What I'm Working On Wednesday for August 30, 2023

So here we are, the penultimate day of August, and like I mentioned in yesterday's post, it's also a Mercury retrograde and today is a blue moon. Lots of astrological stuff going on, and truthfully, I just feel wrung out. Today I decided to give myself and my mind a break and spent most of the day playing ukulele. 

I remember back when I was the online editor over at Beading Daily, I used to do a feature called Worktable Wednesday where I would show pics of what I was working on and talk a little bit about the projects and the beads and components I was using. 

While I can't show you pictures of the music I'm working on (ha!), I can talk a little bit about it and maybe put up a video or two here and on my YouTube channel. 

But until I can get around to that, here's what I'm working on...

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Last year, I discovered this wonderful musician and composer, Choan Galvez, from Spain. He has a sweet little website called The Ukulele Bookshop and a great YouTube channel where you can see and hear him performing his original compositions. (I'll do another blog about him in the near future.)

Since last spring, I've been working on his 50 Miniature Studies for Ukulele. These original compositions are as sweet as they are sophisticated, and they are fabulous for those of us who want to get better at fingerstyle uke. I also really appreciate the original compositions - the ukulele is an incredible musical instrument for sure, and these little pieces really show off all that you can do on it. 

So far, I've memorized the first four of the 50 Miniature Studies, but don't get too excited - they're all Grades 1 and 2. My goal is to get through all 50 of these compositions before the end of next year, which means I need to step it up a notch. 

Today, I worked on three more of these, so I'm up to seven so far. Just 43 more to go. 

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Next up, I'm working my way through another series of fun technical exercises by another incredibly talented musician, 4stringboy, aka Sammy Turton. Sammy also has a fabulous YouTube channel with his Fingerstyle Fursday pieces, fun technical exercises he wrote to help you become a better fingerstyle player. 

Aside from one of his later pieces for low G that I just picked up earlier this year, I'm still working my way through his first book of Fingerstyle Fursday exercises. These are short and sweet and very pretty to play, and they are sooooooo technically challenging for me. 

I remember hearing somewhere (maybe from Sammy?) that when you're playing an instrument, you should always learn pieces that are slightly above your skill level because it gives you room to grow. Well, I'm definitely growing as I work through these melodic exercises. 

One of the things I love about the Fingerstyle Fursday exercises is that Sammy has videos on his YouTube channel that break down each one so you can start slow and work your way up. AND if you're a member of his 4StringFriends membership page, you can get access to great live lessons where he goes into even more detail and instruction for each of the pieces. 

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Here we come to the What I'm Working On: Baritone edition. Because all of these other pieces I've mentioned earlier are for re-entrant (high G) ukulele, I've got a seperate set of pieces for my baritone that are either written just for baritone or for low G ukes. 

After watching the Netflix series Wednesday a million times over, I've become slightly obsessed with the music. So the first piece I'm working on for my baritone is Nothing Else Matters, arranged for low G uke by Mustafa Kamaliddin of MK Fingerstyle Academy. It's an advanced skill level piece with lots of pull-offs and hammer-ons and all kinds of fun things like harmonics, and even though I haven't gotten past the second page of the 11-page arrangement, I'm having a hella lotta fun. 

Another piece I'm working on is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, also arranged by Mustafa Kamaliddin. It's a masterful arrangement and again, slightly above my skill level, but it brings back a lot of great memories. My senior year in high school, when I was getting ready to enter college as a music major, a group of us music geeks put on a sweet little informal recital, and I played one movement of the Moonlight Sonata. It's one of my best memories of high school, so that piece has lots of meaning for me. 

I should mention here that there are a couple of pieces by Choan Galvez from his 50 Miniature Studies for Ukulele that don't use the G string at all - so I also noodle around with those on my baritone, just because I love the way they sound in that deeper register. 

And the last piece I play on my baritone is Stairway Denied by Sammy Turton, one of his final Fingerstyle Fursday pieces. He wrote it for low G ukulele, but it sounds great on the baritone and it also sounds wonderful on my tenor guitar (which is like a giant steel string baritone ukulele or a very small four string dreadnought guitar). It's just so beautiful and moody, and it's one of my favorite pieces EVER. I've played it so many times by now that I can just pick up an instrument and let muscle memory take over and really make it a meditation. 

Oooooh, musical meditation...there are some more blogs for the future...

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So there's my roundup of What I'm Working On Wednesday, and I promise that as soon as I shower and brush my hair, I'll record a couple of videos to share, wonky mistakes and all. 

If you're a musician and you're reading this, leave a comment - what are you working on right now?