By Melissa T. Tyler, Upper School Psychology Teacher

I hadn’t held a ukulele since the 1960’s when it was “cool” to play music and sing folk songs with your junior-high friends. Around that time, I was learning to play the cello in the school orchestra. I selected the cello because most of the other girls chose violin, flute, or piccolo. I made a deliberate decision. I wanted to be different. Through that experience, I discovered that I loved making music. Certain passages of the Brandenburg Concerto would give me chills as I drew the bow across the cello strings—at age 13--on my rather shabby but serviceable, school-issued cello. I experienced joy. If you’ve never made music, you can’t know what that is. It is singular.

The director of our school orchestra called my parents to tell them that I had talent and should augment my school experience with private cello lessons. I should have my own instrument, he said. I demurred.  It wasn’t “cool” to play the cello.  I left the cello in the orchestra’s closet at the end of my second year of study and moved towards cheerleading and popularity. I will always regret leaving my music study behind, although the popularity thing worked out rather well.

Enter Covid-19, more than a half-century later, and staying home. For days and weeks and months.

The ukulele arrived from Amazon. It cost under seventy-five dollars. The tone was decent, and it came with picks and an electronic, clip-on “tuner” that emits the proper tones and lights up when the user has reached the right pitch while adjusting the strings. Heck—I once tuned my cello by ear every day. Carrying case—like I’m going somewhere—and a strap.  I left the strap in the case.  It’s not as if I planned to play at a coffee house.

I checked the internet, looking for ukulele instruction and discovered that “ukulele” is properly pronounced oo-keh-leh-leh and not yew-kuh-lay-lee. Good to know. You Tube, as it turns out, abounds with ukulele play-alongs.  The original, or a cover, of the song is played while the screen shows the ukulele chord diagrams.  I started out with the easy ones, like Somewhere Over the Rainbow by the late IZ. The just-like-riding-a-bike thing proved true.  My fingers and brain were in concert with my memories of playing so many years ago. After several hours of musical exploration, my right forearm was sore and bruised. Why would that be?  Gripping the instrument against my body, of course!  Time to attach the strap.

After reaching mastery of the easy pieces over the days and weeks, I moved on to the more challenging songs with quixotic chord-changes and bruising bar chords. I play hymns: Be Thou My Vision. Folk songs: Dream a Little Dream of Me. Cross-over songs like Desperado. I nailed that one yesterday, and it has such pretty chords—twelve of them--that are strummed just before the actual note is sung. It takes a little finesse to make that work, and the challenge is what makes the endeavor worthwhile. That’s rather the essence of it.  It’s not merely making music but also the quest for excellence.

Tender fingertips grew tough and ready for the next challenge.  So much joy and so much satisfaction! I have put aside my snobbish regard for the ukulele, but my guitar in the closet calls to me.  So does the chromatic harmonica that lies in a case on my desk.  I can play a regular, non-chromatic one.  Self-taught.  A long, long time ago.

Making music has helped me to be whole in fractured circumstances.