So, I spent a lot of money to get a Kanilea Tenor Ukulele. It’s made of koa. I’ve been talking about it with the maker for some time now and it’s finally here. All the way from Hawaii.
Kanilea K1-T Premium
Archive for the 'Sound' Category
If there’s Leo’s Song, of course, there’ll be one for my Sumo.
The two are really night and day. As I often say (apparently, I like to repeat myself) one is like an Express Stream dog, the other is in Normal Stream with a future in beauty school.
But although Sumo is faster, he gets too excited, too eager, too fast and that makes him rash and behave aggressively.
I did want to record this last week, but over enthusiastically cut nails and equally over enthusiastic strumming gave me a blister on the edge of my finger.
So here I go again, embarrassing myself with an off-key rendition of Sumo’s Song.
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The chords are G, D (with a high D), C, D
Guess who I found in my ukulele case after I recorded Leo's Song?
This is a song that I thought up after looking into the blank eyes of Leo, who, after 6 months of training, still isn’t paper trained.
It took me 6 weeks to teach Leo how to shake hands. Now that Leo knows how to shake hands, when I command “down”, he offers his paw.
I did this song in GarageBand, starting by laying down the drum track, then played out the bass track on the computer keyboard.
Then I played the ukulele, sang the song and added the barks.
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The chords are F, C5? (CGCG), Am, G
Remember The Greatest American Hero?
Ah yes, ordinary man dons a red suit from aliens and suddenly has unmanageable super powers. Can’t remember much from that show, except I looked forward to it every week.
Life was easier then. No one asked about USPs, for Interactive elements, yadda yadda. Just liked it.
I remember visiting my friends in Ipoh and singing the theme song together.
And now that I’ve done it again, I think the range of the song is surprisingly wide and difficult to sing.
I recorded this on different tracks as I found it hard to balance my ukulele with voice. And when I did that, I found it hard to keep the accompaniment in time…
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It’s been a while since I’ve recorded myself singing and I’ve to say, it isn’t pleasant.
To sing, keep time, read lyrics and recall chords is doubly, triply, quaduply hard.
And exhausting.
And actually quite terrible sounding when you hear you can’t sustain notes like you thought you could.
This is my 7th attempt and increasingly I made mistakes as I got tired.
You have been warned.
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For the past five years, I’d been thinking of doing a bit of music more seriously.
I’ve never been good at music. And no matter how many lessons I was forced to take, I never did well in it like my sisters did.
Both my elder sisters have perfect pitch and they caught on the whole logic of how chords work and so on. I struggled at every step.
Continue reading ‘Music and First (published) recording on the Zoom H2′
Last night, I was obliged to attend Rhythm of Life, a charity concert in support of the Adventist Home for the Elders, Adventist Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre and Adventist Community Services.
The concert featured Filipino Sal Malaki of the LA Opera and The Golden Angels from Korea.
I took the opportunity to test out the in-ear binaurals I got from The Sound Professionals and borrowed an old MiniDisc player. (Until the Samson Zoom H2 Handy Recorder is released, I’m sticking with this old mini-disc.)
It being the first time I’ve recorded a live show, I missed out the beginning of the first song. Which was fine anyway, because the levels were too high and the sound got distorted. Then I might have gotten too conservative and made the levels too low. Finally, I ran out of tape and missed out the last two songs.
These songs are best heard on headphones to hear the direction of chatter, laughter and so on. You can even pick me up sniffing.
This is Sal Malaki with God and God Alone. There’s some distortion at the loud parts. Still, I enjoyed it.
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Okay, I’m not about to complain how it’s been hot one minute and the next it’s pouring with rain. And after that, it’s still hot again.
Somehow just saying that statement of fact sounds like a complaint.
But really, it’s on days like these that I miss the sound of the bullfrogs. Yes, those things that honk in the night after a nice cool rain. Continue reading ‘Hot hot hot. Rain rain rain.’