Can't stay in my seat.
So...I've been learning to play my ukulele. Not just a little, but obsessively for the past week or so. It's been a slow drip since I got her and then it's like someone turned the faucet on this week. I love Kaikua'ana. The fingertips on my frethand? They wish I was dead. lol! I actually count myself lucky that I HAVE to go to work and thus stop playing.
My friend Sam has a mandolin. She is learning too. We are having mandolin ukulele jamming sessions in the evenings. It's awesome. We have most of the bits of about 5 songs. In truth, we can play The Mariner's Revenge by The Decemberists almost the entire way through including mandolin solo. We struggle at the end where it gets so fast, BUT we have it. We also have half of The Gymnast and we have most of the chords to Bon Iver's Blood Bank but no real strumming pattern yet. We also have this massively awesome jam that we created from bits of other songs we know how to play. They aren't the actual original songs, just bits. We like to call it the Jimmy Eats Weezer mix. And we're working on some possible Yeah Yeah Yeah's covers and some Mates of State. (most of the help comes in the form of tabs freely available on the interwebs).
I had forgotten that you actually CAN teach yourself to play an instrument. And I had some serious help from Aldrine Guerrero of www.ukuleleunderground.com . He is awesome, and really, REALLY shows you how to play songs. Granted, I have to do my own chord work (I play baritone and he plays concert/tenor). But otherwise it's great! And very helpful.
The last time I learned to play an instrument I was in grade school, granted I didn't start to be really good at it until high school but I loved the saxophone! And now I adore learning to play the bari uke. Even if my left hand is thinking of mutiny.