marco cirillo

 pretty and not difficult

play some melodies

 there's loads of ukulele tutorials online but this guy, i think, is better and clearer than most. getting some melodies down is really freeing, esp if you're encouraging younger people 

easy ukulele

for no good reason i haven't played any ukulele for ages. but i heard this guy the other day and got one down from the hanger. a super easy progression but also handy if you're wanting to think a bit about chord construction. and sounds lovely.  

notes on the fretboard

 i've been mystified for years about why bass/guitar/uke players are mystified by the fretboard. i remember speaking to a guitary friend about it when he was getting confused by his chords etc (and before i'd ever picked up a guitar before) and i said - but all the relationships between the notes are the same. and then demonstrated, albeit via a piano keyboard, that given a basic knowledge of how a scale worked, i could work out any chord and find a position for it on the neck. which sounds great, except that when i'm playing guitars now i play like someone who learned piano as a child! anyway, this video is decent if you're finding all a bit of a pain, or like me, you're forgetting your basics

*ear players - this is a talent i do not have! it's not better or worse, just different. if you're not getting to grips with the above, consider yourself blessed you have an ear!

taking pinhole pictures

 here's ari, with a decent dive into the world of pinhole photography. you don't need all the shenanigans to start but if you do...you will! lol (talking of which 4x5 film holders are not cheap - if anyone wants to sort a brother out with a good deal, i'm all ears!) 

here's a second binus ari video. warning - instrument abuse ahead! a couple of things. first, you can make an image making tool out of just about anything - i'd super encourage this behaviour as it's a lark (see previous camera obscura posts). secondly, you'll note the presence of ukuleles, pianos etc in ari's house. having different interests is essential to practice! and, imo, the more analogue the better! 

samantha muir

 

i'm sitting listening to this loveliness from samantha muir and i'm reminded that i'm supposed to be moving into the time of year when i'm picking up my musical instruments again, something that, so far, ghas been complicated by the fact i'm just too busy with either language or making stuff to have done anything so far. time enough tho and, so far as music goes. i'm put in mind of this story, attributed to kurt vonnegut, about the importance of just doing

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at any of them.’

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘win’ at them.

bach cello suite

 

lovely to watch someone else's hands not mash this up like i do!