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+# How I got into music
+
+I used to play:
+
+- drums
+
+Now I play:
+
+- bass
+- ukulele
+- a midi keyboard, if you even consider it an instrument
+
+## Early childhood
+
+I was not raised a music person. As a young kid I had near zero exposure
+to formal music education. We would listen to Mandopop and Cantopop, and
+mom would hum tunes while she did dishes, but that was it.
+
+There was once my parents picked up a 88-key keyboard for me at our local
+supermarket in hope I might amount to something. I never did. Sorry mom
+and dad :(
+
+## Drums & percussion
+
+In sixth grade I joined a brass and woodwind band as a percussionist (that
+was before I wore braces; the conductor looked at my teeth and said
+"nyeh"). For most of my band career I was in charge of the bass drum and
+the drum kit, but I did learn the timpani a lil bit. My favorite
+performance however was Takarajima, where I played the agogo (the soul of
+this musical number, despite being just one bar over and over again).
+
+As a side effect, a disadvantage I had to all the other band kids was that
+I can't really read pitch, only rhythm. I did not know what a Bb minor
+was.
+
+## Ukulele
+
+Fast forward to 2021. The summer I graduated high school, I decided to
+challenge myself to learn ukulele. My father got one secondhand for me. It
+turned out you only need a tiny set of "easy" chords to get started. You
+can sing in other keys with a capo. And if that doesn't work, the song
+probably isn't made for the ukulele anyway.
+
+On my mom's birthday I sang her "House Of Gold". It remains my favorite
+song to play on ukulele.
+
+## Bass
+
+The uke sounds pretty, sure, but I'm afraid my hands are too fat to press
+adjacent frets (like D and Dm), and especially bar chords (B, Bm, etc). My
+setlist effectively stopped expanding as of 2022.
+
+So near the end of winter break, early 2023, I took the other extreme and
+invested in a bass (known in guitar world as long boi). It is a red Ibanez
+GSR200 PJ bass, the only model that'll ship in 3 days. The date of arrival
+is 2023-02-02.
+
+![Body of a red bass with stickers of Konqi, twenty one pilots, "Blåhaj
+Simp" and "This Machine Kills
+Homophobes"](img/how_i_got_into_music/ibanez.jpg)
+
+I learned most of my songs from [Rod
+Nieder](https://www.youtube.com/@rodnieder).
+
+However only less than a week later I found out I was somehow admitted
+into UMich. Afraid that the airline might wreck it, I decided not to take
+it with me across the ocean. Instead, I bought a Squier that costs about
+the same. (I know it makes no real difference, but I kinda prefer the
+Telecaster-style headstock that has all pegs on one side.)
+
+!["Charcoal frost metallic" (grey and black) PJ bass in mint
+condition](img/how_i_got_into_music/squier.jpg)
+
+## Keyboard
+
+Without a ukulele I couldn't record melodic sections. So I turned to
+synths and samples in a DAW, such as LMMS and Ardour. At first I drew
+notes with the mouse, but it soon proved slow and tiresome. It was also
+too determinstic to be artistic. So in the final days of winter break,
+January 2024, I looked on ebay for a MIDI keyboard.
+
+There were six keyboards on sale, and I placed a bid on probably three of
+them. All of them were outbid soon. I was especially eyeing on an AKAI MPK
+mini, a two-octave keyboard with eight drumpads and four knobs, and
+I don't want the price to go crazy high. So I waited.
+
+Five minutes before the auction closed, I checked back on the price tag,
+and it was $16.50. Tentatively, I bid 17. Moments later some bot bid 17.5.
+
+One minute before closing, I bid 18. Same bot outbid me again.
+
+Five _seconds_ before closing, I bid something like 19, and the next thing
+I know is I won. But when I checked, my bid was 21.5. ebay apparently
+helped me outbid the one who bid 21 by two seconds. It was only one second
+before the auction closed.
+
+![MIDI keyboard next to a regular
+keyboard](img/how_i_got_into_music/akai_mpk_mini_play.jpg)
+
+With a bit of channel/note mapping, it works flawlessly with Linux.