Top 102 Ukulele Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

I remember I asked my mom for a ukulele, and she said no because she thought I would never play it. So then I got my birthday money up, and I bought my own. It was the most rebellious thing I've ever done.

I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.

I started playing ukulele first for 2 years from age 9 to 11 and got my first guitar and got inspired by blues I heard on the radio that turned me on and I started learning myself.

I've been writing and collecting songs on the ukulele for at least 10 years, so it was time to clear them out of the apartment building and make room for some new occupants.I need to make room for the bassoon record.

There's something about guitars, they're just so big, you know what I mean? You're just like, 'Ugh!' It just seems so overwhelming. And the ukulele is, like, the opposite of overwhelming.

Now everybody's got a crazy notion of their own. Some like to mix up with a crowd, some like to be alone. It's no one elses' business as far as I can see, but every time that I go out the people stare at me, with me little ukulele in me hand.

You know, the ukulele itself is not a very loud instrument, all right? And, you know, compared to like a trumpet, right? A trumpet is really loud.

Most of my ukulele heroes were traditional players from Hawaii, like Eddie Kamae and Ohta-san. There may not be uke stars in popular culture, but there are certainly pop stars that play uke - George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Taylor Swift, Train, and Paul McCartney.

You go to a studio with a guitar, people are like, 'Oh this girl's going to write this song on a guitar.' Or wants to, or whatever. You go with a ukulele, people are just like 'Eh, well, whatever.' They don't really care. It's a very non-threatening kind of instrument.

The first songs I ever wrote - my first, like, serious offerings - were all written on ukulele. It's always been a part of the way I write for a really long time.

I love the fact that people don't see the ukulele as a serious instrument. A lot of people see it as more of a toy, and I love that because it just proves that people aren't intimidated by the instrument. They aren't afraid to pick it up.

I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.

I play guitar, the ukulele and the piano. I grew up on a mountain in Tennessee, and we had 'The Mountain Opry,' where anyone could just get up on stage to perform. It was just about the soul and heart of music. My upbringing was less about being great and more about just doing what you love. It was always for joy.

My advice for someone just learning the ukulele would be to have fun with it and not take anything too seriously. Some songs that I think are great for beginners would be, 'House of Gold,' 'Riptide,' and 'I Don't Know My Name.'

Sometimes I can't think of a better way to end my day than coming home and just strumming my ukulele for a few minutes. I mean, I joke around and tell people that it's an entire yoga session in one strum, you know?

It was never part of how I imagined my music, and I watched in awe at how this ukulele troubadour image suddenly devoured the Jens Lekman I had planned so carefully.

I spent my entire life working with the smallest budget I could get. Just working with old, junky, donated equipment. The only things I bought myself were the trumpet and the $9 ukulele.

II know very, very little about the ukulele, but I actually grew up playing the viola from 4th grade through high school.

When I was five my parents bought me a ukulele for Christmas. I quickly learned how to play it with my father's guidance. Thereafter, my father regularly taught me all the good old fashioned songs.

What I think is cool about Fender, and what originally drew me to them, was the Fender electric guitar headstock, which I've never seen on another ukulele. I feel like a rock star when I'm tuning it.

We, America, elected Trump. Putin didn't do it, nor the trolls in St. Petersburg with their zillions of busy bots. They may well have plucked certain strings in the national psyche - played us like a dimestore ukulele - but we were keen to be plucked.

My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds.

Elvis came along when I was 10. My father gave me a bass ukulele. I taught myself how to play from a book to play some chords, so I was laying down 'Hound Dog' and things like that when I was 10 years old in 1955. That's the way I was. My ear was glued to the radio. I knew right then what I wanted to do.

I started playing the ukulele in the year 2000. That sounds so futuristic saying it like that. The year 2000.

I like to play the ukulele, but I'm not, like, awesome at it. I mostly play the piano and the guitar.

I play guitar, the ukulele and the piano. I grew up on a mountain in Tennessee and we had The Mountain Opry, where anyone could just get up on stage to perform. It was just about the soul and heart of music. My upbringing was less about being great and more about just doing what you love. It was always for joy.

I play the piano, drums, little bit of bass, guitar. I can play harmonica, a little bit of the ukulele. Pretty much anything that's a strumming, string type thing.

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.

I'm an American songbook guy, though I've got eclectic tastes. I really love the American songbook. I've taken up the ukulele, and so you can play 'Five Foot Two' and Hawaiian music, but you can also do some of the great tunes, like 'You Go to My Head,' 'I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,' 'Taking a Chance on Love.'

I mostly play old period songs, as they suit a ukulele more. I bought it when I saw the tribute concert to George Harrison. Joe Brown came on and sang 'I'll See You In My Dreams,' and there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.

I learned so much about music by playing this little, miniature songwriting machine [ukulele], especially about melody. The motto is less strings more melody.

I would love to sit down and do only the ukulele with a very small crowd. I would also like to sing the super poppy songs and all the background stuff. I think both would be an interesting path.

I always feel a little funny being in front of a lot of people trying to show them my approach to the ukulele, but I do enjoy it. I do get a little more nervous doing workshops rather than performing.

When I was in Toronto shooting 'Hemlock Grove,' I'd spend a couple of hours in the makeup trailer every day because my character had all these tattoos. I was telling one of the artists how bored I was - I didn't really know anybody - and he said, 'Pick up a ukulele and start playing. They're 30 bucks for a cheap one.' And I did!

Another goal that I have is to learn how to play the ukulele - should be fun - and to stop taking my clothes off for money. But I need money. That is a ridiculous goal. I'm gonna cross that one off. That's stupid.

I actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.

One interesting thing - I play bass and guitar and stuff like that. I know those instruments really well. But I don't know how to play clarinet or trombone or any of these other instruments. I don't actually know how to play ukulele even though I've played it a lot in the past. Because of the weird tuning it's not exactly like a guitar. That's one of the reasons I like that instrument - it makes for surprises. It's not so predictable as the bass or the guitar is for me.

A family friend was staying with us once and had brought over a ukulele. I just loved the way she played it. I saved up the money from my 11th birthday and went out and bought one for myself.

I see a young man playing 'Plaisir d'Amour' on guitar. I knew I didn't want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing.

My daddy had been a fiddler, and I heard a lot of fiddle music as a child. I had a ukulele and had played along with him.

Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. Senor Dali has the jump on me from the beginning. He remembers and describes in detail what it was like in the womb. My own earliest memory is of accompanying my father to a polling booth in Columbus, Ohio, where he voted for William McKinley.