Ukulele

From the (new!) title of this blog one can surmise my primary instrument.  But, after my mother recently half-jokingly suggested my brother or I pick up the ukulele, I've been googling how-to-play and tab sites, and seriously considering giving the ukulele a shot.  It's a perky little instrument, it's kind of unusual, it's certainly easier to transport the instrument than transporting my current one, and from what I've been reading it's not all that hard to learn.  Plus, I think it'd just be fun to try.

Two main roadblocks stand between me and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", however.  The first is that I don't have a ukulele as of yet.  It probably goes without saying that learning to play an instrument without actually possessing that instrument is just a little bit difficult.

The second thing is that such instruments are completely and totally foreign to me.

Here's the thing: I'm a classically-trained pianist with about ten years experience.  I can play the likes of Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin.  When somebody sticks sheet music up for something jazzy or more of a popular song, though, it feels awkward for me to play, even after I look over the music and play through it a bunch of times.  I know absolutely nothing about playing the ukulele, guitar, or anything remotely similar to these instruments.  Hopefully it won't be too much trouble, though.

Impediments aside, though, I've been tracking down songs to learn at some point, including bits from…

April Smith and the Great Picture Show


Jason Mraz


Charlie McDonnell (aka charlieissocoollike)

And, it's probably mandatory that I learn this at some point.

Hopefully it'll work out so I can play at least play a little something.  We'll see how that goes.


(EDIT: I wrote this post 27/7/10... since then I've received a uke for an early birthday present, and I can play a handful of chords and a couple tunes!  Woo!!)

On Collaboration

Writing is usually thought of as a solitary pursuit, and to a certain extent it is.  One can't exactly write while carrying on a conversation, or in a restaurant among a bunch of people.  However, it's something one can't do completely by oneself.  One needs feedback, support, inspiration... and, after all, a writer needs readers!  One should write for the sake of writing, but that writing's written for somebody to read.

I've come across a few good places to find feedback for my writing.  Yes, blogging's alright, but it's tough to find wide readership if it's thrown out for the general internet population to happen upon.  But, if work is put out for a narrower audience odds are someone's more likely to find it and appreciate it.

Way back when I discovered the writing site ficlets.  The idea was to craft story bits, or just smaller writing pieces, between 64 and 1024 characters in length.  It doesn't seem like a sufficient length to do anything significant, but it was impressive what people could conjure.  The following is an old piece of mine:

Sigh.

It felt like only yesterday that we met.
Something just seemed to click.
We had the same sense of humor, could understand each other’s quirks.
I can’t recall when I’ve had such interesting conversation with someone (who is not related to me, that is).
(Then again, there are all those other similarities, so there is that possibility.)

Alas…

Alack…

There is so much we can’t see.

Words can only go so far, you know.

I’ve never seen your face.
I’ve never heard your laugh.
I’ve never seen a smile grace your lips.

We’re separated by an unseen barrier of time.
A wall of space.
A web of wires.

But I guess that’s what the imagination is for, isn’t it?

I can only guess what you look like.
What you sound like.
And you can do the same about me.
Our friendship linked by words.
If only we could finally meet.
If only to be friends.

But for now, as I type, I’ve decided:
For now, I can let my imagination satisfy me.

Because that’s what the imagination is for, isn’t it?
http://ficlets.ficly.com/stories/43467

Not only was it amazing what one could do in a short space, but the community was what truly astounded me.  Most folks tried to look out for everyone else, giving feedback and otherwise supporting each other in their writerly endeavors.  We were a very tight-knit community.... until AOL pulled the plug on the site in January of 2009.

One of the original developers of the site, Kevin Lawver, resurrected the idea in a new independent site, ficly.  It's essentially the same idea, very short pieces, and again with some old ficlets vets and new recruits it's up and thriving.

In the interim between ficlets' death and ficly's birth I discovered Protagonize, a similar community without the character limit.  It was intimidating at first, but after a slightly bumpy start I got right into it and I haven't looked back.  The folks are great, the pieces are good, it's overall been a great experience.

Most recently, however, I've discovered the awesomeness that is local feedback.  I've found a good support group in two friends from my English class and my physics teacher, of all people, who're all working on some project or other.  We've deemed ourselves The Fellowship, and thus far I'd say we've been working very well together.  We're looking over each others' projects, offering feedback on those projects, and overall support.  We'll see if we can still work with three of us slightly sprawling at different schools next year.

Basically, I've found that while the actual act of writing's fairly solitary, the surrounding processes of support and communication shouldn't be so.  Sounding boards are great.