Jen Plays Ukulele

 Welp, I was right on. The world feels heavy right now. Two of my shamanic teachers have noted over the weekend that between Samhain coming up and this most recent full moon eclipse in Scorpio/Taurus, there is some major shit going on in the spirit world. So much death over the last three years and now the mass deaths in Gaza and Palestine has created a spirit world fraught with souls that have not yet crossed over. I postponed a soul recovery I had planned to do with someone because ain't no way I'm gonna go mucking around in the middle world looking for soul parts right now. We'll do that later once things have settled a bit.  Anyway. This is turning out to be another one of those Mondayish Mondays. I was expecting a very important package from the herbalist I consulted with in Ontario back in September, but when I checked the USPS tracking number this morning, it appears that someone made a mistake - my zip code was off by one digit. One damn digit, and not even a digit ...

 One of the things that I teach almost every single person who comes to me for a ukulele lesson is....how to tune your ukulele. Seriously. It's so important to know how to tune your ukulele properly. Playing in a group? Yeah, you don't want to be so out of tune that everyone notices. Playing solos? Also you need to be in tune so you don't cause a giant case of Audience Cringe.  Tuning your ukulele isn't as difficult as you might think. With all of the amazing options out there for tuning, there are lots of different ways you can get tuned up before a group or solo practice session.  Let's check out some of these options. ************************************************************* Tuning Apps. Of course! If you have a smart phone, you can find HUNDREDS of tuning apps in your app store, many of them for free.  The app I prefer to use is called gStrings. It's got a lot of features for a free app, but takes a little bit of time to learn. That said, if I don't ...

So we had a lazy weekend last weekend. My husband wasn't feeling great, and we have all just been feeling kind of stretched thin and exhausted all the time. So on Sunday morning, my husband put on a relaxing movie (War Of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, ugh) and then about twenty minutes in, he got up and left the room to take a phone call and left me there with my steel string baritone guitarlele (fun little instrument) to practice scales over the sounds of explosions and screaming.  **(If that's not an apt metaphor for what's happening in the world right now, I don't know what is.)** Anyway.  After mastering the first major scale in the set of exercises (they're actually for guitar, but you can obviously play them on the 6-string guitarlele, I just transpose them in my head so I know what scale/key I'm playing in), I went on to the next...and realized that the fingering pattern was exactly the same as the first - it just started on a different fret.  I went on to ...

 Well, whatever plans I had for writing this morning got kinda blown out of the water because my body was just not going to cooperate at all. Whatever. I still managed to get done some other things and while I was resting my body, my brain was coming up with some new ideas. We'll see if those come to fruition.  So next week is Samhain, and it's a great time of year for Tarot readings, so I'll be offering those next week in a special three-day Tarot Reading and Reiki Extravaganza!  I still also need to get my website ready for the holidays. Gotta get on that. I have so. much. jewelry. sitting around that could go to new homes, if only I could get my shit together long enough to take pics and post them everyfuckingwhere on social media.  BUT...I have orders packed and ready to go out tomorrow so people get them in time for Halloween next week, and I have more gift packaging and shipping supplies on order for the holidays, so time to get with it.  I'm still working...

 Holy wow, this blog is not turning out the way I intended (sort of) when I started writing again a few months ago. It seems to be turning in to one of those "one post a month" kinda blogs and I don't even know why that is because I'm actually not that busy. Lately. Yet.  I'll paint a picture for you today: It's almost one o clock in the afternoon, I just sat down to eat my slightly burnt black bean and sweet potato burrito, and I just realized that it suddenly start pouring rain outside. It's been grey and damp and chilly all morning, and I've already loaded the wood stove twice so far today in an effort to keep it warm in here so I don't have to turn on the oil heat. I looked out the window the other day and realized that there's suddenly a carpet of gold and brown leaves on the ground, and even though we're only halfway through the month, it's starting to feel like Halloween already. So I'm sitting here with the fire going and I...

 Sooo here we are again, talking about this made-up holiday to honor a colonizer who was a cruel, inept, and probably more than a little bit evil. Whatev. It's about time we started celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day instead and try to acknowledge the complex societies that were here before that murdering crackpot got lost at sea and wound up here. I could go on a rant about how the history of the indigenous people was lost and how the colonizers did everything they could to destroy them and their culture, and thank Goddess they didn't succeed entirely. But they did inflict so much trauma and violence on these people, I can't even begin to imagine. And I can't go on a rant today about that because my brain is just not functioning well enough to find the sources I need to back up my rant, so that'll have to wait for another day.  Instead, let's celebrate the indigenous cultures throughout North America, including the culture of the Hawaiian islands prior to the E...

I think I've mentioned a couple of times about my daily practice routine in this blog, but in case I haven't, here it is. [Edit: I started this blog like two weeks ago, and I'm finally just now getting around to finishing it. YIKES.] Keep in mind, my routine does change every now and then. The ukulele practice routine that I use now is way different than the one I used when I first started, but I do include some of those exercises now and then when I think of them, just to see how my finger dexterity has changed. (And to test my old lady memory.)  So what's a practice routine and why do you need one? Do you even want one?  A practice routine is just simply a set of songs or exercises that you play, every day, or every time you pick up your uke. You can use pieces and exercises that you've committed to memory, or you can use written music in a notebook or on an electronic device. As long as it's something you can play every day, then you have a practice routine. ...

 Oh, wait, did I say October? I meant ROCKtober. Ha! Last year, I started making some videos for Rocktober, but that got cut short when we all came down with Covid and I spent the next 10 weeks in bed trying to recover, in between ER visits and cardiac monitors and acupucture and everything else.  SO NO BAD VIBES THIS TIME, YOU HEAR? I'm done. Sick of all this shit. We are out of the shadow of Merc Rx and I am just done and ready to take some meaningful steps forward. There! Anyway...now that I got that out of my system... Yes, this is the month I affectionately call Rocktober, so I may or may not try to do some covers of some of my favorite rock songs, and now that I have an actual practice amp for my electric instruments, that might be fun.  Tonight is the first online monthly songshare with a group of my songwriting friends, and I have to make sure I have most of my latest song finished and ready. It's gonna be a little tricky because I'm writing it on my six string (g...