Skip to main content

Day Ninety Nine (Year Four)

Most of my musical activity tonight was ukulele related.  I hadn't picked it up in about a week, and on a whim, after running through my lick for Guitar Aerobics, I took it out of the case, and tuned it up.  I was a little bit rusty, but went back through a few basic chords, and found that it came back pretty quickly.

Also, I finally found the "Learn Ukulele" book that I had snagged at Half Price Books over the summer.  It's got good lessons in it that advance at a good rate for someone just starting out.  There's also a huge chord and scale dictionary in the back part of the book, which is awesome.

After playing for about half an hour, I ventured out to the computer, and tried to find a tabbed out version of Jake Shimabukuro's take on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."  I found something that at least comes close, from the sound of the description, and that will be a good enough place for me to start.  His version of that song is my holy grail on ukulele.

And then, of course, after that I found a YouTube video of him performing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," so yeah, maybe there are two ukulele holy grails in my world.

All told, the music tonight was relaxing and productive, even though there wasn't much guitar involved.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Six (Year Four)

Today was the first official day of the second half of my "album-in-a-month" challenge. As for today's goals, I wanted to see what I could get done in regards to track order, and get at least a little bit of a start on the lyric writing process. I spent more time working on the track order question than I did on the lyrics today, but as a result of that, I ended up with something that I think will work in terms of order. I did sit with the notebook for a few minutes at the very end of the day, and got a solid starting line of lyric and some other ideas that I hope will be jumping off points for lyrics. What I'm thinking I might do, however, is switch my focus from the lyric writing part of the process directly to the recording part of the process.  That way, if I can get the music recorded and burned onto a CD, I can take the music with me in the car, and listen and try to see what images and thoughts the music brings up.  It's a tactic that has worked for...

Day Two Hundred Ninety Two (Year Five)

Today was the last seminary village cookout of the year. While we were all sitting around the picnic tables eating dinner, I got a chance to talk with a few of the Mrs.'s classmates about guitar related stuff. As it turns out, more than one of them wants to be more proficient on guitar. I'm not saying that this will lead to more teaching opportunities, but I told one of them that I would throw a folder together for them. Essentially, anytime I get a chance to talk shop is a great chance for me to reinforce some of the things I have been focusing on. If nothing else, it gets me thinking ahead to tomorrow's day off and a chance to get into the studio for a decent amount of time.

Day Three Hundred Nine (Year Seven)

Well, it happened.  We came, we saw, and we (sort of) conquered.  I'm not sure how great we played all the way through, but there were definite moments that went really well, and all things considered (from my side anyway), it was an absolute blast and I hope we get to play again for something that's not church related. The set list, as it was, went like this: 1.  I'll Fly Away 2.  From This Valley 3.  Crazy 4.  My Church 5.  Jolene 6.  Long December 7.  You & I 8.  Can't Help Falling In Love 9.  Hey Jude It was an interestingly eclectic group of songs, with more bluegrass and country than I would have expected. It definitely took us a little while to get our feet under us, and on some level I felt like we were just getting warmed up by the time "Hey Jude" ended, but it was a start, and I'll take that any day.