This week I joined a “guitar ensemble”.

It’s a short-term commitment, with a performance of a couple of instrumental pieces coming up in a couple of weeks. If this experiment is a success, there will likely be more performances down the road. It’s all very low pressure, and designed for players of all levels; it’s just as much a social outlet as it is a performance group. I think it’ll be a good experience.

Last night we started working through some variations of the folk hymn-tune “Forest Green”, putting it through a few different time signatures and arrangements – what the final piece becomes is still a bit in flux, as the idea is that it be a “collaborative” effort of the participants, each adding their own spin on things.

It turns out I’m one of the more advanced players in the group (my venerable and hacked-above-it’s pay grade Fender acoustic is older than the combined experience of about half the performers), so I’ve been doing a bit of teaching and coaching along with my playing, which, so far, has been a good experience.Also, I’m not actually playing guitar on this piece. An odd occurrence in a guitar ensemble.

For kicks, I brought the ukulele along to rehearsal, the presence of which caused much excitement amongst the group (another member brought along an autoharp, though it experienced a few technical difficulties). Hence, I’m the ukulele player, laying some top-end counterpoint to the wall of sound created by seven or eight acoustic guitars. Finally, an excuse to really learn how to play the little beast.

Having never played the uke as part of an ensemble of much larger instruments before, I learned something – the ukulele, even a concert ukulele like mine, is very small, and doesn’t project nearly as much sound as your average dreadnaught folk guitar. Thus, I found myself seriously hammering on the strings with a nylon guitar pick in order to be heard above the fray, creating a sound not unlike a mandolin, which fit well with the folk-bluegrass-esque lines I was playing, and adds a nice novelty to the sound.

“Master of the Bluegrass Ukulele”. I think I’ll print up business cards.