[The_Bumble_Bard]

Such a great discussion on practice! I think it’s true with the idea of walking away from a song and coming back to it later, but I also don’t know the science behind it! I think I’ve heard it said that after 30 minutes or so of practice, there is diminishing returns with how your brain processes / imbibes information (I watched an expert talk on this once and that concept also applies to studying). I’m not sure that’s always the case, though, because there have been times that I’ve played instruments for hours, sometimes many hours, but then I do feel like I reach a “threshold” where I start making more mistakes and it can get frustrating, but for me I am okay with that because, like misterbones said, when I come back to it later, my brain actually did compute / retain a lot more than I thought. But then there is also the risk of “learning mistakes” if you keep playing while messing up in a brain-fog of too much playing. Just my thoughts on / experience with that.

@annyuke, I agree with others that your playing is amazing for such a short time and, in general, such a lovely take on that tune! And @misterbones, such a beautiful take on Red is the Rose! You play that one so delicately and precisely. I, like a bunch of others, am also trying to learn that one. That’s right, I didn’t wait until the very last day of the challenge to *start* learning a challenge tune, but started several days early! Maybe I’m learning. Well, maybe my aging heart can’t take that much stress anymore. 😂😆

Haha!! The thing with using a flower to pick a tune, @brettboy, so glad you liked that idea! That image was just hilarious for some reason and I could so clearly picture you doing that! 😂 @leb397, mayhaps you could also use that method at some point! And thank you – there have been so many ups and downs in the past few years especially, but it has led me to a deeper connection to my Christian faith, to God, so for that I am very grateful. Whew, there have been some doozies of “events” though, the last few years. As C.S. Lewis says, “pain is God’s megaphone” and that’s so true (to quote exactly, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”). *Anyway,* I am really grateful for this community and all the kindness, support, and so much ukulele joy and fun we’ve shared through it all! And looking forward to hearing a bunch more tunes this month!! 🥰

[The_Bumble_Bard]

@grannieannie, thank you so much for that, for your encouragement and kind words!! I really appreciate that so much! Sorry for the extreme delay in reply, too! 😂

To say I was thrilled by this gift is really an understatement! It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received! I think because I’ve played piano since I was a child and never really stopped, except the last five years or so when the ukulele took its place because I lost my childhood piano – it was broken and I had to sell it because it was too hard to move, as well. But I’m so glad that happened, otherwise I probably never would’ve found the ukulele, which has become such an incredibly special part of my life and helped me make so many friends all over the USA and the world, which is so amazing! I would say, the ukulele is more of an “emotional support instrument” and an instrument I can lounge and play – and piano is more like an instrument that I can play more “effortlessly,” instinctively, because I’ve just played it so much more than ukulele. Around 27 years (piano) versus 5 years (ukulele). I never learned guitar or anything, so ukulele was the first stringed instrument I ever tried learning – not counting me buying a garbage-tier violin, then breaking it multiple times and hurting everyone’s ears with it. 😂😂😂

Anyway, thank you so much! I’ll have more piano tunes to share here at some point! I’m working on Mozart’s Turkish March (Rondo Alla Turca, I think it’s originally called) right now. I knew sections of it since middle school, but am attempting to learn the rest now! It’s really fun, but also incredibly tricky! There’s a part near the end that is borderline impossible with the speed, so we’ll see what happens. I may need to modify it to suit my skill level. 😂

But the ukulele will always be a part of my life and I’m so grateful for that! Oh, I also was going to say, for me instruments are almost as much a social thing as a creative thing – both piano and ukulele. Piano is very special because two other people in my family are learning to play, including my sweet niece, so we are bonding through that. And I wrote a song (The Night of the Dangerous Camel – I think I posted here) that my brother wrote lyrics for (as his birthday present to me in May) so we’ll record that at some point and when we do, I’ll share that here, too. Also my niece wants to learn it for next year’s piano recital, so I have to work on writing that down ASAP! Lastly, to wrap up this essay, ukulele is a social instrument in that half of my experience with it is an excuse to meet new friends online and talk about ukulele as much as (if not more than) playing it. That’s why my skills have not increased very much with it, but I still love it! The End! 😂

[The_Bumble_Bard]

Ah, I was wondering if y’all were doing a Live Lesson this month!

Love this topic! I’ll just say does anyone actually try to learn ukulele through chord exercises and scales? Let’s be real here. 😂 I enjoy playing scales on piano, but on ukulele they don’t really make sense at all because they don’t follow a consistent pattern that I’ve noticed. They are useful, but unless you’re a professional musician, ain’t nobody learning scales! But maybe I’m projecting.

I feel like you learn just as much, if not more, music theory and techniques through songs than exercises because almost always you’re tackling multiple technical challenges at once. But then, you do have to know a given technique before you can use it in the context of a song…

I look forward to you clarifying all this, Matt! Thank ye! 🙂

[The_Bumble_Bard]

So many great choices indeed! 🙂

@brettboy, I suggest… go outside and pluck a flower. Pull out the pedals, alternating between saying “Kemp’s” and “La Vie” with each one you pull. The last pedal you pull is the tune you play!!! (That’s not usually what that is used to decide, LOL!) Also, if you do that, you should 100% film it and have whatever song wins playing over that footage (or a picture within a picture)! This is probably not helpful at all, but this is what I want to happen and that image amuses me way too much! 😂

Not sure what tune I’ll choose, either! I just know, I’m definitely not waiting until the last day of the challenge again. 😆

[The_Bumble_Bard]

@brettboy, thank you kindly!! I am steadily feeling better but it’s an ongoing challenge for me, honestly. More challenging than these challenges! Man, I was bummed to miss this one, though. Just really bad timing. But yes, thank you! 🙂

@grannieannie, thank you so much, friend! It’s a complicated situation that sadly I can’t detail here at all, certain aspects of it. I can say, some of it has to do with my anxiety, which is really the hardest part and the physical symptoms of that, along with migraines. I am feeling better today, but still struggling with the anxiety issues. But yes, ice cream solves all ails! 😂 Though it doesn’t count, the work I did toward learning that tune and knowing I would have made it if what happened didn’t happen, I am counting it in my heart! I will definitely join for June!! 🥰

[The_Bumble_Bard]

Man, this really stinks, I had a very unfortunate personal issue happen today (on the day I was going to record my usual, magical, last-second entry), so I’m not going to make this challenge. This is the first challenge I’ve missed in like four (or is it five?) years. But unlike @brettboy, I didn’t have perfect attendance from the beginning, so I guess I have to go easy on myself. It stinks because it’s a K’ challenge, but physically I can’t record tonight now. Heap that onto the steaming dumpster fire that is today (not the entire day, just the second half). When I can pray and pack literally an entire pint of ice cream into my body, then all will be well again. 😔

Really looking forward to going back and listening to more of the amazing entries others have shared, along with the epic ones I’ve already seen! Beautiful work by all!! 🥰

[The_Bumble_Bard]

I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER

@lhamilton, that was absolutely gorgeous! So beautiful and mystical with the whistling! And the baritone! Very lovely! 🥰

@grannieannie, I feel your pain – quite literally – with The Skye Boat Song. 😂 Some of those chords were pretty painful and really tricky, not going to lie! But definitely worth the effort because it sounds SO lovely once you’ve got it!

To be honest, I watched that lesson when it first came out, but then didn’t rewatch it before learning the song tonight, so there may have been tips Matt gave to make it all smoother / easier, but I just didn’t have time to rewatch it. Boy, some of those were tricksy contortions, though! I have played songs in A Major (?) before because I love how it sounds on uke (though it is not always as intuitive or natural as other key signatures – is that how you say it? LOL), so some of those I knew already. I also did end up doing that “creepy” D chord because it was the easiest way, the awkward partial bar that then turned into the B Minor chord variation? It was quite painful and uncomfortable for me, but the other approaches really interrupted the flow a lot. It was good practice being uncomfortable with that, though!

I learned this entire song tonight AND recorded it. How? I’m not sure. It’s so very beautiful, though. Matt always does an incredible job laying out the harmonies of a tune – just making any song sound extra pretty on uke. If I have time on Thursday, I may try to get a better take, because I’m not 100% happy with this one, though considering how quickly this came together, it is okay! 😂

Here’s my take on The Skye Boat Song:

Really looking forward to going back and listening to the awesome entries that Annie mentioned! Thank you so much for this challenge, @Andrew, and all the hard work you and your team always do! And all the incredible music of course! 🥰

[The_Bumble_Bard]

Even though I’m not really sure if anyone has seen these videos at all, I still wanted to share this thing I created tonight, which is a video about an original song for piano I created in high school that I came back to 20+ years later (in the past few months) because I found out my family was obsessed with it and would randomly sing it?! I found that so hilarious and it inspired me to finish it. 😂

I also wanted to mention that things have calmed down with me by A LOT and things are much more peaceful now, which is an inexpressible relief. Everyone and everything is okay, by the grace of God. I am still playing ukulele just as much because it will forever be my “comfort instrument,” and my cuddle instrument, to be perfectly frank, LOL. I still am figuring out tunes on ukulele. But if anyone sees this, please enjoy, and maybe the other videos!

I also am working on my entry for this month’s challenge, obvs! I am relatively confident that I can figure it out quickly, since The Skye Boat Song is a style I am used to playing in. We’ll see though!

For now, please enjoy this piano tune. I also secretly hope that @Andrew sees this (it’s not much of a secret if I tag you, lol). Also @jbmills07. 😂

This thread is my little “piano pocket” on RC101 that no one is paying attention to anyway…

[The_Bumble_Bard]

@dianna, not sure if it’s going to quote your text like I tried to do, but let’s see! 😂 I think that point you brought up is why many musicians / artists / writers / filmmakers, etc., etc., etc. are ardently against the idea of using AI for creating complete songs and various works of art. I think Evan brought up in the interview the fact that AI is incredibly useful for expediting certain aspects of artistic creation (such as quickly gathering / compiling / analyzing theoretical information about music creation, for example), but it is NOT a substitute for artistry. There is definitely that ethical issue, in my opinion, that AI indeed draws from databases of existing, including copyrighted, artistic material to create what it does. Are those artists credited? Nope. Maybe you could argue that the information is so “diluted” just by virtue of how vastly compiled / condensed it is, as a person does when they create (compiles their creative experience and draws inspiration). But I also feel that, even though it may not even be fully detectable, there is something profoundly “off” about the things AI creates. It is lacking soul and always will be. Even if it can, in the future, *exactly* recreate the human hesitations and attempt to emulate the emotions behind the music – it never fully will recreate our expression of music because AI has no consciousness and no soul. I mean, I guess we can direct this conversation to Isaac Asimov or another of our sci-fi friends for further commentary. 😂

[The_Bumble_Bard]

@nat-uke, sorry, VERY delayed reaction, but I also – like apparently a lot of people – was looking at Skye Boat Song! I’m joining the Skye Boaters this month, LOL. It would be really cool if you and your husband played it together with him on guitar! 😊

With the barre chords, I worked on those a lot and got to the point that’s the main way I like to play is by moving barre chords around, then adding fingers to the barre chords, but with the partial barre chords, I still sometimes find those painful / creepy, because it weirds me out to put pressure near my finger joints, LOL. That probably sounds strange, but it’s true. So, for the D Major chord (which is what it looks like @otzepeng is playing in his example) I actually will just use three separate fingers for that one still a lot of the time. It can sometimes delay transitions ever so slightly using three fingers instead of one partial barre chord, but if you learn to be quick, you can switch from that position fairly well. I’d rather do that than be creeped out by the finger joint pressure. 😂😂😂 This is just my way of doing it; it obviously is good to try using the partial barre chord approach first if you’ve never done it because you could learn to be good / better at it through practice, obvs. I *can* do it; I just don’t always like it. But actually I’ll sometimes do it the way otzepeng does it when I do. 😊

And thank you so much about my entry last month! That was probably one of the best takes I’ve had recording my singing, so that really means a lot that you say that! Looking forward to all the Skye Boats this month (and all the rest)! 😂😂 Great start for all the entries so far!! 😊

Oh – and the AI Video that came out on Friday – that was pretty crazy! Really intriguing. That was a really interesting deviance from the lessons, more of a topical video, which was really cool!! I hope you do more topical videos like that @Andrew, so neat! 😊

[The_Bumble_Bard]

So exciting! This challenge has quite an amazing array of tunes to choose from and that ukulele is gorgeous! Time for us all to spend several months pining after that uke! 😉 😂

[The_Bumble_Bard]

@leihali, thank you so much for your kind words and encouragement! It means so much to me, it really does. It honestly was such a nice, enjoyable distraction for a little bit. I’m so happy you liked my performance so much, that really means a lot! I was so shocked how everything came together pretty well in a VERY short period of time, lol! I had practiced different elements of the song over the month – I’d practice the singing in the car without music almost every day, then I learned a bit of the piano part, then lastly the part I was actually supposed to learn which is the uke part! But it all came together, I’m so glad you liked it!! 🥰

[The_Bumble_Bard]

@maryjanew, so sorry you just missed the deadline, dang!! Well, your entry sounded lovely! Also the tone of your uke is quite pretty! Thank you, you know, I think I felt your positive brain waves floating in my direction! Thank you for that and about my entry! I actually think the piano playing the solo with the uke rhythm sounded so nice, I’m definitely going to try other things with that, but it may not be as beautifully put together as RC101 does! Anyway, thank you again and great work on that tune, sorry it didn’t count! 😅🥲

@marianne, thank you so much! Just trying to take things one day at a time as much as possible. I appreciate the prayers so much! 🥰

[The_Bumble_Bard]

BOOM BABY!! I did manage to scrape an entry together, a very “me” entry that involves patching together a bunch of ill-timed clips, but somehow it magically worked pretty well together! 😂

I tried to play the solo part on piano (just reading the music Evan created) but the timing was really off so I sped up the piano part by 1.5. I think it has a lot of potential; I’ll definitely learn it at-speed in real life at some point. I’m not as familiar with jazz chords at all, so it was harder to make up on the spot with very little time to spare.

I am pretty happy with this overall, considering how very last second and off-the-cuff this was. I am even pretty happy with my singing, I just need to work on the more powerful notes and having a bit more control and sustain, I think.

Also, sorry for how extra disheveled I look; I was in comfort mode. 😂

And the thumbnail is a picture I took on the way to work a couple of months ago of a dazzling sunrise. 🙂

Please enjoy this very chaotic and “real” video! 😂😂

[The_Bumble_Bard]

It’s time for a mega-post! I just want to say I really, really appreciate all the kind words and support right now from all my uke friends here – it means so much to me. These have been some of the hardest weeks of my life (I thought last year was, but nope! 😂). But for the moment, things have calmed, and I can breathe, so I thought I’d write out some replies to distract myself from everything, including my toof pangs currently. 😂😭 But yes, really thank you all so much! 🥰

…

@nelsonlin2021, lovely job on that solo! It’s very tricky. I tried to figure it out on piano, but the ukulele version looks even harder! You really nailed that little run, though!! 🙂

@abster, thank you so much for the thoughts and prayers! It was a lot the last couple of weeks, and we’re still not out of the woods yet, but at least a moment of calm, which is much, MUCH needed. But yes, thank you! 🥰

@jbmills07, very, very beautiful, Justin! You always play so emotively and with lovely clarity with each note! Thank you about the craziness, things have briefly calmed down a bit, at least enough to breathe for a moment, so that’s really good! Hope you’re doing well! 🥰

@malku2603, very beautiful take on that one! I agree with others who say that it’s cool to see how you progress throughout the month. Your steady work paid off, sounds so lovely! And thank you so much for the kind words, I can’t say how much that means to me. You’re so right in everything you said. The last couple of years have tested me in ways I never thought I would be and I have grown so much through it; stronger in ways I never thought I could be and more appreciative of life while it is here. For me, these experiences have drawn me closer to God than I ever have been in my life – that’s why I see His hand in everything that happens, good or bad. I’ve learned even more the importance of treasuring the people around you and being grateful for everything, in everything. Thank you again! 🥰

@leihali, so stinkin’ beautiful! I agree with everyone that you have a gorgeous voice! I want to say that your pitch is pretty immaculate and your tone so clear and lovely! I like that you hummed the solo! Lovely playing and singing! 🥰

@carynjoy, very lovely take on Winter Glass! You can’t even tell there’s been a gap in your playing! 🥰

@leb397, thank you so much for your kind words, Louisa! The root canal is done, as I write this, I miss my face being numb, the pain has set in. 😭😂 With everything happening, the hardest part is the family trouble, having to do with very serious sickness in the family, close family. It doesn’t even seem real. I pray about it constantly. I know God’s will …will be done in all of it. Sometimes, that’s all you can do in life, is fully rely on God to carry you forward. But yes, there is peace in that during turmoil. Your take on Winter Glass was so lovely! That tune is growing on me more and more. And thank you so much about my piano rendition of IFILTE, but I have another take comin’!! I share it after this. Piano I think is more deeply ingrained for me, but ukulele is my “comfort instrument,” always will be. You can’t cuddle with a piano. 😂😂 Anyway, thank you again!! 🥰

@nat-uke, haha your description of your entry is funny! I think it sounds pretty much perfect! Very lovely, in fact! Ha, I also limit my takes, partly because it just gets to be too much. 😂 But your playing sounds beautiful! 🥰 I also appreciate the “production value” of your videos, they’re well put together! 😂

@katazumiri, thank you for that! I’m hoping since things are *very slowly* starting to calm down a bit, I’ll have more time for watercolor, along with uke. Those pictures are really pretty, paint-able indeed! Thank you! 🥰

Beautiful work by all!! It was so nice to sit down and feel completely relaxed just for a little bit and write out these replies, watching everyone’s amazing work! Also, I have another post incoming with something I cooked up very last second!! :O

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