When you can't play for love not money, fake it and sing out of tune!!
Mondays are a pretty useless day and in my experience they usually involve work, eating and sleeping, zzzzzzz. So to spice things up myself and some equally Monday hating friends decided to try to learn how to play the Ukuele, because why not!The Queen of Hoxton's Ukuele Hootananny is advertised as a gathering for "regular Ukers, beginners or anyone who is just Uke curious”. I must admit I was excited for most of the day at the prospect of actually playing an instrument and making a recognizable and hopefully enjoyable sound. My expectations of my own abilities were pretty low as I am still impressed with the fact that I mastered Hot Cross Buns on the recorder.
BUT sadly things didn't exactly go as we planned.
Before anyone thinks I am about to slate this event, I would just like to point out that if your a seasoned player who a) knows what there doing b) owns a Ukuele or c) can fake it better than we could then this is the place for you! However, if you are a beginner (like us) who have never even touched this mini guitar like little thing with strings then this is unfortunately not for total newbies (unless your a musical genius).
So why exactly did we not learn anything. Well, when we rocked up dead on 7 raring to go, people had just started to arrive and a worrying theme was occurring.... Most of those entering the Queen of Hoxton had a Ukuele with them which hints that most of these people are regulars rather than total novices. Once 30/35 or so people had arrived we grabbed ourselves a Uke and a songbook from the box that had been laid out; so a promising start you may say. The organiser got everyone's attention, told us to turn to page 21, we sat there fingers poised and ready for our first instruction but in a cruel twist of fete he counted one, two, three go..... and that;s exactly what everyone did, except for us obviously. After half of hour of trying to figure it out we admitted defeat and visited the Nordic theme themed rooftop bar (Skye Halla) which I must say was incredible (separate blog to come about that).
So my overall rating:
For beginners - 1 lemon - If you fancy a giggle and a sing song go for it but if you actually expect to learn how to play a tune then not so much
Uke players - 4 lemons - A high rating as I doubt that there are many places with the atmosphere and comradery that this place offers for top class Ukers!
