A Punk Rock Ukulele Journey

[BiosphereDecay]

Just a little snippet of my tinkering. I recorded it with both my concert and tenor. I notice buzzing (or hissing) from the C string on both. I tested out recording my high g soprano, and it did not have the same buzzing. The concert in particular is unbearable. I'm quite puzzled that the tenor also had some buzzing on the same string, albeit much less. This is part of why I want to jump to something higher quality, as these are both cheap Enyas. The thing is, to my ear, the buzzing is very mild on the concert, and non-existent on the tenor. Is it normal for a mic to be this much more sensitive to this sort of thing?

It's also barely noticeable on the concert when I record rhythm chord progressions, but very noticeable when fingerpicking.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

huh.... I don't hear the buzzing when I listen to the file through the forum, but I do in the audacity recording. Weird.

Those snippets demonstrate very clearly how much bassier my concert is than my tenor though.

 

[rumdood]

Love the Fremont black lines. Tried them on my original Donner concert and they were on my Ohana concert within an hour.

The Worths on my Flight though, they could turn me away from Fremont. Really, really like them.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

Love the Fremont black lines. Tried them on my original Donner concert and they were on my Ohana concert within an hour.

The Worths on my Flight though, they could turn me away from Fremont. Really, really like them.

I want to try the worth browns, but the black lines are just so perfect, and I really really like black strings on most instruments. I'm sure I'll try them eventually, but I already bought blacklines for the uke @Bad_Astronaut gave me. (Arrives in a day or two!) Maybe would have gone with the browns if I had thought about it a bit more.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

Contact @Tukanu (Cripple Creek Mandolins & Ukuleles) to see what he might be able to set you up with. He's offline for a couple of weeks I believe, but he will reply to you. I've purchased two from him and it's possible to fall in your $400 bracket with him.

I sent him a PM. I'll report back when I get a response. Also, @mlolya just offered to give me a $350 tenor for free. This is the second uke this forum has given me. You're such a kind and generous bunch of people. I'm very glad I chose to participate in this community. I'm still on the lookout for a concert, as that's the most comfortable size for me, but I wanted to give tenor another shot, considering the only one I've tried was plastic, and I only tried one type of string on it. I think this new, much higher quality one may change my opinion on tenors. We'll see.

Also, I ordered my strings late on friday... they don't ship on weekends so gonna have to wait like a week to test out the Nova bari-tenor. D:

 

[BiosphereDecay]

Here's the intro, verse1, pre-chorus, and chorus, with lyrics. I was kinda rushed on this, and didn't warmup for singing at all, and was struggling to stay in time with the metronome. I have very bad rhythm lol. (Kinda hoping uke will help with that, and I think it already has.)

 

[ploverwing]

Here's the intro, verse1, pre-chorus, and chorus, with lyrics. I was kinda rushed on this, and didn't warmup for singing at all, and was struggling to stay in time with the metronome. I have very bad rhythm lol. (Kinda hoping uke will help with that, and I think it already has.)

Solid start! Keep at it

 

[BiosphereDecay]

This is my first original ukulele song. It's not very long, but I think it came out really well, and is very interesting to me. Difficult to play, but once I fully learn it, I'll post a clip of that

Tension Flavored Ice Cream

Tension Flavored Ice Cream - Sheet music for Ukulele

Made by Allison Eris. Music notation created and shared online with Flat

flat.io

I struggle to pluck two strings the same strength. One often completely drowns out the other. Anyone have any tips for this? I play this with my thumb on the G and C, index on the E, and middle finger on the A. I can't double pluck with my index and middle. It's much much harder than using thumb and index.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

Contact @Tukanu (Cripple Creek Mandolins & Ukuleles) to see what he might be able to set you up with. He's offline for a couple of weeks I believe, but he will reply to you. I've purchased two from him and it's possible to fall in your $400 bracket with him.

Tukanu suggested that I wait a year before having a custom built, and said that they could make something in my price range.

 

[ploverwing]

I struggle to pluck two strings the same strength. One often completely drowns out the other. Anyone have any tips for this?

You may want to post that question separately either in Uke Talk or the Ukulele Beginners forums - it's a really good question. I don't think I have a good answer besides concentrated practice, lol.

This is my first original ukulele song.

Thanks for sharing your composition. I will give that a try when I get a moment (super busy this week, not a lot of practicing likely to happen, but soon!).

Tukanu suggested that I wait a year before having a custom built, and said that they could make something in my price range.

Sage advice. That gives you an opportunity to have a better understanding of what you'd like from your instrument.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

Thanks for sharing your composition. I will give that a try when I get a moment (super busy this week, not a lot of practicing likely to happen, but soon!)

I'd love to hear someone with more skill than me play it. I can technically play the whole song, but not very well, so I've never really heard it played properly.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

The part where you pluck the G and C repeatedly sounds really cool on an actual instrument. Sounds terrible on the flat playback.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

I've always liked the idea of integrating percussion into my music, which was inspire my Jon Gomm. Seriously, go listen to his music, he is beyond genius.

I just made this up, but I think it could sound pretty cool if I add a little in to my songs. I'm hitting 4 different places, and using the back of my fingers to create the soft uhh sliding? sound.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

I wrote a song called A Hungry Seagull Finds a Reef. I exported the sheet music/tabs, with commentary about what each part represents. It says low G ukulele, but I don't actually utilize the G string, so this can be played with high G too.

Edit: I just noticed that one of the annotations was cut off at the edge of the page. It's supposed to say "after this point the baritone represents what's happening underwater."

 

[BiosphereDecay]

I want nothing more to play ukulele right now, but I hurt my shoulder sleeping

Haven't been in this much pain in quite a while. I mean when I fractured my skull one wheeling, that was like five or six out of 10. This is more like nine... And all I did was sleep. D:

 

[ploverwing]

I want nothing more to play ukulele right now, but I hurt my shoulder sleeping

Haven't been in this much pain in quite a while. I mean when I fractured my skull one wheeling, that was like five or six out of 10. This is more like nine... And all I did was sleep. D:

Ugh. Seriously. My poor mom did that the other night, just turning over in her sleep and wrenched her shoulder. She's better today but yeah, it's limiting her guitar time. I'm sorry that's very annoying. I hope the pain goes away soon!

 

[ripock]

You need a backup plan like a harmonica or kazoo that you can play when you're laid up.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

You need a backup plan like a harmonica or kazoo that you can play when you're laid up.

I do have a harmonica. I never really expected to play it much, but I guess that's something I can practice at least.


On day 3 now, and not really getting much better. I can lift it above my head again, so that's progress.

 

[cletus]

Get better soon. I recently had surgery on my hand and just starting to play again. I missed it and wish you a speedy recovery.

 

[BiosphereDecay]

It's been a pretty rough couple weeks, but my shoulder is finally starting to heal. It's crazy that all I did was sleep weird, and it put me out of commission for almost 3 weeks so far. It's still very very weak, and I can tell it's pretty fragile, but I can get by without tramadol again finally.

I've been writing lyrics again since I haven't really been able to do anything else. I haven't done that since I started playing ukulele back in November.

The weirdest part is that I was struggling a lot with transitioning to G chord from really any position before I hurt my shoulder. Now, with zero additional practice, I seem to be able to do it most of the time accurately. Maybe I should take more breaks? I had been treating it like a full-time job, practicing at least 40 hours a week, sometimes quite a bit more.