About The Music…

I never knew how much I’d love playing the ukulele once I got old. My Gram gave me a baritone uke when I was a teenager and I played around with that through college, but piano was always my #1 instrument. I had studied it throughout my childhood, teen years, and college (my degree is in music – more on that for another time). I’d always wanted to be a singer but was dissuaded from making a fool of myself by various voice teachers, though those weren’t their exact words…

Anyway, unless I get real fancy with my fingers, playing my ukuleles is just strumming some chords and that make no musical sense. I’ve done the strum’n’hum thing too, not expressive enough for me. BUT I still love my ukuleles, of which I have 3, nearly as much as I love my two Yamaha keyboards.

(Speaking of my keyboards, I have a PSR-S950 which is a 61-key arranger workstation, and a PSR-EW410 which is a 76-key lower-end keyboard. It is my most overwhelming desire to replace these two keyboards, both of which I love for different reasons, with a single keyboard that does it all, and has 76 keys; however the Yamaha options are out of my price range and I’m not yet willing to look at others.)

I believe I have already mentioned my solution here before, that of creating my own backing tracks on my keyboards, with which I can play my ukuleles. It is a way around the problem, though I’m learning to play “fingerstyle” as well but it isn’t as much fun for me…and I still wish I could sing. My entire vocal range, after many years of GERD, is barely over an octave and full of pops and cracks. So without a miracle from God it looks pretty hopeless for my future as a singer!

Anyway, I joined a lovely discussion and performance group online about acoustic instruments as used in gospel music, and was sent these 2 lovely graphics by the group’s owner. (I’ve run so far afield of my original topic and intent that going back to it now feels wrong. But I will forge ahead anyway!) They are so pretty, I love the colors of them and wanted to share them with you. That was the original point, and finally, here we are. I hope you enjoy them as well as my rambling on about music!