I bought a soprano on our honeymoon in Yorkshire back in the balmy summer of 2003, just the thing to serenade my heart's own joy whilst lazing by the fountains of Castle Howard and Harewood. This is an unbranded Made in China job bought for £18 from Haemoglobin in Leeds, which is very fine throughout apart from one note which is inexplicably flat. A toy instrument? Very possible, which is maybe why it's been such good fun over the years, although my main use for it has been for faux-flamenco & sampling its febrile strains for use in Ableton Live - click HERE for a short excerpt from Blyth Requiem for cornet & ukulele. I do look at more expensive models from time to time - there are some especially nice ones upstairs in Forsyth's in Manchester - but whilst they look amazing, they don't sound that much better than my cherished Honeymoon Uke, certainly not £200 better at any rate, but as a compete novice who am I to say?

Have fun anyway which is the main thing. On Tyneside the Uke ambassador is folk icon George Welsh who we saw a few years back at The Bridge depping for Ray Fisher. At one point he produced a cheap yellow soprano which he'd decorated with drawings of the Easter Island Moai statues and the legend You'll never know unless you try it, and after a spot of uke-evangelism he treat* us to a sublime Feeling Groovy.

S O'P

* As a Geordie myself my vernacular tendency is to say treat (pronounced tret) rather than treated. Whilst I might check myself in this and other respects whilst talking with non-Geordies, I feel in this context it is especially apposite to let it remain unchecked.