Started out a little low energy playing random songs, and eventually had to take a decent sized noodling break to recover the voice. I’m feeling like everything I do is just a bit sloppy, and its starting to get to me. But then, I don’t really like putting the effort I need to learn things properly on stream, so then I just play more half-finished songs and kind of get away with it. Kind of. I should have just done a learning stream today, but I was tired and lazy, so I get what I put in. Oh well. Still another day of practice.
Tag: Ukulele covers
-

Bonus stream! Beachside Practice
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.
-
Re:Uke Starting Life in Another World Part 3
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?
-

Re:Uke Starting Life in Another World Part 2
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?