Music soothes the soul

I went to a senior expo today and one booth was for Music Therapy. Music Therapy is the use of music based interventions to address non-musical therapeutic goals. Like stress, which we all have to some degree. The very nice young man had a ukulele and a drum on the table. I picked up the uke and strummed a few chords and was reminded that it’s nice to play an instrument that doesn’t take a lifetime to learn to play. A few years ago I was inspired to take up another instrument (yes, another thought that I would be fabulous in no time) and bought a guitar. I’ve never played guitar and don’t know why I thought this would be so easy. It wasn’t. Guitars have six strings which are 2 more than what I have on my cello, and those 4 are enough to work with. My brilliant teacher said “Get a uke!”. So I did. MUCH easier than a guitar. Only 4 strings and it’s so small that it doesn’t require much left hand work, and of course, NO BOW. In fact, you can play a zillion songs with 3 or 4 basic chords and of course, it’s all on line and free. I like theukuleleteacher.com who is cute and British and a good instructor. He has videos that are easy to follow. Grace VanderWaal, who won America’s Got Talent, learned from his online tutorials. Another big plus for a uke is that it’s so portable. I love to travel but my cello requires her own seat on the airlines but my uke goes anywhere. So while I’m climbing the cello mountain, occasionally I like to just pull out the uke and play “Over the Rainbow” or “You Are My Sunshine”.   My husband doesn’t mind my singing and he appreciates an instrument that just plunks along. Both instruments are pretty good music therapy for what ails me too.