Early Efforts

Having got myself a ukulele I set about practising relentlessly.

I was strumming away day and night, just like in my teen years (I'm referring to the fact that I played guitar – or at least attempted to – a lot as a teenager rather than the smut you were thinking). Any time I had a spare minute I was learning new chords and new techniques. I was eating, sleeping and breathing the ukulele.

Except this isn't true. Absolutely none of it.

I wanted to play a lot, but I suddenly found myself making excuses rather than actually playing and the red bag containing the instrument sat on the dining table, gradually accumulating a thicker film of dust as days turned into weeks.

Then one day I decided it was time. The reason I hadn't played was because I couldn't record myself, I reasoned. So I headed back to Red Cow Music to buy myself a microphone. I was excited to return home and start recording music. So excited, in fact, that I stopped off at the pub on my way back and consumed enough beer to render the idea of playing pointless by the time I eventually got back to my flat.

The next day I decided to give it a try. I plugged the microphone into my laptop. What next? Well I was obviously going to need some sort of software to record a song, wasn't I? I searched and searched for hours until I found something that I thought would work. By this point I was resigned to the fact that I wasn't boing to record anything that day either.

Fundamentally I wasn't taking the ukulele out of its bag at any point during this whole charade. I still didn't know any songs all the way through so there was no way I could record one.

I was at least beginning to think about songs I could play though. A few started to stick in my head when I heard them as potential candidates for ukulele punk greatness.

A few weeks later and after spending hours trying to fathom out how to use the music recording software I recorded my first song, a cover of a Bouncing Souls number. Because I hadn't actually figured out how the software worked I had to record the song live in one take. This proved a lot more difficult than you might think. I found I had trouble staying in time with my playing whilst singing. I played several decent versions, but fucked up the last chord and had to go again. In the end it took around 40 takes to get something that was approaching acceptable. And even then it's fairly ropey. I'm going to go right ahead and blame the software, the microphone, my old laptop and anything else I can think of for the poorness of this song (actually there is a very audible hiss throughout and I definitely didn't make that noise myself so there was definitely something wrong somewhere). I found a place to post the song and shared a link on Twitter before sitting back and waiting for worldwide fame and adulation.

This didn't happen. Probably because I chose a song not a lot of people will have heard. And partly because it was shit.

Anyway, you be the judge:

I did warn you. There's a good reason only 28 people had ever listened to that before I pointed you in its direction.

Still, the song is part of my ukulele history so it is going to stay on the site forever, or until someone burns the internet to the ground, whichever happens first.

Now I'd caught the bug. I wasn't about to let a lack of ability hinder me in recording more songs. Nor was a lack of sobriety going to be a handicap and much of my early stuff was recorded after long afternoons in the pub.
There's a ton more on Soundcloud if you want to torture yourself further.

If you can stomach my early recordings, good for you. I promise it does get a bit better.

Stay tuned, uke hunters.

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