Isekai Ukulele

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  • Week 3 Progress Update

    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: 

  • Week 2 Progress Update

    Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. – Mike Tyson 

    I lost another two and a half days to migraines again this week. One was kind of expected: a doctor’s appointment that included an hour long drive to and from. We do have our car set up so I can lay down in the back, but the extra movement and the unavoidable upright time just navigating the clinic and waiting my turn adds up quickly. I returned home pretty useless for the rest of the day. 

    Then a few days later I had a New Pedal Day for the electric uke that I still need to write about. I was having so much fun playing there was no way I was going to stop. Following that day though, we had the one-string experiment workshop for which I took off every string except one on the Sparrow in an attempt to force myself to master the instrument. Well, it seems that the workshop was a little too much and my brain overloaded and again I had no recourse but to sleep off a powerful migraine. 

    When the going gets tough, the tough watch anime! When I’m feeling sick I don’t typically  want to watch anything good, so trashy isekai fits the bill nicely. Maybe Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World? isn’t technically an isekai, but he does find himself in a new version of his own world, where, spoiler: nobody remembers him. Delightful. It was bland enough to be able to turn off at any time, but interesting enough to not dread every episode. Barely. Would not recommend it unless you’re deep in the time-wasting anime woods. 

    On the second headache day I made it through As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World Season 2. If you can’t tell how good it will be from the title alone, your training is lacking! I did enjoy season 1 so I was looking for this, and it certainly delivered the lukewarm isekai soup I was craving. This is one of those where the punchline to every episode is “wow, MC is soooooo talented, and a decent human being who respects others!!”  So. It’s good enough to distract from the pain, but not so good that I’ll stay up late to find out what happens in the next episode. Just right. 

    Anyway, back to the music. This week for my performance set polishing I chose two songs I felt already pretty comfortable singing, and one that needed a good amount of work. I’m starting proper voice lessons from Lahaina Music next week so I wanted to leave the more challenging and delicate stuff to refine until after my knowledge expands. I’ll probably have to revisit these too. Honestly the whole set might need a second pass through to truly get to performance quality. And I’m now singing daily with only one string for now so… eep. But that’s a different story. 

    It’s the goth set! I’ll be honest, I am a big fan of the goth rock and music on the darker side of the spectrum. I actually could have made a 20 song set out of songs by The Cure and The Smiths alone. But, that’s so commercially kosher, especially not in my bright sunny holiday resort town so I had to compromise. Imagine that, a guy just wailing Morrissey while you’re trying to enjoy the pool on your vacation. Hah! 

    I hopefully tastefully snuck these into the set because it was important for me to signal that I have an interest in this kind of music. It’s not necessarily stuff associated with the ukulele, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg for all the things I’d like to play. But I’m far from the point where I can get away with playing whatever I want because I know how to make it interesting and engaging. I won’t subject you to my renditions of Joy Division or Siouxie songs… yet. 

    There’s a growing awareness that there is a higher rate of depression and mental health issues among the musically inclined. I am no exception. It may be about how we are wired, whatever draws us to music may also lead us to a pessimistic outlook. There are many theories attempting to explain why and wherefore, but for the point is that as a musician, if you’re feeling down or things seem hopeless, you are not alone. And what better way to show that than indulge in the misery with waves of melancholy sound! I’m partial to the idea that studying music forces one to adopt a holistic approach to understanding, and when you apply this approach to the world, it’s hard to ignore that it’s kind of a terrible place. 

    Even before I became disabled I had a long history of fighting against depression. And I gave in to the resignation of despair for many years when all my hopes and dreams and plans for the future vanished. Having the rug pulled from under your feet by a random malady isn’t the kind of thing you can really prepare for. But languishing gets boring after a time, and if we’re lucky we find a way out of the hole. It’s all peaks and valleys. You’re either facing a challenging climb, or sliding down after an accomplishment. If it’s all the same, I might as well sing. 

    There is a light that never goes out by The Smiths

    I suppose I could call this a theme song from my younger years. Growing up in a small town on a remote island, I could only imagine what it would be like to have the option to go see live music that I liked being performed. When I was in college, I played in an indie rock band, and we went out to make music and see life every chance we got. I really like Morresy’s overbearing angst and the compelling ambiguity to the lyrics. And more than anything, this song directly references truck-kun, the unsung catalyst of many an isekai. So of course I had to bring this one out. 

    Really though, a lot of parts of this song resonate with me quite strongly. The idea of being so enthralled in an experience with someone else that I wouldn’t mind if the world ended before the night sounds great. I haven’t found the one to spend the rest of my life with, but I’ve certainly had nights like these. The idea that home is nowhere was another prominent theme for my youth. I was never truly unwelcome at home, but I probably wouldn’t have willingly chosen to come back under most circumstances. Finally, I interpret the ending refrain (and title of the song) in a couple of different ways. On one hand, it could be saying that the lights of the music venues never go out –  that there is always hope for a good time out there somewhere. On another it could refer to the light of the soul, the spark that survives reincarnation, or the love between lovers who get hit by a bus. I doubt Morrissey was an isekai fan (especially back then), but if the shoe fits! 

    From a musical perspective the biggest challenge was getting the order of verses properly aligned. This is another one of those ones where the lyrics are relatively similar throughout, but the slight variances have big impacts on the meaning. I also purposefully ignore Marr’s approach to the song because I’m under no illusion that I could replicate that vibe alone on a uke. Maybe someday if I incorporate backing tracks and synths into my show. Truth be told, I’m somewhat more influenced by a cover done by Braid, an early midwest emo band that I’m quite fond of. 

    All in all this was a softball of a song since I had most of the lyrics and chords memorized from long ago. Just needed a bit of polishing. There was a bit of attention paid toward expressing the emotions visually as well as sonically. And an attempt to make crooning about getting killed by a ten ton truck not too cringy. Of all the songs by The Smiths I’ve learned to play, this seemed the most popular and least niche, so it won. If you like The Smiths, and you like my version, I like you!

    Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode

    There’s not as much backstory to this song, I mostly just like it. Well, I am a synth and synthpop enjoyer. But I’m as much of a KMFDM fan as I am of Depeche Mode. And again, I don’t really feel like singing some of the darker songs I know  from them by the poolside. As an early millennial, I never really got to experience a true goth club scene, so all I really know of the legacy is how I feel about the music. I wanted a bit of a dancy song, and I felt my voice matched the natural pitch and timbre of this song, so it was kind of another fun softball for me. 

    You can hear I also don’t really even attempt to replicate the synth leads. Instead I simplify the picking and choose to use a busy strumming style to try to capture that driving dance beat. I actually do experiment a little with an uneven strum to try to add a subtle depth instead of breaking into a proper solo, but I’m not actually sure how effective it is. And I know I got it backwards: There is a light that never goes out ends with a fade out of the refrain, this song just fades with an instrumental. But whatever. I do what I like.  

    Lovesong – The Cure

    There are many songs by The Cure that I’ve learned and enjoy playing, but again for the sake of appealing to the legions of my adoring poolside fans, I had to go with one of the most well known and least angsty songs. Honestly I had half the heart to do this in an upbeat island reggae style like how I approach “Boys Don’t Cry” but you know, sometimes it’s good to be serious. If the timing ever feels right I am actually interested in doing a whole Cure/Smiths set someday. I’m vaguely aware of some issue between the two bands or something, but given Morrisey’s famous attitude, that’s not really surprising. 

    The first two songs were softballs because this was the beast of the week. I figured that putting time into working this one out early means I’ll have more time to really polish it up by the end of the exercise. For this one I actually wrote out a whole (relatively simple) fingerstyle arrangement of it to help inform how I wanted to do the instrumental half of the song. These musical themes are worth learning and including in my version. I did skip writing out the solo section though because… I am weak. 

    Lyrically it was a little tricky to place all the words in the right place, but I came up with some little memory tricks to help:

    First, while rattling through the only words that are different in each verse, I noticed that the variance in the second verse sounded kind of… Chinese. You make me feel like I am young/fun again. I’m half Chinese and appreciate a good chuckle, so this is now an inside joke for me to memorize the second verse (young/yung is a common Chinese last name, and fun means noodle, i.e. chow fun). 

    Then for the last verse we’re free and clean, and for some reason clean comes second which gives it a sort of emphasis that I found strange. Somehow it feels like putting “clean” last makes it feel more important than “free.” That oddness is the trick to remembering that one. You’d rather be clean than free? Sure why not.

    Finally for the first verse it’s just a matter of remembering that “Home” comes before “Whole.” We come home first. Then we’re whole. Have some chinese noodles. We’re free, but more importantly, we’re clean again. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but that’s what works for me to remember it. I didn’t really see any other logical connection between everything to help otherwise.   

  • Week 1 Progress

    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…  

  • Trouble in Paradise

    TL;DR I’m dumb. The buzzing was caused by me touching my phone while it was charging. Seems like touching a charging cable electrifies you in a way that can’t be felt, but can be picked up by a sensitive device like the Sparrow. 100% user error. Problem has been solved and the uke still plays like a dream.

    So, above is the short version. It was entirely my inexperience with electric ukes that caused this non-problem. But since I am documenting this experience, I would be remiss to admit that this did cause me several days of frustration!

    It started when I was noodling around practicing my F scales in the woodshed with a couple of the gang tuning in. I’ve been learning more about overdrives and amps and was playing with a high-gain effects patch with tons of spacy reverb to explore lush layers of sound. It was really good fun, but toward the end I started noticing that horrifying sound of static popping from a failing instrument cable.

    Here’s a sample of the style (made after the problem was solved)to listen to while reading my tale of being a total steel-string magnetic coil instrument noob:

    Since I was playing live, the only thing to do was stay as still as possible and hope it wouldn’t be too intrusive. But of course playing moves the instrument around, so I couldn’t avoid the static attack. It was only in the woodshed though, so nobody cares if you drop the ball, but its never fun to have that kind of thing interrupt your playing.

    So right after we wrapped up I tried plugging the chord into one of my acoustic-electrics to see if it was the cable that was messed up. There was no issue with that. Yikes. It might not be so obvious in this initial short because this was recorded just with my phone mic so I could talk and describe the problem, but a little further down is another example of me recreating the issue in a much clearer manner while recording with my line-in signal.

    (Both shorts are unlisted and should only be visible within the context of this post.)

    The next day I opened up the back panel (with a little effort – the back was really hard to take off initially! It did come off eventually) to take a look at the wiring inside. I’m am admittedly not savvy when it comes to things like this, but I can at least identify crossed wires or things that look out of place. I’ll say I am well versed in the tried-and-true “poke it and see if that is the problem” method. Well, the wiring looked pretty meticulously and clean. There seemed to be no issues with the internal construction.

    It was actually pretty cool to look inside and see the hollow-ness of my uke. Sorry, hard not to get distracted by the craftsmanship. Anyway, I noticed that I could cause the popping by touching the little foil strip that was next to the input jack. I’ve since learned that this is electromagnetic shielding, but before diving into this issue I didn’t really understand why the base and back plate were covered by such nice shiny and obviously carefully placed foil.

    Since poking that point caused some static, and putting pressure on the back plate seemed to be a trigger for the issue. I decided to try put a piece of tape on top to break the connection to the foil on the shielding plate.

    This seemed to mostly clear up the issue. Mostly. The static and popping was still there, just a lesser amount. And that’s really no good if I’m trying to create lush walls of sound. But was late so I went to sleep and decided to try work on it in the morning.

    To my surprise, in the morning things had changed. Instead of static popping, my sound signal was cutting out completely in a classic display of a faulty instrument cable. Was it the cable after all? I redid the check with an acoustic-electric, and it was still fine. But still not ok in the electric. Very strange.

    So I swapped out the cable, and… the complete signal loss stopped, but the static popping remained. My running theory for this is that because the Sparrow is about 1/2 the thickness of my acoustic ukes, it presses up against my bed in a different manner than the acoustics, causing problems with it that my acoustics might avoid. I’ve ordered a right-angle cable for the electric uke that should be better.

    Ok, so fresh cable in, problem still persists. Next I thought that because I’m laying in bed, I maybe I could be putting an unusual pressure on the back plate that caused the block of the Tone knob to hit the foil and cause some sort of loop. So I put tape on top of that rectangle too. No change. I was out of ideas, so it was time to ask the Uke Tribe if they had any ideas. So I grabbed my phone and made another video to show what was happening.

    Ironically, I unplugged my phone from charging to use the camera kit and capture the line in tone… and the buzzing stopped! D’oh! This video was captured by touching the charging cable even when the phone wasn’t plugged in, which I quickly discovered was a thing once I identified the culprit.

    So in short: using the phone by itself is fine. Touching the charging cable by itself is not fine. Using the phone while it is charging is also not okay. But otherwise, there is no problem. I took off the tape that was interrupting the shielding contact, and it played again like the day I got it.

    I certainly didn’t anticipate that my entire body would become slightly charged by just touching this cable. Thinking about it further, I suspect most people who are sitting or standing while playing probably have their phone on a desk or at arms length somehow so they may rarely have the charging cable in contact with their body while playing. And since my acoustic-electrics are all piezo-based, the extra charge never caused any problems.

    So in the end it kind of was a special issue caused by my unique situation. But if you ever hear a buzz when you put your charging phone down on your lap… there is a supremely simple fix to the problem. Don’t touch that wire while playing! It could happen to you!

    If you are new to the electric instrument game like me, maybe my experience here can save you some headache. Let’s have fun rocking our ukes, not troubleshooting random static!

  • 2025 Performance Goals

    One of my goals for this year is to focus on polishing up a set of vocal ukulele covers to get it to “performance quality” where I would feel satisfied with my mastery over the material to the point that I could present it with pride. This is not that.

    This is where I am today, and the hope is that in a few months I will be able to run this set again at significantly higher quality. Or at least by the end of 2025. Guess we’ll see. The idea is that I’ll pick 3 songs a week to work on, and try to tune them up to standard. Maybe I’ll make a tutorial for the mini-set, or just do a minor presentation of the weekly progress. That’s the plan.

    These are the songs I want to play well, and how I sing them currently. Some songs are almost there, but most need much improvement. Lots to work on!

    A better way to do this would be to join up with other people and get both the external and internal feedback from the experience of live performance. Since I’m disabled and basically bedridden, it makes it very hard for me to leave my room. So, I’m relying on other methods.

    Luckily, everyone has a camera in their phone these days, and so we can all record ourselves and see what we look and sound like. It’s… not really super fun to watch your self flub up and identify all the mistakes, but I’m not doing it for “fun”. I’m doing it because I want to do better. It’s actually quite nice to have such a powerful tool for self-improvement at our fingertips. And it does become fun to work through the issues and get good.

    But don’t get me wrong: I am definitely embarrassed by this performance. The shame is only slightly buffered by the thought that very few with care to watch through this in the vast sea of content. I also recognize that even though I am hyper critical of all my flaws, there are those out there who may appreciate or even enjoy seeing the work in progress.

    I hope this might be something inspiring, either in the way of “I could do better, maybe I should make my own content too!” or “wow that level of skill seems attainable, and I can see how that eventually becomes solid. I can do that too!” And I truly hope that in a few months I’ll be able to run this set much more proficiently, and will look back at this recording and laugh. Here’s hoping.

    The main issues I notice to work on are intros/endings, first note pitch and pitch in general, instrumentals and breaks, and of course, memorizing the lyrics and chords. I really need to sit down and work out proper instrumentals for many of the songs to compliment the singing. Also the break sections in many of the songs give me trouble, typically because of a change in pitch and chords.

    Also, add reverb to the vocals. My lord. I was hearing reverb while I was playing, but it didn’t get recorded because the wrong button was pressed on my mixer. Well, suppose that’s one way to make it seem like I’ve drastically improved in a very short time!

    I don’t like trying to brute force memorization, so instead I play through the setlist daily. So yeah, that means I drill into 3 songs specifically to work on them, and then play through the whole set, daily. This equates to about two hours of practice. I’d do more if I could, but that’s about as much as my voice and brain can handle. I usually take a several hour break and continue with instrumental / electric uke practice in the evenings.

    Well, ideally at least. I’ve had relatives in town for the holidays so I haven’t been able to drill down as much as I’d like – and I expect that this is a common problem for all of us. Life often gets in the way. Nothing to be done. Its rare for all my siblings to all be back in town, so I choose to spend time with them while I can. They all head home tomorrow though, so hopefully then the rubber hits the road.

    Here’s the set list on Spotify and the charts for it on Ultimate Guitar. About a third of the songs are actually relatively new to me so I’ve had to listen to them a bunch. I also make the whole set list to double check how it “flows” and feels when placed next to each other. I do re-interpret a couple of the songs by making them slower (or taking out the instrumentals because I’m weak). That’s all part of the process.

    I also run through the set as a “performance” practice by streaming that in the Uke Tribe Discord Woodshed at around 12pm HST unless otherwise noted in the #progress channel. If you have any interest in streaming or want to work out nerves in front of a small and supportive audience of fellow uke enthusiasts, feel free to join up and jam in the woodshed too!

    And last but not least, here are the time stamps for my setlist:


    0:00 Intro

    0:51 Nujabes – Luv Sic Part 2

    5:00 Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel

    8:44 Counting Crows – Mr. Jones

    13:10 The Smiths – There is a light that never goes out

    17:03 The Temptations – Just my imagination

    20:15 Blind Melon – No Rain

    23:30 The Cure – Lovesong

    28:07 Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence

    30:50 Bruno Mars – Count on me

    34:50 Van Morrison – Brown Eyes Girl

    38:23 Crosby, Stills, & Nash – Love the one you’re with

    42:08 Jimmy Cliff – You can get it if you really want

    44:36 Jack Johnson – Better together

    48:20 Loggins & Messina – House at Pooh corner

    51:46 Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – In this life

    55:50 Hapa – Ku’u Home o Kahulu’u

    1:00:40 Neil Young – Harvest Moon

    1:04:08 Plain White T’s – Hey there Delilah

    1:09:12 The Killers – When you were young

    1:13:09 Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The impression that I get

    1:16:30 The Platters – My Prayer

    When I have a bit more time I’d like to write a bit about why I chose each song. Maybe I’ll do that in the follow up posts as I refine them.

    If any songs catch your ear and you are interested in seeing a tutorial or hearing them get polished up first, let me know on YT or Discord. I’m just playing it by ear, don’t really have an order of refinement. There’s enough variety here that I can kind of gravitate toward whatever I feel like working on, at the moment at least.

    And I think 12 songs for a full set sounds better than 11, so I’m open to a couple more suggestions to make a nice round double if anything comes to mind that you think would fit my style and vibe. I’m all ears!

  • Blues is the path to Jazz

    I wasn’t really ready to start this project, so a lot of it will be slowly built out live. But now that the ball is rolling, nothing to do but chase after it. It all started when I randomly clicked on a Reddit post promoting the Ukulele Tribe Discord. That was apparently formed after some drama on the Ukulele Underground forums, but I haven’t dug too far into that and frankly don’t care much for drama. Anyway, I joined both groups, and wanted to share my electric uke journey with them, and so pulled the trigger on making my own little corner of the internet. 

    As it happens, a new friend from the discord who is an actual professional musician has been giving me some great advice on different ways to improve, so that’s been taking up an unexpected amount of time. But I’m spending the time to act on the advice because it will be so clearly useful to me. It’s really not anything super unheard of before – focus when you practice, learn the notes on your fretboard, listen to music that defines the style you want to play. 

    When I mentioned I wanted to play jazz, he suggested that I start by getting really familiar with blues. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never been super interested in blues music. I love all the complexity inherent in jazz and have listened to quite a lot of that, but my musical tastes have always been a bit eclectic. My favorite genres are shoegaze, goth rock, punk, emo, hardcore, ska, industrial, idm, some edm, a range of jazz styles (bebop, big band, neo and electro-swing, gypsy, modal, smooth, swing), ambient and experimental, classical, and of course, anime songs. 

    Notably missing from this list are blues and pop. Actually I have a fondness for 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s music, but a lot of early rock and classic pop eludes me. I don’t mind most of it, but I don’t usually choose to listen to a lot of the more well known artists of the past half century. When I want to perform, I usually feel a need to go out of my way to find songs that I hope other people have heard. And since I’m starting this project to put myself and my music in front of people, 

    So I put together a playlist of songs I think that I would like to perform, and I think that people would like to hear. The advice was to work on 3 songs at a time and polish them up to become performance ready, so that will be the project for the tenor and singing for the foreseeable future. These aren’t really songs that I would choose to polish for the sake of singing to myself, but I like them enough to put the work in to present it to the world. I would really like to do more of my eclectic favorites, but maybe that can wait until I have more of an audience. 

    The next piece of advice was that if I want to play jazz, I should listen to more blues and learn to play it. Makes sense, if I want to play a certain genre, I should learn about its roots and develop a sense of how it got to be what it is. And so begins a journey to learn the blues. I was actually surprised, the original blues are a lot more raw and soulful than I had expected. I am quite liking it too actually. 

    And learning to love the 12-bar blues is looking to be more exciting than I had expected too. Tonight I spent a couple hours just noodling a scale over the progression while learning where the notes on my fretboard are. Imagine that, nearly 10 years in and I never took the time to properly learn my fretboard notes before. I mean, for the majority of what I play, I only needed to know my chords and to be able to sing in tune. That was until I got bit by the baritone bug earlier this year and developed a taste for fingerstyle. And developed aspirations to actually be able to solo during the instrumental breaks, and maybe one day play solo jazz ukulele. 

    Here’s a little taste of my 12-bar blues noodling:

    Apparently a generic 12-bar blues progression in F is copyrighted, but for now they seem to be allowing me to post the backing track, just in case anyone feels like some noodly practice of their own:

    Well, it’s up for now. And yes, that’s a Digitone 2. I need to do a whole rundown my setup now that this channel is live, so stay tuned. I still think some better should music come first though.

  • Christmas Challenges

    Well, I lost two days to a migraine because that’s what happens to me when I’m not careful with my time. That’s why I’m disabled and doing this instead of working a real job like a normal person. I got a wish granted by the monkey’s paw: all the time in the world to do whatever I want, as long as I don’t get out of bed or get too intensely focused for too long. 

    It’s also why I watch so much anime. For some reason seeing real healthy beautiful people acting out imaginary problems just rubs me the wrong way, so I’m not as big of a fan of live action stuff. If you can tell by the name, I’m a real big fan of the isekai genre because oh it would be so lovely to be reborn in a new world with a working body (and preferably a cheat skill). Anyway, during this episode I made it through Pseudo Harem, which was actually pretty sweet. Romance is also usually not my thing since I’m an eternally lonely hikki-neet living with his parents irl, but I can appreciate a good story. And anime relationships are usually so wild and contrived (just talk to each other dammit!!!) but every once in a while it’s nice to get hit with the saccharine feels. I liked it enough I’m actually thinking about adding one of the op or ed songs to the transcription list. Maybe someday. Before that though, I have a long list of very well known songs I’ve been wanting to transcribe for fingerstyle, so I’ve got a lot of songs lined up already. 

    I was actually able to make some progress in transcribing one of the most important songs to get right, but it needs a little bit more time in the oven before I’m ready to share it. And while I was working on it I was blindsided by a fantastic suggestion of a method to practice playing in a key from the Uke Tribe Discord. Instead of following through with my plans, I spent several hours just running around the fretboard in the key of F! Well, it was really fun, and I got so engrossed by it because the value of doing it was so obvious. 

    This week’s discord challenge was also to record a Christmas tune, and the Ukulele Underground Forum had a Christmas song thread as well, so that’s what I’m featuring today:

     

    These are actually some kinda new songs to me, my mom learned to dance hula to them from her classes, so we want to put on a little show when the whole family is around next week. We’ll see if we actually perform them, but I think the songs are interesting and fun enough to share. I wanted to do a whole Christmas set (two actually) but losing days to pain always kinda kills my motivation so… maybe next year. The songs will surely be more polished by then too, so your ears can thank me then! 

  • Is it the instrument, or do I just suck?

    Spoiler alert: I just suck. Perfect example of why I call myself “intermediate” level. I can make it through my songs, but it’s not always great the first time. I don’t think it’s super awful, but I do think it could be much, much, MUCH better. It’s actually pretty difficult to jump between tenor and baritone scale, at least for where I’m at right now. I have less than a year of experience with baritone, and most of that has been focused on fingerstyle, so I’m really exploring new waters here. I thought it would be natural for me to swap back to tenor, but well, here we are. You can judge for yourself: 

    Truth be told, I would not play these songs this way on my acoustic uke. I just used the same effects as I did with the electric to emphasize the difference between the two instruments. Ideally you would sculpt your effects to really take advantage of your magnetic or piezo pickup. Having only had the electric for a week, I’ve just been using what I already had set up for my acoustic-electric. So in that regard, these effects should probably sound a bit more appropriate in this context, as they were mostly initially designed for this ukulele. 

    Regardless, I don’t really like to drown my acoustic ukes in effects like this, so I would probably just play it on my basic “acoustic” setting which actually has a bit of delay and reverb to help thicken up the sound. It’s hard for me to use proper acoustic microphones because I’m stuck in bed and it’s kind of a nightmare to manage that, a vocal mic, and a camera all at the same time. And because I don’t use a DAW, I can’t really do noise reduction or add non-destructive efx in post. Just gotta do it live!  

    Actually, recording a stripped down set like that is probably tomorrow’s project, hence this being part 1. I was having so much fun it seems I’ve overextended myself and have a major migraine coming on, so I’m going to have to put any more music work aside for the time being. 

  • One week with an Electric Ukulele

    Here’s what I sound like after having a week to practice and play around with the uke. I have basically zero electric guitar / uke experience, so it really is a whole new world for me to explore. For now I postponed learning proper baritone chords and just picked songs that I could sing 5 steps lower (or 3 higher). Thoughts start at 30:40 if you’re mainly interested in those: 

    I’ll also summarize those thoughts here because I often would just rather read than click the video:

    • Not having chucking to add percussiveness is still hard. More on that later
    • I’ve settled on a thicker pick because the steel strings don’t offer the same kind of resistance as my acoustic fluorocarbons. I think it feels much better to have more pull, though I don’t think I’ll be going up to felt thickness anytime soon. 
    • Still playing tenor chords. Sorry. I’ll do it right someday I promise. 
    • The strings are super responsive to bends, hammer-ons, and pull-off’s. I noticed I have a tendency to pull my E chord (B on baritone) shape down slightly, which on acoustic is no problem at all, but on this one it can cause detuning. It’s just something new to pay attention to. It opens up opportunities (that I demonstrated by playing Lazy Eye) but also can cause problems. 
    • It’s a lot of fun with the effects. I’m really liking how that sounds. 
    • Steel strings kind of need to build up some new callouses. My fingertips are getting sore before my finger muscles. 
    • [Bonus] I forgot to mention this in the video but I’m not as comfortable palm muting with the palm on the bridge like I would on a guitar. Maybe it’s the instrument size? It just doesn’t feel right. Instead I’ve been kind of using my forearm to mute. You can see how it looks/sounds in the blink 182 song at 6:33. 

    A friend on the Ukulele Tribe discord (join link here)  mentioned several important things to for me to consider:

    • Chucking lower to the bridge, right over the magnetic coils might improve the percussiveness. There’s also some electric-specific techniques that can be developed.
    • Raising the gain to maximum early in the chain is ideal, then dynamic range can be expressed through playing or by using the volume knob. Volume knob! That’s a thing! 
    • Once you plug in to amplification, you’re playing the speaker, not the instrument. The instrument is now just a tool to direct how the speaker should make the actual sounds. This is basically opposite of the acoustic approach, where the instrument is what makes the sounds (and a nice microphone is used to make that sound louder). 
    • I may want a proper amp to sculpt my sound even further

    Sounds like these things are worth looking into more closely. The journey continues! 

  • New Ukulele Day!

    My Sparrow Thunderbird arrived in the mail a week earlier than estimated! I thought I would have a bit more time to practice for the big reveal, but there was no way I wasn’t going to take it out of the box immediately to start jamming! I really wished there were more examples of what the uke sounded like while I was doing my research about the instrument, So, I decided to make it myself:

    And well, it’s pretty rough. But it’s real! I only consider myself an upper-intermediate player, so I’m by no means a professional. And I figure most of us out there are not professionals, so, you know, it might be interesting to share the journey. This is my first, and right now only electric ukulele. Someday I may play it good XD

    I’ve been playing acoustic ukulele since 2015, primarily tenor (low g) and in the “singing with strumming” style. I started on a quite affordable Luna tenor with a cheesy tribal engraving on it. Sounded pretty decent, but over the years I think its neck bent and now it only stays in tune with itself. Not a team player. My next uke was a Mahogany Hula Ukes, an old factory-ordered brand that Mele Ukulele used to offer. I’m from born, raised, and living on Maui, and an unabashed Mele Ukulele fan. But at that point, about 5 years into my uke journey, a full Mele was a bit of a stretch both skill and price wise. You can certainly learn to drive in a Cadillac, but you don’t really need all the luxury when still just learning. 

    Another 3 years later I picked up my first true Mele, a solid body Koa tenor with a MiSi pickup. This is still my workhorse uke and weapon of choice. Just this year I discovered Baritone ukulele and nothing has been the same ever since. Now I have two baritones. The UAS (ukulele acquisition syndrome) finally hit, and hard haha. I still kind of want a nice reentrant (high g)  concert, but my hands are really quite full with these two latest bari’s. 

    I’ve actually wanted an electric ukulele for quite some time now. You can see the results of a lot of my research in the Background Info post. First I thought it would be enough if I just got a nice pedal to drown my Mele in effects. That certainly was fun, but there’s a certain quality to the traditional acoustic-electric signal that wasn’t quite what I was wanting. And it seems a crying shame to cover up the beautiful acoustic tone of a koa uke with thick layers of reverb. The steel strings and magnetic pickups of a fully electric uke will have a quality much closer to an electric guitar than any acoustic-electric uke ever will. 

    Once I decided I wanted a steel string electric ukulele, the big question was which one? Since I live in a rather remote place, there’s not a very vibrant second hand market, so I didn’t want to plan to start cheap and plan to upgrade as I grew into it. I also figured saving up the extra for the higher end ukes would give me time to really settle on how badly I really wanted it. So I fixed my eyes on a Fanner, particularly their jazzy cut style since I’m quite fond of jazz guitar. I saw a lot of my favorite players (Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, Joe Diorio, Joe Pass, etc) playing that semi-hollow body Gretsch style guitar, so I thought it would be pretty cool to have a uke version. I’d also learned by experience that not having a cutaway meant the highest frets were kind of hard to use, so I definitely wanted a cutaway for the electric. So the [jazzy venetian cutaway] was my initial focus of desire. 

    The next big question was what size to get. I was leaning toward baritone because a guitar-like sound was actually what I was going for. You can always put a capo on 5 to play in GCEA but you can never get a tenor down to DGBE. Only problem was I had never actually tried a baritone ukulele. I wasn’t sure if the size or scale length would be a significant issue. It also happened that the iconic Mele Ukulele store in Wailuku was closing after being there since before I was born (they’re still around with two other stores on island, just this location was going away), so I went down one last time to try out a baritone. 

    Long story short, I came home with a brand new acoustic baritone Mele ukulele. It felt so good to play I just couldn’t put it down. It sparked a desire in me to play fingerstyle, which I really hadn’t put much time into over all these years. In fact, I originally and am still currently planning for the Isekai Ukulele project to be mostly fingerstyle baritone, but sometimes life happens and your plans just need to adapt. 

    So, baritone scale length was no problem. Fretting certain things was a little trickier just because of the increased size, but overall it’s pretty comfortable. Learning proper baritone chords has been an interesting challenge, but since I never really wanted to sing with my acoustic bari it wasn’t a big priority. On the flip side, I was suddenly very familiar with the fretboard from fret 5 and up. That makes jumping up to chords in middle positions all the easier. But really I’ve mostly been reading tab and practicing fingerstyle on the baritone. But I digress. 

    Before placing my order, I had one last thing to consider. I made a post on Reddit asking for anyone with experience for insight on choosing between a tenor or baritone size electric. I had never played an electric before in either form, and nobody I know around here has one or sells them. I wasn’t about to spend close to a grand and wait 6 months for a Fanner without asking for input from people who have actually played one! 

    You can read through the thread for yourself, but one thing that struck me is that there is a sizable group of people who will say “just get a guitar instead.” As it so happened, a good deal on a used Gretsch guitar showed up on craigslist, and so I thought well, instead of getting the ukulele that looks like a Gretsch, why not just get the Gretsch?! So I bit the bullet and pushed my plans to order the custom uke back a few months to get the guitar. 

    And it’s a beautiful guitar. Plays wonderfully, sounds great, looks like it belongs in the hands of Chet Atkins himself. Unfortunately my issue of being primarily bedridden makes playing it rather difficult. The size and weight of the instrument cause significant issues for me.. The dimensions of the neck are quite noticeably bigger than on ukulele. The extra strings and the reduced vertical distance between strings also makes clear how different of an instrument it is. I really feel like guitar and uke are cousins. And most of the time you wouldn’t ever confuse a cousin for a sibling. Aside from having frets and similarly tuned strings, the differences are pretty major. 

    It’s also another example of an instrument really meant to be played while upright. Sitting up and playing it feels like a dream. If doing that didn’t aggravate my particular medical condition, I would have happily accepted this instrument for all my electric explorations. If I really had no choice, I could probably make it work. But I do have a choice. And I chose to continue focusing on the instrument I have been playing, which is the ukulele. There’s also a whole thing about how the limit to four strings forces a certain type of sound and creativity, and I talk about that more in my ukulele vs. guitar section. Not having a low E or A string means you have to do things differently than a guitar would. 

    Having had a taste of the “real” deal, I suddenly felt much less inclined to also own the ukulele version of it. I was also somewhat concerned about ordering from such a distant country, and so I reconsidered. Sparrow was the next custom shop in line, and they were located within the United States, so that was a plus for me. And they just so happened to be offering a semi-hollow body baritone uke in their signature cut. Having just had an issue with the weight of my instrument, this seemed very appealing. And they would make and ship the instrument in a matter of weeks, rather than months. 

    I had a few concerns about the instrument, so I called the number on the website. It’s a funny thing: that connects to a guitar and ukulele shop, and then they give you the right number to call to speak to John the luthier directly. I had some questions about the weight and how the uke would feel while laying flat, and got all my concerns answered to my satisfaction. And with a little advance on my Christmas present, I was able to place the order.

    He actually managed to ship it out before the 14 days reserved for production, and then the stars aligned for the shipping to skip an entire week of estimated transit. I just woke up one day and they said it would be arriving. So I had to scramble to be ready for this unboxing!

    Todo: Add text summary of thoughts