NaNoUkeMo

• 2013-04-11

  4.10 - Caribou

  Hey, it’s been a while but I just thou—OH MY GOD look how short my hair used to be.

  Whoa. Okay, I guess I have gone a little feral. We’ll see how long I put up with it, probably until the first warm day. Anyway, it’s another Pixies song! My (ukulele-playing) friend Bill tweeted “Caribooooooou, Caribooooou!” the other day and I told him I’d send the chords. And I figgered I’d make a video while I was at it. For old time’s sake. (But really just to show off my luxurious, manly sideburns.)

• 2012-12-26

  12.26: Break My Body

  The Pixies! Fun to play, and the songs are all mercifully short. I may do more of their stuff in the very near future—I have the week off.

  According to The Goog, I’m the first person to do this on ukulele. (!) I flubbed it a bit in the middle, so I did another take where I missed the very last chord, then Molly got home right as I was about to do another. I’ll just post this first one instead of worrying about her making noise.

• 2012-12-11

  12.10: Down Today

  Second request was for Jonathan Coulton’s “Down Today”, a jaunty little tune about hot air ballooning. (Those indie kids and their crazy hobbies!) There are some fun licks in the original and I’ve been practicing the fingerpicking all week, but I realized tonight there’s no way in hell I’ll ever be able to pull that off while trying to sing at the same time. So here’s my take on it, stripped down and sped up. I started on the concert uke but it was a little out of my register so I switched to the barry. (I did also spend a few minutes trying for a thrash metal version, but it just wasn’t gonna happen. Damn.)

  Alright, what next? Anyone?

• 2012-12-03

  l12.02: Here Comes the Sun

  I hope if I ever get asked who my favorite Beatle is I’ll remember to say “uhh… Joey?”

  The Beatles and The Ramones are two bands I never really “got”, probably because I heard and absorbed the music they inspired long before making my way back to the source, which seemed simple or primitive (or, ironically, derivative) in comparison. It’s hard now to put musicians (okay, anyone in history) in their original context and see just how revolutionary they were.

  So what I’m saying is I just didn’t grow up listening to The Beatles. Unlike everybody else, it seems. I thought they were just guys who made some kinda-cheesy rock’n’roll hits then turned into hippies. Also, I grew up in Texas.

  But I did get a request for Here Comes the Sun, so here it is. I first recorded it on the laptop mic but the uke didn’t come through so I switched to a USB mic on the desk. Then the uke was better but the vocals kind of dim. Between the two, I’ll go with uke—it’s a good song for fingerpicking, and I’m happy the singing didn’t seem to discombobulate the fingerwork. I’d probably do better in a different key; high G is just verging on falsetto for me, and I can’t quite do an octave down. Also my timing is sloppy as hell, but hey, I just learned the song.

  And one more thing! Here’s the absolute best version of this song ever:

  http://littlehexes.bandcamp.com/track/here-comes-the-sunshine-when-shes-gone

• 2012-12-01

  11.30: Goin  All Veggies

  And there goes November. So let’s see, I managed to do… with this one, 15 songs of the 30 I’d aimed for. Only half of the goal, but better than nothing. But then, what was the goal? The point of NaNoWhateverMo isn’t the product but the process—the journey, not the destination, to be all hippie about it. My take on the franchise was to get me spending more time playing ukulele and not being self-critical. So in that light, can I call it a success?

  No, I don’t think so. It was a chore, and it took the fun out of playing. I never felt terribly inspired. I had so many other things going on this month I don’t feel like I was ever able to spend enough time to come up with new ideas. So here’s my new plan: instead of making new songs, I’ll learn some old ones. I’ve got lots of uke songbooks I’ve barely even touched, and the idea of recording myself singing a real song is terrifying enough it’ll feel like an accomplishment. (And it might just get me to finally go and take voice lessons.)

  Any requests?

• 2012-11-29

  11.28: of a million dollars a year!

  I’m just… tired. I haven’t been swimming for the last couple weeks because of travel and sickness and working on that mystery project I still haven’t shown you and now lethargy is winning the battle. It’s always night outside, and soon the ice weasels come.

• 2012-11-28

  11.27: power is and how it can (instrumental)

  Here’s what came out tonight (other than a whole lot of phlegm, not pictured) but I couldn’t match it to any Horse words. Too bad, because the remnants of the cold could only improve my singing voice. This wasn’t, alas, the cold where I get to sound like Tom Waits. (I had that once and it was so much fun.) Instead, it’s a slightly mathy instru-metalish thing. No wonder I couldn’t fit the words in.

• 2012-11-24

  Excuses, excuses

  We went to Santa Fe. I spent most of the trip working on code for the thing. We got back, I showed off the (sort-of-working) thing, people were impressed, I got a cold. Then I spent the next two days on the couch feeling like my head was being crushed from the inside out.

  But now I’m finally squeezing out the backside of this ick and I can think about doing something other than blowing my nose or writing code or playing !@(*ing Skyward Sword. My promise was a song a day so I’ve got about a week’s backlog now—I won’t catch up on that by the end of the month, but I’ll try not to fall farther behind. And I’ll file for an extension.

• 2012-11-16

  11.15: awesome methods to help you

  When all else fails, there’s always the power chord.

  I had a tune developing, sounded pretty good, was coming together nicely. Then I realized it was the same as a few days ago, the one with the… uh… faces? All that I can remember right now is OVER THE OVER THE OVER THE OVER THE OCEAN. I like that one. I keep singing it when I’m on my bike. This one, however, isn’t going to stick (probably’d be better plugged in, but I’ve got a low throbbing headache) and that’s okay. At least I got something up.

  But the big (Horse-unrelated, sorry) news is the hardware on my mystery project is working and now I can do the rest in code, much more forgiving. We’re off to Santa Fe for early Thanksgiving but I’ll see what I can do to keep this going. Expect another guest appearance from the (possibly drunk) family.

• 2012-11-14

  11.13: In Winter. In Summer. OVER THE OVER THE OVER THE OVER THE OCEan. CONTINENTS. OCEaN. CONTINENTS. 0˚ 0.20 O.24 0.20

  Some days the Horse gives you spam links, some days the Horse gives you the perfectly-formed chorus to a folk rock ballad. (Never mind the OCR drool at the end.) I was going to record this last night, but Molly lodged a complaint about having the amp cranked up at midnight and my endless noodling trying to get it to sustain like I wanted, so I did a quick acoustic jam version this morning. Man, I love that IV-I transition.