Unlike a guitar, a ukulele is pretty portable and can be pulled out on the subway should you get the itch to share some tunes with your fellow passengers. What started out as an innocent music break led New York City resident Jessica Latshaw to more than a million views on YouTube in this viral video:
DNAinfo.com has more details on the event as well as the limelight that Jessica suddenly found herself in.
The NY Times has a story on how more and more people are taking music lessons over the Internet, usually via Skype or Google Hangouts. It’s a trend that I’ve noticed. For example, Rob Michael, the lead guitarist for the jazzy Atmos Trio, started offering online lessons last year. Matt Dahlberg, one of my favorite modern ukulele performers, also offers lessons via Skype (and he prefers Paypal for payments).
The one major downside of doing lessons online is that the instructor cannot physically place your fingers in the right positions. This may not be a terrible thing except in rare instances.
I’m curious to know if any of my readers has taken online lessons: what do you think? Was it better than IRL lessons? Worse? Why?
Maybe this person should start looking online.
Utterly hilarious cover of Kanye West and Jay-Z’s hit song:
PhotoPile.me is a really cool site that lets you view all of your Instagram photos at once. Ok, maybe not all of them, but a nice big pile of them that’s really quite striking. Here’s mine (click through to see the live site):
Very cool (at least if you use Instagram).
Jake wishes his fans a “Merry Christmas” with his version of the classic “Silent Night.”
Paul Celentano over at Etsy is back to his mad schemes, this time with an Optimus Prime ukulele for only $550.
As he says, “This instrument is made to order. And i do have a waiting list. Please contact me for info about time of completion.”
It’s a great time of year to be a ukulele player. I assume you’ve memorized all the classics; if not, here is a link to the best downloadable ukulele songbook I’ve found on the Internet:
It’s got a nice mixture of pop tunes as well as the old standards. Enjoy!