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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.
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.)
## 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.
With a bit of channel/note mapping, it works flawlessly with Linux.
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