Neglected Uke?

Dear Splodgies

Recently I've been having a quandary about my ukes. Here's a picture of them, hanging out and being deep and moody and poetic in black and white and all that jazz:

From left to right, they are a soprano, a tenor and a baritone. It occurred to me recently that I hadn't tuned my baritone in months- this is partly because now that I've had them a while, all my ukuleles stay in tune for longer- but this was mostly because I've not played it in ....well quite a long time. This means that I spent a couple of hours today playing all of my ukuleles.

The thing is though, I usually play my tenor ukulele. It's the one I use at work, it's the one I use to teach with. It's the one that feels the most comfortable in my hands, the frets are spaced really nicely, and I can stretch a long way on it. It's the first ukulele I owned after starting to take ukulele seriously. 

But I don't want to forget my other two either. And of course, I don't want to forget little blue either. Little blue has been living with Sarah for a while, but has come back to roost in Lancaster for a little while. My little soprano in this picture was the ukulele I bought when I was in America, so that I'd have a decent ukulele to play while I was there - Not that little blue was no good at the time, just that I'd not restrung little blue at this point, and the tenor was too big to take with me. So I bought that one.

And the baritone was a present for my 22nd birthday. I broke one of the strings the first day I had it, because I was trying to tune it as if it were a soprano or tenor, and then went on a panicked trip around town looking for a replacement. When I found it, my dad replaced the string (I'd never replaced wound strings before, but this was also before I could competently do it myself) and then when my friends came over I was able to play along as if nothing had gone wrong. I was so petrified because I had originally gone to the music shop to choose an electroacoustic concert uke, but had found this one and decided I rather liked it. And I was pleased that I did in the end, because playing baritone ukulele is completely different to playing the other kinds of ukulele (don't even get me started on U-Bass. I don't like them- they look cool, but feel really weird to play) and this made me learn and understand more about the way chords and pitches work. So I'm really glad.

But I've feel like I've been neglecting them and they must be sad without me there to play them- even though I am there, and I am able to play them- I'm not doing so because I'm playing the tenor so much that I'm not playing the others. Perhaps the soprano and the baritone don't like the tenor for this reason, so now that they're leaning up at the wall together again (because I take it out of the house so frequently, the tenor is often in it's case) they're picking on it!! Well I played them all today, so hopefully they'll be feeling ok about each other.

...yes I know ukuleles don't have feelings. But I have feelings about ukuleles.

Today, this is me having satisfactorily tunes all my ukes: 

See you tomorrow!

-Rosa

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