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@gi_gi_, thank you so much! Your encouragement and kind words mean a lot. That’s crazy your journey with singing. How did you learn to sing that well, just on your own using Internetube videos (YouTube)? 😂 I love what you said about being famous, couldn’t agree more. 😂 Thank you for your kind words again and it’s so nice you commented on everyone’s entries! After this month I’m going to go back and look through certain gems in this thread that I missed because I only got to see some of the entries.
@leb397, thank you so much! I can’t say how much it pleases me that you say that it sounded like a harp because that is exactly what I hoped it would sound like, no joke. 😅 I always wanted to play the harp, so there are times with uke that I try to make it sound as harp-like as possible. Your entry was very lovely, those techniques are so hard and ya nailed it! To me, strumming and chucking and all those things are way more challenging than fingerpicking, but some of that at least is just experience related. You did really great with it though! And thank you again for your kind words. 😊💕
@nelsonlin2021, ha, we should definitely try to coin the term Mattxim for Matt’s various maxims/sayings and also Drewism (truism) for Andrew’s. 😂😅All the entries I’ve seen this month are amazing, can’t wait to see the ones I missed! This month I’ve been moving, lost power for three days, and my car broke down … twice. 😅 I’m looking forward to next month hopefully being calmer. 😂😅😳😥😭😅 Still this challenge was super fun, thank you, Andrew especially but everyone for doing such great work and being so encouraging! 😊
Really, really amazing work by everyone, but I just want to comment on a couple again. Everyone did so amazingly well this month though, it’s actually insane. 😅
@gi_gi_, absolutely gorgeous! There’s something about the way you sing that makes me want to cry every time. 😂 I think because you sing with such feeling and it’s so real, and I really love singing that is naturally beautiful and unfiltered like that, which is why I love listening to live performances by famous singers, too. That said, you could be a famous singer. 😅 Lovely! Thank you for sharing! I hope you keep sharing songs that include singing here. 😊
@misterbones, that was so amazing! You’re basically a professional clawhammer guy now (a PCG). 😂 I loved that so much. I thought your singing was really great. I would literally listen to those tracks of you playing / singing along with my regular line up of songs because they’re just that perf… perfect. Listening to that also makes me want to learn more traditional clawhammer tunes instead of the strange ones I make up. Thank you for sharing all those! 😊@muzikmama, despite that brutal week of blizzarding and minor calamity, I agree, I prefer being too cold over too hot. And I still love snow. Kinda crazy that you’ve never seen it, but also very logical. Actually, I haaaaaaaate, hate being overly hot, I get very cranky. 😂😅 Well, I’ve also gotten heat stroke pretty badly so that affects the anxiety I have getting overly hot. For some reason, I imagined Australia just always being hot, literally year round. I don’t know how weather works. 😂😅 But then it can’t get too cold there if you’ve never seen snow, so that isn’t too huge of a leap.
The song sounded so good and extra impressive that it’s your first ukulele arrangement! I get very overwhelmed if there’s a song with a lot of different chords like that when creating an arrangement of my own, which is why if I do reference chords for a song I usually pick the one that has fewer chords–Then fill in any gaps by ear and/or trial and error. For me, I like to do arrangements by ear as much as possible because that’s what I enjoy doing most. I enjoy the challenge of that and the freeform nature of that. But it’s really good you did your arrangement that way, using all those chords, because it almost automatically gave your arrangement even more depth and richness, I think. I have created a few arrangements but they’re not on the level of RC101’s.
Agreed, there are still some RC101 courses I want to do, too, like the strumming ones and the theory one. It’s pretty obvious which things I avoid with uke, it’s those two things. 😂 That’s also my goal for this year, too, to do those courses.
Your drawing is looking so good!! Such a difference between the first and last picture. I really think you have a natural skill for that. When you shade in a drawing, do you shade by moving the pencil in small circles or from side to side? That might be a strange question but I’m really curious. 😂
There will be more uke drawings in February after I move because I’m in the process of moving, kinda right now, but thankfully I’m fairly prepared now. I’m also hoping I might squeeze in one more, hopefully better, take on the song I did for the challenge.
Thanks for sharing all you have! I do think one creative venture can enhance another. I also think there are certain useful / interesting overlaps between creative skills, such as pressure control with drawing and with playing a musical instrument. Even gradations in visual art versus something like a crescendo in music. There are other examples I’m sure. I’m trying to justify this topic existing but I do genuinely think there is some merit to that. 😅
Sorry, I wrote another novel. I think I’m tired and that’s why. My editing skills get even weaker than usual. 😂
@marianne, that was flippin’ amazing! Agreed with Andrew that it’s an incredible take played with incredible feeling. Jeepers creepers… 😂
I’m sorry, I can’t remember if you said, but is that a RC101 arrangement? Now I have to go look. 😅 Really, really well played though!
@katazumiri, that is quite intriguing with the key signatures. Straight up, I didn’t know that a key signature could have both sharps and flats written at the beginning of a song. 😅 With D Phrygian Dominant scale as you pointed out, @Andrew, the F sharp is what makes it dominant? I guess that’s also where the “d major” comes in with the song being in g minor ish, because d major has an f sharp (either that’s a painfully obvious statement, or incorrect, I’m not sure). 😅@wannabgood, oh sweet! I’ll definitely give that a watch. I love documentaries / short films like that. Thank you for sharing! 😊
To be fair, this topic is stretching the definition of “uke talk,” but we have shared a bunch of “uke art” / disturbed ukulele fan art (in my case). 😂
@nelsonlin2021, sigh I know what you mean so much. It’s so hard to slow down a song you’re working on that you know should be faster. I’m extremely bad at that, in fact. So bad at it, that I just don’t slow down and continue to plow along at full speed. 😅 Nonetheless, it’s a way better strategy to heed that maxim of Matt’s. Mattxim?
@katazumiri, those were both so amazing! Oh my, so great. Those are beautiful examples of that chord progression. Thank you for sharing that. (I think these are the two songs you were talking about sharing with me at the beginning of the month. If not, sorry to be so awkward again, sigh.) I tried so hard to understand what was happening with the key signatures. One has one flat and the other two. I… I noticed that. 😂😳 I straight up didn’t realize that g minor has two flats (still, not 100% sure that’s correct). I “know” that F major has one flat. I think what makes that interesting is that it’s the same chord progression in two different key signatures. Is that right? Either way, those were lovely to listen to and good inspiration indeed! 😊Everyone is doing an amazing job, but I just wanted to specifically comment on a couple:
@nelsonlin2021, your take on Crossing Hemispheres is sounding really good! I love that song; I’d like to learn it at some point, too. I actually think it also sounds nice played a bit slower. Looking forward to your final take! 😊
@mark1256, that sounds so beautiful! Really lovely to listen to. NGL, when your doggo barked near the end, it made my heart stop for a second–because I was so caught up in the peacefulness of the tune. 😅@muzikmama, ha, yes, the power going out was a little fun, using candles for light and such, but yes it gets a bit dangerous with the sub-zero temperatures. Thousands of people had to leave their houses temporarily because of the outages and the cold. We basically had a three day sleepover at someone else’s house, so that part was fun. 😂 But I’m sure you’re pretty unfamiliar with that kind of winter, living in Australia? 😂😅
Thank you so much about my song! It’s always so intimidating creating a song and it’s easy to be really hard on yourself about it not being good enough and things, but I actually am pretty happy with that based on my current skill level. Hopefully I can get a take playing it better, it’s pretty much done now.
Your arrangement is sounding very lovely! That’s really amazing for your first arrangement and just in general it sounds really nice. So many chords. 😂🥺
Haha no worries at all about the poem! I understand that. I also overshare about things (quite obviously) but yes there are definitely some things you don’t want to share in this context. Ha yes I guess we should keep in mind that this is an educational ukulele site. 😅😂 But I really do think that different creative ventures can inform others, as with visual art informing/enhancing the experience of learning music.
Ha thank you about my drawing! Please do keep sharing yours! The drawing on your video in the challenge was yours? That looks really nice. Haha she is right, it is rendering, rendering is the process of creating the drawing and you do that using different values if I’ve got that right! Hopefully I’ll have more uke drawings soon, I’m actually moving very soon, so I have to pack and do many things, whoops, also sorry for so many run on sentences. 😅😂
@gi_gi_, haha I guess that’s the key of the month this month. 😂 I really look forward to hearing yours. I agree, I love these open-ended challenges; it would be fun to have them a bit more often. But then Andrew very kindly allows a certain amount of creative freedom with all of these challenges, which I (and I’m sure others) appreciate so much. 😊
@morrieuke1, ha that is pretty funny especially considering my orig is based on a randomly generated chord progression that I posted at the beginning of the month. 😅😂 I think that we both chose (or me randomly chose) G minor for the minor parts of the songs. Mine is more fingerpicky and flowy and yours more strummy and embellishmenty. And I think we have similar formats, but yours goes major, minor, major from what I understand (and mine the opposite)? Just some fun comparing and contrasting. Yours sounds very lovely, look forward to hearing the whole thing! 😊
@wannabgood, that was so good! You really had such a great feel to that. I love it! 😁@Andrew, thank you so much! That really means a lot that you say that and is very encouraging. Hopefully I can get another take playing it a bit better. 😅
I like the phrase, “contrasting tonalities” for some reason. 😅
@morrieuke1, that sounded really good! Really cool, kind of mystical sound to that! Lovely! 😊
@maryjanew, that’s sounding so lovely so far! I think it’s really interesting to see how other people practice. I actually find that rather fascinating. 😅 Also I loooooove that song so much, that arr by Steven is so gorgeous, one of my fav RC101 arr’s. I also really love Matt’s arrangement of that song. Really lovely work so far! 😊Okay, since I have a moment to breathe after a crazy couple of weeks, I thought I’d post an update on the original tune I’m trying to create.
I had two melodies that both had a major and minor version, but I ended up using the minor part of one melody and the major part of the other melody. Then at the end I play the minor melody again with the clawhammer technique – I was trying to do what James Hill called “melodic clawhammer,” if I understand what he was trying to do, because I just watched a video of him playing with it, not teaching it. I just observed what he did. But it’s something I’m very interested in doing with clawhammer, using the technique to play more kind of classical-sounding songs, less clawhammery songs, using the clawhammer pattern. I do like how it sounds but I think I’m still not creating a refined enough sound with the thumb, it’s still very bum-ditty-y sounding. So the rest of the month when I can practice I will focus on that and smoothing out my mistakes. Sadly there are a bunch in the major section especially.
I took this video at the “winter adventure” house that I retreated to when my house lost power days ago. It’s back on now, thank goodness. 😂
One last thing, I can say that the song is pretty much completed at this point, I just hafta smooth it out. So hopefully if I can’t film again this video will count as an entry. If not, we’ll see I guess. Thank you for reading and listening! 😊
@wannabgood, haha, no worries about that! 😂 I really appreciate you mentioning it. Even though I’ve lived in Wisconsin a long time, I’ve been lucky to not be without power for multiple days like that. It was sort of a major incident with the number of people without power – over the course of a few days, around 100,000 people lost power in the dangerously low temps, after the foot of snow from the blizzard. Sadly we were some of the last to get power back, but it’s getting back to normal now. Praying it will stay there. 😂😅
… Except the shower, ha. Also, my car. “Jesus take the wheel.” 😅 Yes, thank you, hopefully that won’t be too long before that issue is sorted out! Indeed it might just be a waiting game with the dang pipes. 😅
@wannabgood, sorry, I actually explained that really poorly. 😂 The issue was that the house was without electricity for around three days in sub-freezing temps, so we shut off the water. Since last night the electricity was back on, but because parts of the house were still so cold we had to wait to turn the water back on, so indeed the pipes wouldn’t freeze and burst. But since I wrote that we actually were able to turn the water back on, so that’s really good. Some of the pipes still aren’t draining though. Like the tub isn’t draining. It may just be frozen, then thawed, shower crud so we’ll see if we can fix that. 😂🤢
You just don’t realize how easy it is to take things like light, heat, water, cell phones, stoves, all those conveniences for granted until you don’t have them.
@muzikmama, I can’t even begin to relay the insanity of the past two weeks for me. 2024 needs to slow down, big time. Maybe I jinxed it by saying “2024 is starting out pretty great.” 😅😂😥😭
Needless to say, much to my sadness, I didn’t get to try my pen tablet much before we lost power from a blizzard this last Friday/Saturday. Just got it back last night. Had to abandon my house and go to a place with heat and power and running water because the temps were well in the negative (F). I actually still don’t have running water. Hopefully that will come back today. 😅🥺😭
So that was the main issue the past few days, but there’s so, so much more that happened besides that that I shan’t get into… 😅
Anyway……….. I just need a little break, so I wanted to reply here and in the challenge thread.
So cool that you’re working on your own arrangement?! I found your description in the challenge thread quite funny for some reason, just how you described what you’re going to do, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” 😂 But it’s awesome that you’re just going for it! Can’t wait to hear it!
As far as poetry, that’s also very therapeutic and fun to do, too. I’d really like to read the poem you submitted. I’m very into poetry, reading and studying it, and on occasion trying to write it, but there are only a few I’ve written that I like.
And I’m definitely NOT going to my high school reunion. 😅😂 They may not even be able to make any arrangements for it again (as with the 5, 10, and 15). High school was not the best experience for me, anyway, and all the people I want to know from high school I already interact with, so that’s a nope. 😂
Blending stumps, paper stumps, can be good but they have their drawbacks. They can burnish the paper, which means they wear the paper down so it’s so smooth and shiny that you can’t add more pencil to it. Never tried it with pastels though you’ll have to let me know how that goes!
Sorry for writing this novel, apparently I needed to get some of that out of my system. During my adventure to someone’s house, I did manage to do a little drawing with my sister there. I’ll attach that. It isn’t uke related, but I might draw her holding a uke later so just imagine that. 😅
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