# Music

I was not raised a music person. As a young kid I had near zero exposure
to formal music education.

In sixth grade I joined a brass band as a percussionist (the conductor
looked at my teeth and said "nyeh"). For most of my band career I was in
charge of the bass drum, but I did learn the snare drum, the timpani, and
the drum kit 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. I did not know what a Bb minor was.

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.

The uke sounds pretty, sure, but I'm afraid my hands are too fat to press
adjacent frets, especially bar chords. My setlist effectively stopped
expanding as of 2022.

So in the 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/index/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 will buy 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.)

Sorry about the infodump. Here's the blogposts under this category.

## [Early Sunsets Over Monroeville](early-sunsets-over-monroeville)

![Editor window in Ardour DAW](img/early_sunsets_over_monroeville/editor.png)

I recorded the ukulele, did the vocals, and mixed them in Ardour. Result
is an acoustic cover of "Early Sunsets Over Monroeville".