This… was an ambitious plan. And I even designed it to be able to cheat a little by including a good number of songs I felt were close to ready already. Thing is, under the spotlight, my “close to ready” really is anything but. Anyway, here’s the progress I made on the three songs I chose to focus on this week:
In truth I think that even though they still aren’t there quite yet, by the end of this exercise I think they will be pretty solid. Well, ignoring the fact that the exercise doesn’t end until everything is solid anyway! What I really mean is within the intended time frame of two months. We’ll see!
I am very open to constructive criticism to help me improve, so if you have any to share please don’t be shy! I am signed up for proper voice lessons starting next week, so hopefully soon I’ll be making some good progress in that department.
I’ve also decided to document and share the specific things I worked on, to both reinforce my learning and reveal more of the process. I’m not interested in making tutorials for how to play these songs – I’m more of a peer in this journey to get good than a pro. But I am trying out this format of giving “hints” about what I did in this polishing process. Maybe someone with the knowledge and skill will surreptitiously offer some wisdom to boost my efforts. I… tried making this into a video, but ugh. Ughhhhh. XD We can live without this, yes?
Mr. Jones by Counting Crows
I was always a fan of this song from when it was a hit on the radio back when I was still in primary school. I like how it describes a dream, from hanging out in a dingy bar to becoming a star of stage and screen. And it presents in no uncertain terms the irony that ‘when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely.” To me, this is a perfect encapsulation of the musician’s aspiration. We all want to be big stars, but we don’t know how, and we don’t know why. We want to be loved. We don’t want to be lonely. We all want something beautiful. I wish I was beautiful.
We know that chasing fame is a fool’s errand, but what else can we do? For me a prescient reminder to be happy and satisfied in the present moment. In our imagination we wish for all these things that we think will get us “there.” Becoming disabled forced me to confront my aspirations and what it means to be satisfied. I used to be a highly productive member of society. For years I’ve languished, and now, well, my reason for wanting to be a big big star has gotten strong enough to start up this project.
I also like how the song starts with “shalalala” in a direct call to another song on my set: “Brown Eye’d Girl.” In that song we sing “shalalala” while remembering good days gone by. In a way this mirrors the journey of this song. We start with a wish to believe, we get our grey guitar, and the band does get to see themselves staring right back at them on the TV. And he still wants to be Bob Dylan. The appetite of imagination knows no bounds.
This was the “softball” song of this week’s set, with the main challenge being memorization of all the lyrics. Oh, and learning to sing “Jones” in the right pitch. That was driving me crazy. I just had to get that down or else it would bug me forever more. So, priority number one was finding the pitch of “Jones” to hit that iconic part of the chorus. Can’t sing this song without nailing that.
Priority number two was to memorize the little turns of phrase that he uses in every pre-chorus. There’s a certain logic to the progression, but it’s pretty subtle and has been tricky for me to get flawless. I’ve got it mostly down, but still stumble over the secondary point: first they’re telling fairy tales while smiling in the bright lights and coming through in stereo; then they look into the future where he’s standing in the spotlight and bought himself a grey guitar; finally they’re stumbling through the barrio, and they stare at the television.
The final bit that needed (and still needs) work is the strumming pattern. I want it to be slightly different from my default 2 and 4 chuck in the verses to better replicate the original sounds, and to give space to roll into that driving beat in the heat of the chorus. The challenge is where to place some of the accent chucks that I want to do, and I’m trying my best to internalize the timing instead of writing it out explicitly to follow. So this will just come with time as I continue to practice this song daily. .
You can get it if you really want – Jimmy Cliff
I’m more of a ska fan than hardcore reggae junkie, but I do really enjoy a lot of the early rocksteady artists coming out of Jamaica. I really appreciate the optimism and message of this song, and have kind of adopted it as my motto for the year. The message really rings true for me. I firmly believe that if you really want something, you can get it. But you must try, try, and try. The catch is that often what we think we want isn’t really what we want, so it’s important to be very aware about one’s goals and aspirations. Know why you want to be a big big star, right?
I have been playing ukulele in some capacity for almost a decade now, but I was primarily a drummer in my previous prime. For the past few years I’ve been taking the uke more seriously, and really trying to not be terrible at singing. I took Choir for a few semesters in high school, but otherwise I’m a primarily self-taught musician. Well, taught by many books and videos as well, though I learned in a time before YouTube tutorials were a thing.
Since becoming bedridden, it’s really become my weapon of choice. I tried getting into synths and sound design, which I still find really intriguing, however most hardware is painfully designed to sit on a table. Which makes it particularly hard to use in bed. I wanted to play piano, and we put together a rig to lift one over my bed, but that caused unfortunate muscle strain because of holding the arms up vertically instead of horizontally letting them rest on the keys like normal. So, if I wanted to make music, ukulele seemed like my best choice!
For this particular song, singing in the falsetto voice was my primary challenge. I had actually originally learned this song two keys higher, so I had to relearn the chords again. It’s not a particularly challenging song chord wise, though the instrumental break did take a few days to get consistent. Finally, the strumming technique to come in and stay on the up beats took a little while to learn. Again it’s important to do this to give contrast between parts of the verses and the chorus.
I decided to pluck out the horn theme at the start, but then to vocalize them following each of the chorus’. That’s mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to do the upbeats while playing the melody, a pure skill issue. Would be so nice if I had an actual horn player for accompaniment! I’m not entirely sure about the hard stops, but for now I think it’s ok enough. I might find something better to do before the final deadline.
Ultimately, this entire project is an attempt to show that you can get it if you really want. That’s the motto! That’s why I showed my initial performance in the unrefined state. And why I’m sharing this intermediate stage. In the original piece, there’s a vocal fill “Don’t I show it??” that I’ve not figured out how to squeeze in, but that’s the point. I believe the line, now I just need to show its truth.
Better Together – Jack Johnson
The song is a crowd pleaser that Stoney in the Uke Tribe reminded me that I had learned in the past. I like the juxtaposition of the struggle of expressing one’s feelings with the simplicity of the solution: we’re better together. This is a message I want to send to my audience. I may not know you, and I don’t know the right words or the right songs to say it, but I do know I appreciate you listening to me. And I hope you can agree that you’re better off for listening to me too.
Also I’m currently loveless, and would love someone to be able to genuinely sing this to. Better start practicing! You can get it…
This was the major challenge for this week’s set. I had learned the song in the past but never memorized the form or lyrics. Worse yet, there’s an instrumental prelude, interlude, and break. I needed to find things to play for each of those. I settled on simple arpeggios with some scale runs to make it more of “my own” sound instead of trying to replicate the original interludes. I’m sure it’s playable, and I may figure it out someday, but I had too many other things to work on for this piece already. I wanted to add an instrumental solo, but then realized the song actually only has a little break before the conclusion. Someday I may, but for now I just skipped it.
I played this song last in the presentation to force an unavoidable capture of my current progress. If I were recording the songs alone, I would typically spend up to a half an hour per song trying to get the perfect take to share. That might make for a better sounding video to listen to, but it surely isn’t pushing me toward my goal of becoming a better performer. You don’t get to redo takes until you get it right on stage! I just have to live with it, and learn from my inadequacy.
Maybe three songs a week really is a bit too much…