The voice lesson went well! I learned almost as much in a half hour with a pro as I did from reading the entire Singing for Dummies book. It did cost almost 3 times as much for the single session as the whole book as well though, so if you’re considering investing in expert guidance, I strongly recommend going in with a good knowledge of your weaknesses and what you want to work on. And be prepared to follow through with all the advice you receive. There are no shortcuts, but every once in a while a simple sentence from a master can change your whole trajectory. It’s kind of like that thing with good luck though – you can’t really create luck, but with diligence you can put yourself in a position to take advantage of the opportunity when it arises.
The first thing I learned was that there’s a subtle change I need to make to the way I’m singing. Its a matter of “knowing my instrument” and identifying how to make it sound its best. Apparently there’s a natural point of resonance that we can target to make the notes come out stronger. Its probably only subtle to my untrained ear – the teacher picked up on it instantly. Hopefully this will help me with that “wispiness” in my tone that I could never quite get rid of.
The second thing I discovered was that singing with a grand piano is a completely different experience than singing with uke. It becomes much clearer when you are on or off pitch. Almost immediately I realized that I need to stop trying to do vocal ornaments and focus on really nailing the pitches. Combining this with the previous lesson of refining my tone, my singing bandwidth is already starting to feel taxed.
But wait, there’s more! The final big takeaway that the teacher spotted instantly was my breath control. I had read about it in the book, and I thought I was doing it, but I really wasn’t doing it properly at all. Taking the uke out of my hands and singing along to someone else playing the chords made it possible for me to really pay attention to my breathing. We noticed that I never really exhale excess air at the end of phrases, And of course the poorly timed breaths became super apparent when I had nothing to focus on but my vocals.
As a user on the UU forums mentioned, it’s probably a good idea to treat the voice as a completely separate instrument to improve alongside the ukulele. I definitely agree. There is enough nuance to singing that if you want to do it well, there needs to be some dedication to the craft. And that sounds like a good plan to me – I need something to do when my fingers get tired from playing all day long! Some say learning how art is made can ruin the magic, but personally, as I learn more about just how difficult it is to make good sounding music, I only find myself with greater awe and appreciation of the artists I look up to.
Back to the topic of a master’s advice completely changing your course: a professional musician on the Uke Tribe discord gave us a workshop on the wonderful world of the Unitar on the condition that we would commit to going down to one string on our primary uke until thoroughly working the exercise. The value of doing this was so apparent that I eagerly complied. I’ve been playing for about 10 years now, it’s time to properly learn the notes of the fretboard and go past the 12th fret!
This also means I’m supposed to put all my time into working the one string and not cheat by using my other 4-stringed ukes. As a compromise, I’ve been doing my daily singing while only playing on one string… and holy cow is it hard. This also means I haven’t been able to work on the instrumental parts that are typically a large weakness. So for this week I tried picking a few songs that mostly required lyric and chord memorization more than instrumental development. And of course songs that would be nice to try incorporate the new lessons in singing into.
Count On Me – Bruno Mars
There’s no denying the talent of Bruno Mars, and I appreciate that he’s from Hawaii too. I picked this little tune over some of his other major hits because it resonates with me more. It’s relatively simple and straightforward, but it’s nice. Cozy. Memorable. The kind of song that when I first heard it I said “oh, that’s cute!” Then I looked it up and decided to learn it. I’m hoping that’s the kind of response my audience has when I sing it too. I think it’s a good one for uke, and it’d be a particularly nice song to sing to your child or to woo a lover. Not that I have either. But if I did, this would probably be a staple in our house.
The progression has more than four chords, but it’s pretty consistent so once you get the order down it’s not too bad. I was able to find and play the roots on one string to practice while memorizing the lyrics and focusing on the vocals. Stripping back and focusing on the essentials is the name of the game this week, so I chose not to even try the very memorable high-note ornament he uses toward the end of the song. Someday I may, but for now I’m just trying to get through with solid pitches and accurate lyrics.
One thing I did want to do for this song was add in a travis picking style strum to form a bass line, and to use the movable shape for Em (4432) to create something a little different from usual. But, that would take practicing with 4 strings. So for now I’m just using the open Em and letting it be a little less tight than it ideally would be. Just another “someday I may” get it right.
Hey There Delilah – Plain White Tees
I was reminded that I knew how to play this song in a recent Uke Tribe Open Mic, but the original key was a little bit too high for me so I had to relearn the chords along with remembering the correct order of the lyrics again. I’m told I should change up the key for sequential songs, but I was struggling so much on one string I just had to default to a familiar progression.
I think this song was popular when I was in college, and so I assume it will be recognizable by my target audience of millennials on vacation in Hawaii. I think it translates nicely to low-g ukulele, and is definitely a challenge for the vocals. There’s no hiding in that chorus! The point of practice is to get better at doing things you couldn’t do before, and I’d like to be able to sing refrains like this with confidence. So, on the set list it goes.
It helps that it’s a quaint message too. It came from a time before online relationships were the norm, and when long distance relationships were much harder to maintain. Not that I really know if it’s any easier these days, but now that everyone has a good camera and zoom, I’m sure you can make it work if you really wanted to. Back then there really was a worry about the distance, and if you got lonely maybe you could text, but sitting in front of your computer with laggy low-resolution webcams was not a compelling substitute for a heartfelt song. It also encapsulates the mythos that one can “make it” with music. After all, they did make a successful hit with that guitar. I think it’s something most musical aspirants at least dream about at some point. I did too. Wouldn’t it be nice.
Yeah, I’d surely like to have the girl, and to hit those high notes. But I’ll stay on uke thanks very much.
The Impression That I Get – Mighty Mighty Bosstones
I try to only keep half of an eye on what’s happening out there in the real world, and it seems to me like the standard empathetic impulse has been continually degrading. Being born and raised and living in a relatively small community on a relatively small island makes it highly likely that you will encounter the same people throughout your life. This means that if you’re a jerk, people will remember you. So there’s mostly a sort of default level of respect most people afford to each other. Word travels quickly here, and if you’re too unfriendly you stop getting invited to parties. Now that you can be anonymous on the internet there’s a whole sense of “I’m never going to see this person again so I’ll say anything I want” which sort of baffles me. I mean, I get it, but I don’t really understand what life is like with that mindset.
When the fires took out the heart of Lahaina town, there was not much I could do but watch on in horror. Then thank my lucky stars we survived. So this song has quite a bit of a personal relevance for me. I know lots of people who were affected, and I know it isn’t good. But I still didn’t face the fire directly myself, so all I have is this impression. Now that I see something similar going on in California on a much grander scale, my heart goes out to them. It’s an awful feeling to see your community destroyed, to lose all the landmarks of your youth, and to be left with literally nothing but ashes. And it’s hard to empathize with such a grand tragedy. But I think it’s important to at least make the effort to sympathize.
And this doesn’t only apply to victims of natural disasters. We can rarely fully empathize with the lives of others, but we can recognize that they are having a human experience just as we are, and should be treated with a certain amount of dignity by default. People are the way they are for reasons. Treating others as you would like to be treated seems like a good policy to me.
Ok I’ll get off my soapbox now. Back to the jumpin’ ska tune. Since this one is a lot about rhythm, again my main work this week was on memorizing the lyrics, forms, and chord progression. Again I mostly just practiced by playing the roots on one string, and picking the rhythm of the strumming to settle on when to use upbeats. Just like with the Jack Johnson song I skipped the unique intro because I lack the skills to emulate it. It’s challenge enough for me to sing the horn parts and get the words correct. Oh, and to sing it with feeling. Man, there’s so much to work on. I’m really thinking a second pass over everything is probably going to be necessary to get to where i want to be. Maybe even a third. Who knows.
In other news, lately I’ve been kind of obsessed with Chet Baker and Wolfgang Lackerschmid’s Ballads for Two. Something about the ethereal vibraphone and soulful trumpet really does it for me. I’d love to play around with something similar with uke solo’s over atmospheric synths. One day, after I conquer the unitar.
This week in anime I’m continuing to catch up on the fall season that just finished. I hate waiting for weekly episodes so I just wait till the season ends and binge. I needed to not look at my fretboard while running scales, so I wound up watching a bunch of shows while I practiced.
“The Do Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor” was actually objectively pretty decent, if you can ignore the MASSIVE ELEPHANT THEY KEEP POKING throughout. I don’t care if there’s lore reasons, your emperor just can’t be so excited that his bride is under 14. I guess it’s some consolation that in reality it’s an adult woman voice acting as a 16-year old who was time warped back into her 10 year old body to marry a 19 year old dignitary. Ugh. Nope that’s not any better. The story would have been just fine, if not superior, if everyone was of legal age from the start. It wasn’t as bad/good as Onimai, but I’d say maybe similarly discomforting. Oh Japan.
“Loner Life in Another World” was basically Mary Sue: The Isekai. By episode 2 he was no longer a loner, and all his “junk skills” turned out to be crazy OP and everybody loves our whiny reluctant isekai hero and everything always turns out well for him because he’s just so “ingenious.” The show was so aggressively average I was somewhat impressed. They have to like, intentionally avoid being too unique or interesting and actually be actively annoying to hit 5/10 so hard. I actually do kind of like it for that, but I would not go as far as to call it remotely good. The premise sounded like it had promise. Unfortunately, they did not deliver.
“Let this Grieving Soul Retire” was like a wish.com Eminence in the Shadow. It was actually a pretty fun not-isekai fantasy romp that I enjoyed. It never quite hits the same highs as Eminence… no, it doesn’t even come close to the peaks of Eminence, but it’s still a good time nevertheless. At least this whiny reluctant hero is actually weak, and the ensuing hijinks are definitely more entertaining than annoying. That ending song kind of grew on me as an earworm too. Maybe it’s that scream. Or the way they did interesting transitions into it. Or the booty shorts? Idk. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the next season.
Finally the dark horse of this week was “Kinokoinu: Mushroom Pup.” The UU weekly challenge theme was “animal farm” so they wanted a song related to animals and I thought I might find a quirky opening or closing theme to learn. Alas, I was hit with a heart wrenching story of overcoming grief and breaking out of depression after everyone you love has died. With the help of your very own magical mushroom dog mascot character, of course. If you find yourself listless after losing a pet or a parent, it might be a comforting watch. Otherwise on its own I felt it was kind of a downer. Sadly, unconditionally loving magical mushroom dogs don’t seem to pop out of nowhere to comfort us in real life very often.
I didn’t get a cute song out of that show, but defaulted to one of the few songs featuring animals I already knew. Here’s my submission to the UU weekly song challenge as a bonus for making it this far: