G chords, which I know make up most of the chords in the ukulele songs I ultimately want to play. Without anyone singing along, however, the chords sounded a bit flat.

I moved onto the notes to start hearing a melody. The book was really helpful with identifying the notes as it provided pictures of the correct hand placement on the ukulele and what the notes should look like on the fret. In what felt like no time at all, I was playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and although it was slow, it sounded right! I was so happy.

I know I still have a long way to go before I will be ready to perform at a luau, but I am excited by my progress. As I move forward in learning more difficult ukulele songs, I can start checking out over 100 ukulele-specific songs from the special vertical file sheet music collection behind the Reference Desk at the Lawrence Headquarters Branch. Some of the songs go all the way back to the 1920s!

Another note for ukulele fans – Grace VanderWaal, the then-12-year-old amazingly talented singer/songwriter featured on the eleventh season of America’s Got Talent is rumored to be the lead in the upcoming “Disney adaptation of the Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl, Deadline has reported” (according to Lauren Rearick on Teen Vogue’s website). As the character in the book played the ukulele, it is likely that Grace will be making another graceful ukulele performance on the big screen. And don’t forget to read the book before you go see the movie! We have plenty of copies at the library.

Thanks for tuning in, and aloha!

- Julia, Lawrence Branch