I’ve been bunged up with flu for a few days, so I haven’t started grabbing all the article stuff together yet. Just wandering off on a tangent at the end of a Saturday… Ukulele progress!
I’ve managed to get the chords down now, and it’s becoming a less frequent occurance that I substitute guitar chords for Uke chords, but learning some of the strumming techniques is a bit of a challenge. George Formby (for it is a pre-requisite of any Uke player that you can play a) Formby and b) Iz) created some pretty advanced strum patterns that involve multiple strikes of the strings with different digits. Who’d have thought it would be so complex?!
Anyway, with the help of YouTube I’m getting there, so I’m still feeling pretty pleased with my purchase. Still nowhere near good enough to inflict myself on the public, but in time…
I had a nice package delivered today: my new concert-sized ukulele. First of all, I’m a guitar player so it’s all very alien to me (but quite exciting!).
I opted for an electro-acoustic model in the mid-price bracket (using up some of my paypal balance), and I’ll connect it up to garageband later on to see what it can do. In the first instance though, I’ve got it out the box and tuned it up to get a feel for the sound. According to my research the strings were likely to be “servicable” and nothing more, so I also bought some of the universally recommended Aquila strings which should dramatically improve the sound; restringing is a task for this evening.
I also hear that it can take a while for a uke to hold tune. My Ovation electro-acoustic guitar only needs very minor tweaks every month or so to hold tune, but this is definitely slipping out of tune within minutes.
So on the subject of Ukuleles, I found a nice useful site when doing my research which I’d recommend for anyone considering buying their first Uke: http://ukulelehunt.com/buyaukulele/
YouTube is full of uke-goodness too. I especially like Gus & Fin:
I’ll post some tests up when I’m feeling confident enough to play it!
When I switched to my new Mac several months ago I didn’t really get a chance to set up all my peripheral hardware. I’ve been adding the various bits of goodness to the Mac as I’ve needed them.
Today I added my Wacom Graphire 4 tablet, and after installing the drivers it’s working beautifully. In fact, it seems to be working far better than it ever did on my various PCs. The tablet itself is getting on a bit now, and I suppose I could do with a new one fairly soon, but I’m really pleased it seems to have a new lease of life; might be the revised drivers, or could be Photoshop CS4 I guess (although I don’t think so).
Quick test of pressure sensitivity:
Actually, it might be that I’ve managed to set the pressure levels more successfully than previously. Whatever, I recommend using a tablet. Alien at first, natural after 20 minutes of use. I’d forgotten in the several months since last using it how much it can add to the workflow.
A couple of months ago I was inspired by something I read on Geek Dad. I ordered a wooden chest from eBay and a load of chocolate coins. Much application of tea bags to stain the chest, coffee grinds to create spots, and similarly for a sheet of paper – scrunched, mashed, stained, burnt etc. ensued until we were ready to plant the map + chest for discovery. Today we didn’t have anything much planned, so we stuck the map in a bottle at the bottom of the garden, and the treasure chest about a mile away, at the top of a local hill (20 paces north of a landmark!).
I got the kids searching the bottom of the garden for blackberries, and sure enough they discovered the bottle and map. Serious excitement. Even more when they spotted the big X on the map, and they were ready to march off and find treasure. In fact, they even dug out a compass and shovels (I restrained them on the shovels front). They had to walk about a mile and trudge around the landmark before finding the loot, but all had loads of fun doing it.
Unfortunately my overly analytical 8 year old quickly sussed out that it was a plant/stitch-up: “it rained last night but this is dry”. Ho hum. Still worth it for the look on their faces, especially when they discovered the treasure and got some chocolate for their trouble.
Excuse the washed out photo – it’s an iPhone original.
