Hey there, I’m Trace Tessier – the creator of AspiringUketuoso.com. Like all good things, my ukulele journey began with my family. In early 2021, my wife, a teacher at my daughter’s elementary school, told me how they were offering ukulele lessons to students. Hoping to nurture my little girl’s love of music, I immediately headed over to Amazon. But, having seen a remarkable number of gadgets only fleetingly grab her attention before being abandoned to a random cubby and – I might as well be honest here – my being cheap, I invested all of $29.99 in my child’s musical future.
When the package arrived, I quickly tuned it up and played around with it before, by now somewhat grudgingly, giving it to my little girl. While the ukulele I chose for her was little more than a toy, right away I was hooked. As someone who came of age in the eighties – growing listening to hard rock and hair bands – I would have never expected that this would become my instrument of choice. But ever since I plinked out my first semi-recognizable tune, it has become an obsession.
Like many people, over the years I tried my hand at various instruments, including two widely-separated but failed attempts to learn guitar. But the uke is different – the number of strings compared to the number of fingers makes sense, the smaller size and wider spacing between the strings makes fretting more natural and comfortable, and most importantly, it’s a lot of fun! More than anything though, I was seduced by the rapid progress I made in the first few weeks after I purchased my own uke – hurtling, as it seemed then, towards overnight mastery and fame.
While this was obviously not to be the case, I’ve never lost the feeling that, if I put in the work, I can become a really, really good player. I also appreciate how easy it is to share this pursuit with my loved ones – I just play for them!
Fascinated by how versatile, expressive, and challenging this deceptively simple instrument actually is, I found myself needing an outlet to try to organize everything that I am learning, as well as to share my enthusiasm – and so I started this blog. I hope you find something inspiring and useful while you’re here – thanks for stopping by!