I started with the story of how I came to own the Fanner, went into some of the songs I tripped over yesterday at the beach, wandered for a while and tried to learn some new songs, then got turned on the distortion and ended the day with some emo songs.
Every time I play the electric ukulele’s I have an absolute blast, its just that I always feel like I want to play them with a full band accompaniment, and I don’t see that happening anytime in my near future. So, for now they’re gonna stay my way to kick off the week and have fun with music. Ain’t that the point?!
I was working up to it all week: getting my hair cut, practicing on the tenor uke, going through songs I have memorized. I woke up a little later than I wanted to and almost made an excuse to not go, but I did it!
It took 12 minutes of upright time from preparing to leave to getting flat on the beach. I got really lucky with an open space under a tree very close to the beach entrance so I didn’t even have to open up the umbrella I brought. Not bad. I think next time I’ll jump into the water for a second before settling in to play.
It was really weird to play with no monitoring whatsoever, so I had no clue until afterward if the stream was working or how the sound was. It seems the data gets choppy and lags on occasion, but overall I think it sounds good. I was worried that the sound of the waves would be overwhelming, but the balance seems quite ok.
Playing from memory was mostly ok too. Good thing a lot of my memorized songs are relatively beach-friendly. It definitely feels strange to play certain songs out on the sand. Now I want to start memorizing more too though so I have more new songs to sing away from the charts.
If I place the camera in such a way that people can see me I won’t be able to monitor or respond to chat, which isn’t often a problem but I don’t know if that’s really a good plan. I can’t really think of a good way to capture me and the beach and watch chat in on a single phone. Even with ordering some of the gear I’m thinking of to support this kind of thing it might be tricky. I hope with an Ipad I’ll at least be able to check chat between songs? Maybe.
I had to cut the stream short because I forgot to bring sunscreen and I haven’t been outside in quite a long time. I was already feel the sun on my arms after an hour, and usually by the time you feel it its already too late. Luckily I don’t seemed to have gotten burned, but I definitely need to use the sunscreen. The number one rule of the beach is “Respect Nature”. The ocean is bigger than you and owes you nothing. The sun will get you, its just a matter of time.
The return trip home totaled 30 minutes of upright time. There was extra time for packing up, dusting off the sand, and showering afterwards. The additional activity and pushing my upright time to the limit did leave me on the verge of a headache for the rest of the day, so I rightfully chilled out and didn’t do much afterwards. I was glad I only spent an hour outside, though maybe the extra time between upright activity might work out a little better.
All in all I think its a good start. It might be some time before I’m able to do this without several days of recovery in between them, but I think I’ll be able to make it a habit.
Had a really bad headache today, so I wasn’t in the mood to sing at all. Played through some instrumental stuff and noodled around all day. IF that’s what you’re in to, here’s a bunch of it!
We started early today to accommodate the Ukulele Underground Open Mic, which is always a good time. I spent most of the day trying to figure out what I was going to play, and settled on Cicada Days by Will Wood and Heart of Glass by Blondie. It was surprisingly difficult to settle on songs that I thought would be good for that audience. In the end I think it went well though, and I was happy with the performance.
Also did a thing where a viewer had written some lyrics, and I just turned it into a song on stream. That was pretty fun, though it feels weird just making stuff up on the fly. They had turned the song into music with AI, which I still need to listen to, but I’m guessing its going to be an interesting experience to try cover an AI song. Never tried it before, but there’s a first for everything, eh?
Today we were practicing to go out to the beach, so I tried to do as many songs as I could with as little reference to the charts as possible. After having over 700 songs of options, cutting it down to the small pool of songs I know well enough to play without reading chords or lyrics felt super restricting.
I was still able to fill a good 2 hours, could probably have done a little more even, but my focus waned. Turns out I mostly remember songs I learned a long time ago, and ones that I put a lot of focus on in the recent past: a lot of Ka’au Crater Boys, some Iz, and several tracks from my 2025 performance set. Getting to the beach this week sounds complicated, but I’m still hopeful I can make it work. Maybe Sunday?
Today’s stream was a little unique, and nobody actually noticed why. One of my goals for this month is to get out to the beach and try to stream by the ocean, but I actually don’t want to take my nicest uke out to the beach for the first time, so instead of playing my normal baritone ukulele, today I’m playing a tenor. This means all the chords I’m used to play are all different shapes than usual, and I often default into the completely wrong chords. But, nobody seemed to notice, so its all good right?
After writing the monthly review, I decided it was time to overhaul the website entirely. I’m hopefully going to be writing reviews here about what I just did on the day’s stream, but man, this stream was yesterday and I totally forget what I did. What did I do? Watch and you can tell me XD
A guided approach to noodling on a uke (in G major)
0:00 Introduction noodle
0:24 Overview and Disclaimers
What is noodling and why do it?
“Noodling” is basically free form improvisation
In the guitar world, it can be a bit of a derogatory term because it implies being aimless and not diligently working on creative output.
There’s a tendency for “noodles” to be of lower quality than carefully and intentionally polished solos.
I find uke players to be much more tolerant of just messing around just for the sake of it.
In my opinion, the only difference between a noodle and an improvised solo is that one is done on stage.
It’s a good way to make practicing techniques fun
Bonus reasons
It helps gain an intuitive grasp of what motions make what sounds
It can be relaxing to explore sounds without worrying about playing the “right” notes of a song
Its a good way to create find licks to create your own original music out of
We learn to color inside the lines so that we can learn when and how to color outside of them
Disclaimer: This is not for day one beginners.
I expect you to know how to hold a uke, play some chords, pluck with pima or a pick, and understand a bit about scales and rhythm.
If you need help with that basic stuff, there’s plenty of resources out there. I’d be glad to point you in a direction if you ask in the comments, or better yet come join the Uke Tribe Discord and we’ll be glad to help you out there.
These methods will work on both re-entrant and linear tunings. High G and Low G are both ok. It’s just going to change whether some notes are being played in Unison or Octave. I play linear, so that’s the perspective I’m going to present from.
Finally the summary for this lesson is up on my website, no cost, no sign ups. I prefer learning by reading instead of videos, so I offer this to you as well.
Alright let’s get into it:
Exercise 1: Lifting Fingers
We’ll start with the G chord as our “home base”
To make sure we’re on the same page:
G string is open, not fretted
Index finger on D (2nd fret of C string)
Ring finger on G (3rd fret of E string)
Middle finger on B (2nd fret of A string)
We pick a basic picking pattern to use while we explore the various options available to us
Focus on one thing at a time.
If we’re thinking about the left hand, keep the right hand simple and constant
And vice versa
We start by looking at how the left hand can move, so the right hand goes on auto pilot.
I demonstrate with plucking the strings individually from top to bottom, G > C > E > A in full measures of eighth notes at about 100 bpm
Try to listen carefully to each variation. Repeat as much as you need feel familiar with the quality of its sound
Don’t look at your fretboard while you practice this. There’s no need to yet, as the fingers aren’t changing location whatsoever.
Part of the “intuitive grasp of the sound” is not needing to look at your fingers to play the right notes.
Step 1: Play through all the options
Play through home base GDGB [0232]
Lift the index finger [0032], and pay attention to the change in sound
Lift the ring finger [0002], listen
Lift the middle finger [0000], listen
Place the index finger on D [0200], listen
Lift the index and place the ring finger on G [0030], listen
Place the index finger on D [0230], listen
Lift the ring finger and place the middle finger on B [0202], listen
Return to home base [0232]
Step 2: Now we play around to explore the new ideas just examined:
Let’s play through the cycle again with measures for each variation, and returning to home base between each one
Notice how each transition has a unique quality. Think about what distinguishes each one, and how you might find it useful.
Technically all the options are different chords. You could learn all the names, and you might recognize a few already.
You don’t need to know that [0200] is an A7sus4 to use it.
Chord names are useful if you want to talk to other people about them, and to identify similar sounds, but not exactly necessary for beginners.
Step 3: Introduce a little more freedom
Play through a measure of home base [0232] followed by two measures of any combination of the previous options. Return to home base and repeat.
You can be systematic or sporadic in the exploration, it doesn’t matter. Everyone learns in different ways.
Keep the right hand picking pattern consistent as we focus on changing chords with the left hand
Step 4: Add “licks” into the practice.*
A “lick” is a short sequences of notes
They’re often played in sequence to create a solo.
If a solo is a sentence, licks are the words that make it up
Its nice when sentences “make sense”
We want our licks to be somehow related to each other so there is a bit of cohesion.
A musical phrase that is repeated throughout a piece can be called a “motif” or “theme.”
These are the licks that make us recognize particular songs.
When you find a theme you like, try to keep it in mind and play around it while noodling.
We can create licks by varying our picking pattern, and the timing of notes in each improvised phrase.
Play through a measure of home base, followed by two measures of improvised licks
Keep the home base picking pattern constant
This is a method to create a motif that we consistently return to
You could introduce variations, but it comes at the risk of getting lost!
Only use notes of the G chord and open strings for the moment.
Now that we should be a bit familiar with the left hand options, we can try varying the right hand picking patterns
Think of the left hand chord shapes that create licks to target specific notes.
A good way to start is to think of the target as the note you want to finish the phrase on.
Alternatively, the target could be starting a lick with a sequence of notes then going into variation
Play around and have some fun!
Bonus Round: Add a specific technique to practice
Repeat the previous lick creation exercise with a focus on using hammer ons and pull offs.
Consider keeping the right hand pattern consistent again, so you can focus attention on the left hand movements.
If you need a more detailed explanation of hammer ons or pull offs, the One Music School tutorial is pretty good: https://youtu.be/r6RXbzjpbzA
Exercise 2: Unison and Octaves
We are going to expand our options with a simple rule: If we have used a note once already, then it is fair game to use again.
Notes before we begin:
You don’t need to know all the notes you’re playing to do this, but it is incredibly helpful.
This exercise can help you learn the fretboard while making fun music!
I mainly play in linear tuning, so I’m going to present in it. If you have a re-entrant uke, just know sometimes your high G will not match what I say.
Unison means the exact same note is played from multiple sources (in this case, strings). Octave means the same note is played in different registers.
I won’t go past the 5th fret for this video, but feel free to explore further at your leisure
Do your best to not look at the fretboard while actively playing. It’s fine to look while we’re adding new notes, but part of the exercise is to train the fingers to know where to go without the eyes.
Step 1: Playing with Octaves
Again we start with our G chord, held in the same way as in exercise 1
Index finger on D (2nd fret of C string)
Ring finger on G (3rd fret of E string)
Middle finger on B (2nd fret of A string)
Notice that the open string and the note that the ring finger is holding are both the note G
Play both notes for a little while, and try to hear the quality of the sound.
I demonstrate by using my thumb to hit the low G string and my other three fingers hit the G on the E string in an eighth note pattern.
Next we’ll add the high D on the 5th fret on the A string.
With your hand still in the G chord shape, use your pinky to press the 5th fret on the A string
To do this you need to have good fretboard hand posture: the tip of the left hand thumb should be firmly on the back of the neck
There are reasons to learn how to use this hand shape effectively, but before anyone says no way they can’t and gives up… relax that pinky
This is one potential thing to work on over time, if you decide it will be useful to your playing style
Let’s try an alternate hand position instead!
Because we’re aiming to hold down the D on the A string, we don’t need our middle finger on the 2nd fret anymore.
Start in our home base G chord position. We’re going to transition into a G5 chord [0235] in a specific way:
Lift your middle and ring finger
Shift your middle finger to the 3rd fret on the E string
At the same time, move your pinky to the 5th fret on the A string
This should be much more comfortable
Notice how each finger naturally lines up with four frets.
This is called a “hand position” and is usually labelled by the lowest fret in use. In this case it is the “second position”
One fret per finger is generally a good default state, and informs if you should move your hand up or down the fretboard to play a phrase.
Now everyone should be playing an Octave between fret 2 on the C string and 5 on the A string
Play around with the octave D’s for a bit and get familiar with the sounds
If you accidentally hit a G, no worries. That’s our next step!
Explore alternating between the various D’s and G’s in this position.
If your fingers get tired, rest and shake it out. It takes time to build up these muscles.
Step 2: Learning a new hand shape
Practice going back and forth between G5 [0235] and G [0232] playing one measure of each for a little bit.
Go as slow as you need to to make the transition smoothly
Try not to look at your fingers or fretboard while doing this.
Now we’re going to mix in what we did from Exercise 1.
Play one measure of G5 [0235] followed by one measure of G [0232]
Play around freely with the various shapes, plucking patterns, and hammer ons / pull offs for two measures.
The high D on fret 5 of the A string is now fair game!
Notice that you can shift your middle finger to G during the improvisation to make it easier to reach the high D.
This also frees up your index finger to move around
Then return to playing one measure of G5 followed by one measure of G. Play these measures the same way every time you come back
This is your new home base
Repeat the 4 bar pattern
Step 3: Filling in the rest of the notes
Notes:
There’s going to be a lot in this section but it’s all based on the same principles. Take your time to digest it all.
It can be a good idea to just add one note in at a time and explore all the possibilities it opens up before adding another.
You don’t need to keep up with me, I’m just trying to keep the video condensed.
I talk about the basic chords (major, minor, 7 and maj7) that can be played as we add notes in the document, but will skip the discussion for the demonstration
Being able to use the open chord notes like this is a special case for the key of G.
Technically we’re exploring two chords that are part of the same key. Am7 [0000] is a naturally occurring (i.e. diatonic) chord in the key of G.
This method of finding unison and octaves to define the scale works with basically any two chords within a given key.
The pattern of finding octave and unison notes is consistent throughout the fretboard.
You don’t absolutely need to memorize the names of the notes as I’m introducing them, but why not try? It’s how musicians communicate these things with each other.
The demonstration uses the form established in step one of this exercise.
Remember to always return to home base every two measures!
The first note outside of the G major triad that was introduced was open C.
We have an octave of C on the 3rd fret of the A string
When we add this in, we can get a lot of interesting runs on the A string
The basic C chord [0003] has now been unlocked
“Unlocking” a chord just means it’s a standard chord shape that we can use in our improvisation section.
Whether you like it or it sounds appropriate to use is up to you.
We also have another C on the 5th fret of the G string
This one won’t be as useful until we add the next note
The next note we added was the open E string, so E.
We have a unison E on fret 4 on the C string.
This can be played with the pinky while holding the G chord
Again, this is kinda hard, but it has its uses
Alternately, it can be played with the ring finger while the middle finger is on G
This is the standard way of playing Em [0432] which is now fair game. Em can also be played as [0402]
E unlocks the barre chord form of C [5433] and an inversion Cmaj7 [5432] (we already had and used the open version of Cmaj7 [0002]), fun chords but may be hard for absolute beginners
Why would we want to use this note instead of playing the open string?
Everything is a choice, a musical option to be selected to reflect our intent
Unison notes can sound really cool
It allows you to play E and G at the same time, which has a tonal profile
Alternating plucking E and G at the same time sounds different from going between open and fretted
You can’t hammer-on or pull-off from the open string note
The final note we added was the open A string,
There is a unison A on the 5th fret of the E string.
See previous arguments for why unison notes are handy
Can be played with the pinky while holding the G chord
Or using the ring finger while the middle is on G
This unlocks an uncommonly used inversion of Am [5453]
This is a good time to mention that any two notes we’ve played can be played together as a “dyad”
Dyad just means two notes played together
These are really common and sound really cool
Try out [x23x], [x45x], [xx32], [xx53], [xx35]
Another A exists on the second fret of the G string.
This unlocks one of the first chords most people learn: Am [2000]
Explore the union/octave of this note and the open A string, and this note and fret 5 on the E string.
If you’re getting tired of G5 > G as your home base, try play around with Am > C, and keep all the other “ok” notes to play the same
Last but not least, the note that’s been here all along, B which we played on the second fret of the A string.
We have another B on fret 4 of the G string.
Notice its octave/unisom relationship is basically the same as A, just two frets up.
Its usefulness will vary for our present purpose depending on reentrant or linear tuning, but it is there to be used and explored.
This unlocks some intermediate chords that folk can play with: barre G [4232] and closed Em [4432]
Step 4: The final frontier
The last piece of the puzzle is the second fret on the E string: F#
Now we have a full picture of the “frets we can reliably press to get notes that are harmonious in the key of G major”
This is your pallette. It’s up to you to craft licks that are cohesive and entertaining
If you don’t want to memorize the fretboard, and you don’t want to memorize the scale, you can remember all this information in a simple shape:
A|-|x|x|-|x|
E|-|x|x|-|x|
C|-|x|-|x|-|
G|-|x|-|x|x|
And all open strings are ok,
Just to be clear it’s frets:
0,2,3,5 on the A string
0,2,3,5 on the E string
0,2,4 on the C string
0,2,4,5 on the G string
Adding F# to the mix unlocks the Gmaj7 [0222], D [2220] [2225] D7 [2223] [2020] and Bm [4222]
The reason I included major 7 chords in this discussion is for this exact moment:
A major 7 chord has a distinct sound to it. The name of the game here is to recognize the properties of this sound, and internalize when to use it.
Learning theory will teach you how and why it works and the “rules of engagement” so to speak, but
You can learn to hear and use this sound without any of that knowledge
The same thing applies to dominant 7 chords (often just called 7 chords, like D7 for example)
There is a distinct sound and a set of well defined use cases
You can learn by experience, or you can learn by studying. It’s usually good to do a bit of both.
Does the D7 make you feel like you want to play a specific chord after hearing it?
If you’re familiar with Jazz, you’ll probably want to say D > Gmaj7, because that’s how V I’s work.
The major 7th is a half step below the tonic, or root note (i.e. the nite the scale is named after).
You can transform a major 7 into a dominant 7 by moving the 7th down half a step. Only a half step separates these two very distinct sounds
In the case of G, you can lower the F# to F to go from Gmja7 [0222] to G7 [0212]
Try strumming D7 > G7 > C. Let’s use this as our home base and noodle around a bit?
If you learned Hawaiian style, the answer to where D7 goes is D7 > G7 > C.
This adds the note F to our acceptable notes to play
Notice it doesn’t work as cleanly with every other part of the scale
But adding it also opens new options for sounds
I do this to show you are free to start bending the rules and exploring different things.
Now that you know where the lines are, you can start coloring outside of them
Try to find licks that you recognize or different scales for you to play with!
Where do you want to go from here?
I demonstrated how you can use this approach to learn a new scale, and to make some fun sounding noise in the process.
You can apply this process to any and every key on the ukulele.
Each key has unique quirks that make them fun and interesting.
You can look up the scales for other keys, learn how to construct scales based on intervals, or just play based on shapes
Chord progressions often show you what key you’re in. Most of the time whatever frets you press are fair game.
Whenever you learn a new song, try explore other directions those chords might take you.
This method works for learning chords too.
If you want to learn a new chord, say a barre chord for example, build a noodle around it and have some fun.
Make getting those repetitions of forming the new hand shape part of hearing how the chord fits into music too.
We incorporated practicing a specific left hand technique (hammer ons and pull offs) into the practice.
You can do this with any new technique you’re trying to learn to intentionally focus on developing it, while not getting bored to tears.
Slides are fun. Fan strokes are fun. Bossa style plucking is fun. So many things to explore!
Noodling can be used simply for meditation and relaxation, or as a path to develop your own original compositions. String enough licks together and you get a song!
I hope I was clear enough in explaining how this all works for you to be able to pick it up and start exploring. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to let me know. Happy noodling!
Last month I was on the verge of burning out, so this month I let go of trying so hard for the sake of sanity. I had initially envisioned this as a part-time endeavor to kill time between seasons of anime, but ambitions grew and I started putting in 40 hour work weeks. That was a bit too much to handle, both physically and mentally. I started getting migraines more frequently, and getting stressed and depressed over not being able to do as much as I wanted as quickly as I wanted to. I mean, I am disabled after all. The reason I’m confined to bed is because I start suffering if I try too hard to do things. And that seems to have not changed. So out of necessity I had to take a step back and relax more. That’s the problem with turning a hobby into a profession: you need to do the tedious work to get the results, not just the fun stuff that you enjoy.
The good news is that all that exhausting and annoying work making youtube videos and shorts from three months or so ago is still paying off. I’ve mostly caught up with what I had prepared for videos, but I’ve still got shorts to post daily for a while longer. I should make more soon, but the burnout has me rethinking my approach a bit, so I’m hesitating to do more of the same. Though, it was working to a degree. Channel growth has been slow but steady. More importantly, the number of people who are becoming regulars on the stream is growing. It’s really hard to resist the urge to see “number go up” but I’m finding I really like it a lot more when a few people I recognize keep coming back to the stream and I start to get to know them more. Quality over quantity. I’d rather have a few people I know well and enjoy chatting with than a thousand followers whose names I don’t recognize.
To that end, I’ve been learning a lot of songs that my few regulars have been requesting. Over the past two months I’ve added over 150 songs to the list of playables, while my to-be-learned list has bloomed to around 300 tracks. Part of this was a realization that I had a big gap of knowledge in songs from the 1970’s, so I sat down with my parents and asked them about the music they enjoyed when they were young. I was familiar with stuff they listened to while I was growing up, but not so much what they liked before that. I figured beyond just expanding my horizons, it will also be a nice mental memento for me to associate with them whenever I hear or play the songs.
I pulled each of them aside separately and got to hear stories of their youthful adventures that were conjured up by the memories associated with music. Dad remembered driving while listening to Kim Carnes on the radio, sitting down and rocking out to Yes and Gentle Giant records on HI-FI sound systems, and the vivid mind-blowing experience of the first time hearing a synthesizer live for the first time at an Emerson, Lake, & Palmer concert. Mom was more into pop crooners like BIlly Joel, Elton John, and Phil Collins. She also brought forward Tina Turner, Heart, and Natalie Merchant. It turns out that by the 90’s their musical tastes had converged, and one of the things that brought them closer together was discovering that they had complimentary CD collections. They both enjoyed the various projects of the musicians from Genesis, Fleetwood Mac, and 10,000 maniacs.
With over 300 songs now on the docket to try to learn, I’ve started to experiment with “live learning” on stream. I noticed established streamers often take payment in exchange to learn a requested song live, and after spending some time figuring out how to make that happen for me, I think I can do it. To learn a new song I typically sing along with the original recording while reading a chart, then go over it a few times to hammer out any kinks and solidify my version. An issue with this is that playing any pre-recorded audio on stream could set you up for a copyright strike. Well, Twitch is kind of ok with it unless somebody reports you, but YouTube has a very strong algorithm that catches and marks any copyrighted audio. So, you’ll see a lot of Twitch-only streamers playing audio without a problem.
Since I’m streaming on both platforms, I had to come up with a separate solution: using earbuds to play audio from my phone during the stream. The only issue with this is that playing music stops my stream feed, so I lose the ability to monitor chat in real time while learning this new song. And because of my particular setup, going back to read chat is a little difficult. I’m in bed, and my monitors are kind of across the room, so it isn’t the easiest thing for me. But since I have so many songs to learn, I might dedicate one stream a week to learning new music. Initially I was doing this on Sunday, but lately I’ve been just taking the whole weekend off. Two days of rest to avoid the burnout seems to be working. Also since I’m not interested in monetizing until the following is larger, and probably monetizing in a different way altogether, I’m not eager to start charging for this service.
Speaking of monetization, I’ve devised a “secret” menu of things I can do that is a little out of my normal activities that mostly come with a monetary cost. Initially I had some options available for free, but after some trial and error it seems that placing a monetary restriction on them will be ideal. For instance, I’ve had several people asking me to play guitar, which I can’t do at anywhere near the same proficiency. So I placed a large dollar cost on that request, in hopes that nobody ever selects that option. Or if they do, I get a nice little payday. Live learning is also in this category, since it requires me to put in earbuds and shift my attention away from the stream. Someone finally requested a NSFW day, and that turned out to be a rather larger disruption than I had anticipated as well, so now there’s a cost associated. I’m not really expecting to make much off of these things, but who knows. It’s all a big live experiment.
Where do we go from here?
A suggestion was made to start focusing on a niche, and I wholeheartedly agree. A vision is forming of where I want to go and what I actually want to do. Right now the end goal looks like this: I play music while streaming poolside at various resorts around my neighborhood. From there people learn about the stream and can watch me afterwards, so the following grows. Maybe I’ll earn some tips, or start a patreon or something eventually. I suppose this means I should start cultivating a setlist that is highly amenable to a tropical resort, but it’s hard to stop playing just anything and everything. The few times I have played at the beach, I do notice that certain songs seem to fit the vibe better. More reggae, less emo. But I’m not sure. Maybe that’s just me.
Cutting my hair was the first step in this next phase, because I want to gain experience playing and streaming on the beach before approaching establishments to play poolside. My hair was really long, and since I still need to lay down, getting sand in it is inevitable. So I had to cut it short to be able to quickly rinse off afterward and stay within my upright time. It’s already a difficult thing to make it to the beach and back to play, and I need to reduce my upright time as much as possible. I may also need to change the time that I’m streaming, since I normally stream right in the afternoon when the sun is shining brightest. We’ll see. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to do a beach side stream or two this month, please stay tuned to see how that goes.
Finally, I want to create a concept album of ukulele music tied to an isekai story which will be the main form of monetization. I’ve been slowly working on the story and finding a variety of musical ideas that I want to use. It’s going to take a lot of work to bring it all together, and I may need to go past my “part time” working limit again, but maybe it won’t be so bad if it’s creative work that I enjoy instead of annoying video editing and social media management that I detest. My target audience is threefold: a generation around my age that has young children who they could read the story with and play ukulele for, an older generation who are learning to play ukulele and might share the music and story with their children (who might be around around my age already) and a slightly younger generation who appreciate isekai stories and in which an interest in ukulele might be kindled.
If you make your living as a performer, as soon as you stop performing, the money stops flowing in. Instead, creating a multimedia product can reach a far wider audience and continue to generate revenue long after you step off the stage. The live performance is the advertisement for the album, which has long been a music industry standard. Though in modern days that has been somewhat reversed now since streaming music is essentially free, and novel experiences are worth a higher premium. Since my body is uniquely unreliable, aiming to be a performer seems like a generally bad idea. I do have one more operation coming up next month that may fix me, or it may not. It’s hard to tell, and after so many attempts, hard to have high hopes. I gotta do it but it’ll be however it will be.
A primary goal of my rigorous streaming schedule has been to develop my voice to a point where I can be happy with recording vocals for the album. Presumably, once you do it, that’s it for most of forever unless you pull a Taylor Swift and remake your Masters. I’ll probably want to make an audiobook version of the story as well, so I can reach a variety of readers and listeners. I may even try to have my artist friend turn it into a graphic novel or something similar. I started by trying to just tell the story in a purely lyrical format, but ran into a roadblock of trying to create too many things at the same time. So I decided to write out the story with all the characters and plot points first, then extract the lyrics from that, and finally layer the ukulele parts on top for the finished product. That’s the plan for now at least. I think it’s got potential. A lot of it rides on how good of a story I can make, how good the songs I can write will be, and how well my plan to cultivate an audience for this work actually goes how I imagine it will.
Curiously, as much anime as I watch, I don’t read a lot of fiction. Most of my reading is rather heavy nonfiction accounts of history, business, and economics. My latest read was “The Making of an Economic Superpower: Unlocking China’s Secret of Rapid Industrialization.” It was a fascinating story with many insightful and well documented details supporting the general thesis. Most of the writing I have done was also non-fiction, in the same business oriented report sense. So I’m actually not extremely confident in my ability to write fiction, and I’m trying my best to not underestimate the creative endeavor. But I think I can do it. I guess the only way to find out is to try!
I think its also time to rethink my approach to this blog and website. Got some ideas, but we’ll see if the body will let me actualize them. Please stay tuned!
After losing two weekends last month to migraines, I decided to take it easier this time around and not push myself so hard. I still had a few bad days where I had to take my meds, but managed to push through and not cancel any streams because of it. Being faced with such discomfort left a mark though, and by the end of this month I was beginning to question if this whole project was worth doing or not. It got so bad that I didn’t even want to sing one day, and spent the stream just thinking about what I’ve been trying to do.
There were several factors beyond the physical exhaustion that led to this. I got engrossed in a fascinating collection of essays in a book called “The Foundations of Geopolitics” which I likened to a Russian version of Project 2025 written in 1997. It presented a lot of interesting and unique perspectives, several which were entirely new to me. Also, several of the pieces were written by actual ex-national socialists from Germany, so, maybe it’s not so surprising that some ideas were completely foreign. I always find it interesting to consider alternative points of view though. There were some good ideas sprinkled in the unabashedly biased worldviews. I stopped reading Project 2025 at the essay on “The Great Awokening” after deciding there wasn’t going to be anything of substance contained within. Maybe I should grit my teeth and revisit that sometime too.
A central point of contention in Geopolitics was the harsh refutation of Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” which of course I had to read afterward as well. I’m at least familiar with the names and essences of traditional philosophy, but haven’t read and digested most of the original works myself, so it was a bit of a journey. Hegel and Nietzsche were the main players, though Hobbes and Locke were invoked as well. I feel like I mostly understood the point, though the reaction from the Russians to it seemed a bit overblown to me. Perhaps it’s because I read the 2nd edition released in 2008 which had some time to revise and reconsider the arguments since the original publication in 1989. Or perhaps it’s because the message simply resonated in my mind that developed deep in the throes of liberal democracy.
I definitely have my critiques of the present state of America. Until starting this project, I kept myself intentionally isolated from world events. I can’t do much to change them, and thus have very little interest in letting whatever is happening out there affect me. However, getting back on social media and trying to intentionally attract attention to interact with people has made me reconsider my position. One conception of the purpose of Art is to distill the essence of the times. Indeed, one cannot escape being a product of the day. And so, I think a responsible thing to do is to define the stance one is taking. Is it better to be a vessel for escapism, or take a stance against injustice and fight to make a better world?
What Do I Want To Say?
When the going gets tough, I find it useful to have some core ideas to fall back on to serve as a source of motivation to overcome the present challenges. Several rather unpleasant comments on some of my youtube shorts successfully discouraged me from being excited to continue sharing my journey. Of course, if you stop that means they win, so I’ve kept going. But now that little red bell icon is a source of anxiety as much as anticipation. Is it a good or a bad alert? It would be so much easier to just stop altogether and not have to see that damned bell ever again. Why am I even doing this anyway?
A core idea in the End of History was modern man’s thymos or need for recognition, dignity, self-worth, or significance. As social creatures, we inherently seek the respect and approval of our fellow man. There’s a whole argument about how the competition over vanity or ideals is a defining trait of being human. All animals will fight for food, mates, or survival. Only Man will fight to the death over a flag. It would seem that along with the impulse to be “productive” that the desire to be “recognized” is also deeply ingrained in me. In my head I feel like I am perfectly fine in solitude, singing for my four walls and not being heard by anyone else. But this idea to turn my camera on and be seen by the world seems to have me caught in its momentum.
The goals of the project up to this point have been targets that I feel like I “should” be aiming for. I should do something, and so the thing I want to do is be a musician. If I want to be a musician I should have an audience. If I want to be a pro, I should make money. Personally, I don’t care about any of that. I enjoy making music for the sake of making music. I have a lot of time to kill, and it feels slightly more rewarding to hone a skill than simply consume all day every day. If I wanted friends, it’d be easier to make them playing video games, instead of pursuing music in my limited physical state. If I wanted money, the amount I would save from not taking singing lessons would vastly outweigh the amount I’ll be able to bring in by doing what I’m doing.
So, why am I doing this? Am I just auto-piloting and giving in to the cultural programming that “one must work or one shall not eat.” Or being motivated by base desires for recognition? Am I truly not as content with being alone as I feel like I am in my mind?
When I get your attention, what do I want to say?
“You can get it if you really want, but you must try, try and try, try and try… you’ll succeed at last!”
This has been my theme song through most of this, but then, what do I really want? Do I want to prove that I can establish a community of people interested in supporting me because of the music I make? That was a dream of mine back in college when I played in an indie rock band, and it appears to still be my goal today. Do I want to be able to stay with confidence, yes, this too can be yours if you try hard enough.
I don’t know. That doesn’t sound quite right. I don’t like the idea that “if only things were different then I could feel okay.” If you want to feel okay, the superior approach is to learn to be ok with how things are now. I learned to do this through my period of constant pain because there was no escape. All I could do was learn to be ok with not feeling ok. Feelings are just feelings. You can feel any way that you want to, at any time that you want to, if you’re willing to try and try. Hedonism is not a noble pursuit. Likewise, vanity is not worth the effort either. Is a vessel for escapism, like all my favorite anime, the most I can aspire to?
If you have a choice, I would say it’s better to be internally satisfied without the need for validation from others. Instead of seeking approval from external sources and making your feelings of self worth dependent on that, why not seek to be fully satisfied by your efforts? That is, I am happy playing music for myself. Waiting for the approval of others to be happy with my efforts is annoying. But every time I turn the camera on, there I am waiting for the approval of others. Every post I make I’m hoping that the red bell is a pat on the back, not a kick in the shin. I wake up in the morning and hope that my subscriber count has gone up. I don’t like it.
Another factor influencing this disdain is that I’ve mostly given up on BlueSky and TikTok, and made new accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Its vanity turned up to 11. It feels like an endless feed of healthy people doing happy things, unhealthy people pretending to be happy, and advertisers reaching for your wallet. I hate it. I need a serious motivation to push through the distaste and make an honest attempt to establish myself on those platforms. I’m at a loss as to how to proceed. I don’t see myself forming the connections I’m seeking through those channels. Youtube and Twitch at least gives me ways to chat with people in real time and learn about who is watching. I want to meet humans. I’m not interested in being a friend of the algorithms.
Ultimately I have nothing I want to say. I don’t want to accomplish anything. As nice as it would be to “get better,” holding out hope for if and when that day ever comes just throws me deeper into depression, so I’ve learned to be ok with being not ok. It’s ok. If it happens, great, if not, great. I have an opinion on how you should live your life, but little desire to impose that on you or profess to lead by example using mine. Just as I’m ok exactly as I am right now, you are perfectly fine too. If you want to get better, get better. If not, don’t. I want to get better at singing, and so I sing.
My hometown burned to the ground a few years ago. Maybe my home country will self-immolate soon enough here too. Whatever. There are games to play, anime to watch, and music to learn. Whatever happens it seems I’ll be in bed playing ukulele.
Has it already been a month? April was an interesting one, filled mostly with process improvements and a growing understanding of “what I actually want to be doing.” YouTube has continued to be the biggest winner, starting the month with 100 subscribers and growing to just below 130 over the course of the month. Shorts still seem to be performing well, and a handful of regulars have started showing up to the streams, so that feels pretty awesome!
I (and my voice teacher!) have also noticed good developments in my singing. Both the quality and range of my ability has significantly improved. I’m not singing for 4 hours every day for nothing!
4 hours? But you only stream for 3? That’s right. I realized I needed more time to practice off stream to drill deeper into certain songs and techniques. So, I do a warm up and practice for an hour, take a short break, and then do the stream.
By the end of the stream I’m completely exhausted, but I’m hopeful that I’ll get used to it eventually. The three hour streams were rough to start with too. There’s just so much music to learn, and so many things I can work on to improve!
Speaking of, I’ve updated my Streamer Song List with 160 songs that I picked up over the last two months. There was another 50 songs I had picked out to work on but haven’t gotten to yet, so the journey continues!
This does mean I’ve been pushing myself to exhaustion like every single weekday though. In March I was able to get a lot of work done over the weekends, but this month I lost two whole weekends to severe migraine episodes. Its really not fun. And whenever I have these multi-day long episodes, my mental state suffers. I tend to get depressed and lose all motivation, as you might expect when one’s head feels like it wants to explode for several days straight.
The first one I think was triggered by my brother coming home from college: I stayed upright too long having a conversation with him over breakfast. It wasn’t particularly long. Probably closer to an hour instead of my normal 30 minute routine. Problem was I wasn’t tracking time. I had to excuse myself because I felt it coming on, and then did my stream, and then… well, it just got worse and didn’t clear up until taking the migraine meds.
It’s a whole story with the meds too. The doctor recommended something and gave samples and they worked pretty well. But insurance said no, so I got some generic something else instead. It was also kind of a nightmare to navigate this stuff within our basically rural healthcare system. It took 3 months from my initial visit to when I got my meds. So I’ve been kind of stingy with them and not wanting to have to deal with refills. Even when I do take these generic ones, it feels like they take several hours to kick in, and it only stifles the sharpness of the migraine – a general malaise still lingers. But well, that’s the monkey paw that gives me the time and freedom to pursue music like this. So it goes.
Streaming and Socializing
Leading up to the launch of this streaming phase at the start of this year, I intentionally avoided social media. I’m very much an introvert, perfectly happy to be alone in my room and not be bothered by anyone. In fact, I stopped looking at most social media because seeing normal people doing normal people things was kind of aggravating. It’s frustrating to have your limitations be constantly thrown in your face while everyone goes about taking their normal lives for granted. It feels like most posts are either boasting, complaining, or advertising. Ugh, yeah, I can live without that.
But the game of being a musician is to connect with people, and given my situation, social media is the way that is relevant and accessible to me. It’s been a struggle to find a balance between shameless self promotion and genuine networking. This month I leaned into shameless self promotion, and while it worked on YouTube, I haven’t seen similar results on TikTok or BlueSky. The strategy of screaming into the void didn’t really produce satisfactory results, and I’m not really sure what to try next. I’m thinking I may just pivot away from those two platforms.
The one interesting thing that came from BlueSky was finding a new streamer who does use it effectively and joining her community. It’s a strange feeling for me though, like, watching her stream she proudly admits that most people in chat are also other streamers. I guess networking is essentially quid pro quo, but I’m not convinced that that’s a winning strategy for me. It reminds me of that thing I talked about last month where musicians congregate just to try mooch off of each other’s audience.
Then again, it worked on me, and I do genuinely enjoy watching her and her friends play games. Sometimes you do just need the introduction. At the same time, there’s that overhanging feeling of reciprocity. It’s like an extremely inefficient method of “buying” views with time instead of cash. But having that social validation of 20+ people watching your stream does help attract people and keep them around. Then again, if all those people are all streamers who are only there to try to get your attention and steal your audience, is that really a good community?
The question then returns to, what am I trying to accomplish? Who am I singing for? What’s the point of my project here? I want to find people who genuinely enjoy my musical performance. I want people to find me fun and inspiring. Kind of. I actually… am at odds with myself. I don’t really care about being heard. In fact, I kind of prefer singing alone in my room with no one to witness it. But also, that drive to be a productive member of society is so deeply ingrained that it’s hard to ignore. It just feels better to be exhausted after a day of “performing” than to constantly have to find new anime to watch to waste away the days.
Another part of the idea was that if I ever needed to work, I’d want to be a musician, and the best time to lay the groundwork for that is before I need to turn it into a profitable venture. So part of this is motivated by fear: I’m currently on disability insurance and being supported by my family, but there’s no guarantee that both of those resources will be there forever. If either of those things fall away, it will be tough times for me. So like the proverbial ant, I feel like I should prepare for whenever winter comes.
Finally, I’ve had the thought for a long time, but wanted to definitively prove that there is a relevant non-traditional path to becoming a professional musician. A professional is someone who gets paid to do whatever they do. I see a lot of musicians who would like to be paid to play music, and I myself would like to be paid to play music, so I’m trying to figure out what it takes to make that happen. So far, the playing music part is fine, it’s all the work to find people willing to pay you to do it that’s the challenge.
Right now I’m struggling to find people willing to listen to me play music for free, so first things first. It was clear from the beginning that it’s not enough to just play music. It does seem to help quite a bit if the music you make is actually good though. These days the competition for attention is vast, and when it comes to music, people can opt to listen to their favorite songs at the touch of a button at any moment instead of listening to your crappy cover. So there’s a lot of not-music work that needs to be done to turn a hobby into a business.
Even though I have basically all the time in the world to devote to this project, my mental and physical energies are limited. I’m thinking I might bite the bullet and pivot back into Meta platforms. I hear the ukulele community on Facebook and Instagram are pretty robust. As cool as vTubers and hungry streamers on BlueSky are, I’m starting to think that it might not be a good use of my time. I’ll probably keep my account open and post occasional updates, but I think I’m deciding that it’s maybe not the platform for me. Also I still can’t stand TikTok so that’s an easy one to drop too.
But Father… I want to sing~
At the moment I don’t care that much about what I’m singing in particular, as long as I’m singing. The idea is that I’m in the process of building up my vocal muscles so that I can sing well in a variety of styles. I think of it like running for exercise: it doesn’t matter as much where you run, as long as you do it regularly. To that end, I’ve been learning anything and everything that gets shouted out or comes to mind. There are definitely some songs and styles that I prefer over others, but I’m able to find the merit in almost every piece that comes my way.
My brother came back from Japan with a Miku Stomp, and I needed to learn the right notes to sing for this, so I had to do it.
A decent chunk of time this month went into learning “Not Safe For Work” (NSFW) songs for a NSFW day, which were filled with foul language reference sex, drugs, and violence. Honestly it was a lot of fun. But also, I don’t want to be known only for that. And it can be kind of embarrassing when someone jumps into the stream for the first time in the middle of an incredibly raunchy song… which somehow happens a lot. Could be an irony attractor.
But if it’s what people want, then it’s what I’ll sing. I think most artists have this issue of wondering if they should do what they want, or give the audience what they want. The best art seems to balance both, and present something wanted in an interesting or unexpected way. Once a level of success if earned
Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a perfect example of a song I’m putting a decent amount of effort into learning to sing well because it’s a popular tune for ukulele. Left on my own it’s really not something I would sing for fun, but if people want to hear it, I want to be able to sing it well. Maybe someday I’ll care more about what I’m singing in particular, but for now everything is practice. There are many lessons to be learned.
