7: Ukulele.

At the beginning of this year, after watching videos of Amanda Palmer playing the ukulele for several months and hearing about how easy it was to pick up on, I decided I wanted to give it a go. I looked around for a while, trying to find a ukulele that was at a decent price. I eventually settled on this one because it came with a case:

The uke was ordered, and I got excited to receive it. I'd been wanting to play the guitar for several years and tried to learn it but I never really got it down. It just took too much time to learn and was too complicated. Sure, you could say it's because I'm lazy, but really, I didn't want to devote a lot of time to learning an instrument that was meant merely as a hobby. That was what happened when I learned piano as a young girl - I spent several years and my grandparents spent lots of money on lessons, and what did I learn? Pretty much just the basics, and after I quit lessons I lost interest in playing for years until I picked it up again as a hobby.

So the uke seemed like a good balance - kind of like a guitar, can be used to play a lot of the same songs as you could play on a guitar (but not a piano), and apparently very easy to learn. Seemed like a good hobby instrument.

So I got the uke in the mail and by the end of the first day I had it, I could already play probably about ten chords and five or six songs. The first song I learned, naturally, was "Creep" by Radiohead, because Amanda Palmer's ukulele cover of it was what inspired me to play the ukulele in the first place. Four chords, a simple song. But a crowd pleaser, for sure.

I started recording videos of me playing with my webcam and posting them on my YouTube account, which, at the time, had just a few videos of basically random things. The first uke video I posted was this:



All The Small Things, by blink-182 - they're one of those bands that most people kind of got over but I still listen to years later. That cover is not a very good one. At the time, I'd only been playing for a week.

Time went on, and I continued playing and learning more songs. I got better and better, but the uke sounded sort of... well, cheap. It made sense, because it was cheap. I didn't intend to get one that was much better. I put some pretty stickers on it to make it look more interesting.

One day, I got a private message from a guy who went by the username "deach69". I had no idea who he was, but he had been commenting on and rating a lot of my videos recently with pretty positive reviews. The message, in essence, said that I was pretty good but I could use a better uke. He said that if I wanted him to hook me up with a nice uke to just ask.

Confused, I asked if he worked at a music store and could get me a discount, or something similar.

No, he said, he just gives free ukes away to people he thinks deserve them.

Naturally, this startled me. Who does that? I mean, honestly? But he told me to look him up on Ukulele Underground, as proof that he was legit. (Ukulele Underground, by the way, is pretty much the biggest internet forum for ukulele lovers.)

So I searched his name, and found lots of people writing thank you posts and all sorts of other stuff about the ukes that he had given them. I also found videos on YouTube of people opening packages from Deach that, of course, contained ukes. He had become so notorious for these random acts of kindness that the act of giving someone a ukulele became known as "to deach" - so if you get a ukulele from him, you are said to have been deached.

I was stunned. This guy - who knows who the hell he is - he just gives these things away for free. And they're nice ukuleles. I didn't get it. So it was legit, but I was still thinking, who does that?

The answer to that question is, of course, Deach.

We continued our conversation and eventually we had it set so that a Mainland concert ukulele would be mailed to my grandma's P.O. Box (my mom was still a bit skeptic, and didn't want me giving him our home address). The next week, my grandma came over carrying a large box.

And I recorded this video.



I have a really difficult time getting my emotions through to a web cam, but I tried. I was truly touched by his generosity. I knew it wasn't like it was a special case just for me, he'd done this lots of times, but I don't think that's the point. The fact he does it at all just shows that he is truly a kind, generous person with a heart of gold. He still continues to watch and comment on my videos as I get better and better.

The new uke majorly improved my ability to learn and play. The strings weren't loose, so it didn't need to be tuned as often. The frets were a bit wider, so it was easier to do strange finger placements for chords. And, of course, it sounded much better than my old one.

I named it Amanda, after my hero and inspiration. I decided to name the other one Brian, so I would have a matching set.

On the day I met Amanda Palmer, I had both her and Jason Webley sign the ukulele.

Not the best picture of me, or the signatures, really. But that isn't the point. It made the ukulele even more special to me. The ukulele has become my best friend, my inspiration, and my distraction. (My Facebook page says I am dating my ukulele. So it actually says I'm dating "Amanda Palmer," but when you click to go to the profile it's a profile I made for my ukulele. That is how much I love my ukulele.)

A few weeks ago, I did something I'd never really done before, thanks to my ukulele and some inspiration from my cousin. I wrote a song. A full song, with actual chords to back it up. When I was younger I used to write lyrics and tunes, but they weren't very good and they were never actually finished. They also never had instruments to accompany them.

If it weren't for the ukulele, I probably never would have written this song. It's titled "That's What I Said," and it's sort of about a lot of things rolled into one. But it's mostly about Amanda Palmer - both the person, and the ukulele.