Coming to blows

Spent a whole practice session doing nothing but playing the same note over and over. With a tuner in front of me.

And it worked. Felt an immediate improvement. Seems that the burbling I'd been getting was me hitting the edge of the slot. Once I was focused on the pitch center, I could also start playing with tone; I'm finding the shifts in mouth shape and tongue position that give a darker, softer tone, or a more focused, brighter tone.

Oh, yeah. And like with the violin, when you hit the pitch center dead on there's a sympathetic resonance you can hear and feel.

But it's silly to wait until I'm "good enough" to record parts, because I'll never be satisfied. I'll learn more, and have more fun doing it, if I record now.

Above is a proof-of-concept draft: I recorded the horn part "wild"; over a portable mic, in the woodshop, without even a metronome. Once I put it in the working file I immediately realized the straight-up bass didn't work; what blended was the fake upright technique (thumb pluck and damping the strings near the bridge with the heel of the plucking hand).

And I had a bad moment when the piano didn't work at all. And I'd already tried organ and even guitar. But electric piano -- especially when I shifted from brushed snare to a brush hi-hat figure -- made a blend I liked.

So now I can work on solving the rest of the arrangement. And continue rehearsing the parts (the bass needs the most practice).

Picture from Ukulele Underground

The Hellboy cover is a very different direction. It is pushing instruments I don't know yet how to blend properly, or how to play properly. I want to get back to the "Bardic Covers" (game and movie themes done with Early instruments). Of course the direction I want to go there is a lot more authentic Early Music voicings, and there's a lot of theory to learn there as well. Plus my guitar--err, ukulele-- playing is really not up for the kind of parts I hear in my mind.

And stop with the instrument longings. More or less. I can justify the instrument above as my latest wish because my old uke just isn't up for what I'm demanding of it.

But as I've been thinking ahead towards the most likely next cover (the "Galaxy Map" backing track from Mass Effect) I can't help but notice there are multiple lines on different plucked or pitched percussion instruments. And wouldn't it be great to have a baby harp for this? Or...if for no other reason than harps are hard to play and building a lyre would be fun...

A "Sutton Hoo" style lyre.

18 mos Violin

I swapped out the old shoulder rest for a Bonmusica. Now, yeah, I can get the web of my hand off that violin neck and really start practicing arm vibrato. But the hand and arm positions are different now, the cues that my muscle memory was based on are different, and basically it's like I'm back to the beginning.

Only this time I'm getting those basics down faster, and the results are cleaner. I feel like I am finally progressing again after six months of what felt like stasis.

Yeah, but that also means all my practice sessions right now are endless exercises in string crossings, vibrato, and a little shifting. Lots and lots of scales in first and fourth position.

The trumpet is also pretty much in exercise land. My exercises now are speed and tone, plus a little on keeping the articulation clean and controlled. Speed is really about the slotting (and a bit about the tonguing). I still have trouble moving from the top of the range to the bottom of the range; to get into those different slots -- particularly with a good tone -- you have to slip your lips slightly within the mouthpiece. Right now I'll start a scale, go up to my top note, but run into trouble on the way down. Especially when trying to do it fast.

The valves mean less and less as time goes on. The key muscle memory is in finding the right slot. To some extent you can play the note even if you've got the wrong valves in. It will usually be a weak harmonic and sound terrible, though. It can be very confusing, until you figure out what you did.

It's also time for another cleaning.

Thinking the next recording might be an attempt at a trio. I'm not that good with the trumpet yet, but I have a keyboard (Behringer controller, but still...), and bass. Gave away the e-drums, though.

Still think the "Bardic Covers" are amusing, and I do like the challenge of trying to work up proper polyphony on the wind parts and properly idiomatic "lute" work. Thing is, I still haven't settled on the upgrade to the ukulele. The one thing I'm sure of is I don't want soprano any more (the fingering is too tight). I'm caught, though, between guitar-like tones, lute-like tones (and look!)...and electric.

By which I don't mean piezo pickups (I have in the closet a project solid-body uke with piezo bridge pickup), but a steel-string, fender or strat style uke with real humbuckers.

I found one cheap recently, and the reviews say the biggest problems are the frets aren't dressed and the action is too high. No problem for me. (A crooked neck, on the other hand, I'd rather not deal with). But, still, that is a bit of the other dirty secret of musical instruments. Bought my first uke. Then bought new strings, and a pick, and looking for a strap. Bought a cheap trumpet, then spent almost as much for cleaning kit, then a practice mute, then another mute, and looking for a fresh tin of spitballs now. Or the violin; bought new strings. Shoulder rest. Better rosin. A new bow. Two more shoulder rests. New chinrest. Oh, yeah...and a new violin!

All U-Bass is Belong to Us

Once or twice in the past I've thought about getting a bass. Certainly not an upright -- those things are huge, and expensive. But even a traditional bass is rather large and cumbersome. Too much, I thought.

Well, not necessarily. And certainly not as of 2005.

Nathan East with his California 5-string, courtesy of Kala

The small-scale hybrid bass concept is not entirely new. The Ashbory came out in 1986. It uses polyethylene strings to cut the length down to about half that of a standard bass. And then there's Paul McCartney with his Höfner 500/1 (a bass neck on a violin-like body.)

One of the many experimenters over the years is Owen Holt, and he combined a baritone ukulele body with pahoehoe strings (manufactured under his own Road Toad branding -- which name is a reference to the infamous Cane Toads, by the by). He then took the new instrument to Mike Upton at Kala, who had learned ukulele building in Hawaii before returning to manufacture them in California.

The first u-bases were acoustic-electric, constructed not unlike a baritone ukulele. There was some experimentation with truss rods along the way, as bass applies new stresses to the standard uke construction. Somewhere around 2011 Kala brought out a solid-body four-string, and in 2015 had five-string options (as well as fretless and left handed options).

Bass players are converts (or, at least adding it to their collections). I saw a used one at the local music shop and was struck by how odd, cute, and friendly it was (in that, at least, it clearly shows its ukulele heritage).

So, yeah, I bought it. And it is, fortunately, one of those instruments that is easy to pick up (all instruments are a lifelong project to learn to play well.) Ukulele skills translate, as do, oddly, violin skills; the former is in the fretting and plucking, the latter is in the sensitivity. This is not a an instrument requiring you to haul down a thick steel string by sheer finger strength. It is an instrument that registers every fretting finger, every brush, every tap.

The one I got is the Kala sunburst SUB. It looks like a baby electric guitar. It has that Fender solid-body shape -- but an oversized headstock and four thick black gummi-worm strings that look like something that belongs on a toy. Internal pre-amp with volume and two tone control knobs on the front and it is just slightly larger than my e-violin.

It is tuned like a four-string bass and with the 20" short-scale has almost the same range. You can hold it like a ukulele but finger plucking is easier with a guitar strap. With those Road Frog Pahoehoes it has a jazzy upright bass quality (particularly if you thumb-pluck and use the heel of your hand to further reduce the sustain). I'm told that with the optional wire-wound strings you can get more of the aggressive bite of a bass guitar.

It is also almost completely silent when not put through an amplifier. You can't even practice it unplugged (but VOX makes a cute headphone amp for guitars and basses).

I do have what appears to be a set-up problem, possibly inherited from the previous owner; my middle strings rattle. I've emailed Kala and will probably be replacing the nut. The low tension means bending is difficult and snapping doesn't work (slap bass technique). It has frets so slides have that fretted sound and you can't really do vibrato. However, the sensitivity of the pickups makes hammer-ons and pops extremely simple. In short there are still plenty of techniques open to exploration on this instrument.

So I've rethought how I will be approaching bass in my next recording project. I've been aware for a while of the true expressive quality of the bass, a quality and a realism that synth patches are a poor substitute for. Well, my playing isn't much better. But the u-bass makes it just possible I can do those parts live now.

And a u-base doesn't take up a lot of space.

Black Sun Passes

So yesterday finished up the current order of Aliens grenades. My timing was good, and I was able to quickly set up some artwork in Illustrator and run a few more pieces off on the Epilog laser. I had some black 1/16" acrylic, which is a lot thinner than I've cut before, and some .04" styrene -- and in both cases, my estimated settings for the laser were almost dead-on. I guess I'm getting a sense for the thing.


With no better job openings, I'm pushing hard at multiple prop projects now. I need to start cutting metal on the raygun by the end of the month. My Poser content store is looking sad -- my pose-able drum kit just went into clearance:

It's insanely detailed. I built it because there weren't any drum kits that could stand up to detail renders, and could be posed at will, and were texture zoned and UV-mapped to allow for easy custom texturing. Unfortunately, Renderosity is not set up for niche products; they are designed around flavor-of-the-month skins (character packs) that typically have a life-cycle measured in weeks. Products that have a steady but low selling history over years and years don't fit well in their boxes.

As this was. The lifetime history of my Poser store is about $2,000 to me. The drums only netted me about $400. Rigging clothing items has gotten so painful, though, that even though they all pretty much count as niche products the only models I can face these days are props. So I'm looking hard at pushing out another themed set as quick as I can model it (I already have a start) --

(What's hilarious about this promo image is I actually unlimbered Bryce 3D in order to make the backdrop!) And, yes, this is modeled on my own Pogue uke; friction tuner, tie bridge, no purfling. And is of course excessively accurate; the frets are placed correctly and the strings are actually different diameters!

The idea is to throw various "folk" instruments that work in a solo, casual, pick-up setting; concertina, mountain dulcimer, native flute, etc. into a small set. Which, based on history, will show a couple hundred in profit over the first month in store. So try not to spend too many hours building!

The commissioner of a custom holocron hasn't coughed up the first paying order yet. So that project rolls over into a general RPF offering, meaning my priority now is to make the files for several different shell and panel options. And laser at least one of them as an example. I've got the "Academy" shell on the paint table right now. But need to laser up a new set of interior panels for that one before I can show it off.

Meanwhile I've taken on three different projects that shouldn't involve any software component at all. Re-dressing a helmet and oxygen kit into a alternate-history-pulp space helmet, throwing together a Morrow Project laser, and seeing if I can't make some stackable vacuumform huts in figure scale that will go with a Dragon Age campaign.

All of that should be traditional modeling, foam and wood and bondo and....oh, right. That laser cutting I was just talking about? That was for the emblem on the helmet.

Uke Out!

Six-show weekend just ended and maybe I can get back to projects before the next shows (or the next performances on the schedule) interfere again.

I'm still pretty enthused about my solid-body uke, although I am more realistic about how much it would cost and how long it would take, and more willing to put it on the back-burner while I work on paying work. I did figure out a couple new things, though:

The hardwood store in town has materials that will work. They even have some scrap wood that might be an even cheaper option. I'm tempted to grab five bucks of scrap (they price by the pound) just to get a feeling of how hardwoods like zebrawood and cordova or whatnot are like to work.

I will make a visit to TechShop SF to see what it looks like.

There actually IS a use for Ponoko in projects like this. Depending on how fine a cut you get, use a ShopBot or similar to CNC a 1/4" MDF template and use that to rout the body of your guitar. A router and template is the recommended shaping method anyhow, and it can be difficult to get a clean enough template with bandsaw and similar tools.

I've considered building a solid-body nylon string as well. An under-bridge pickup can be had for as little as $60. If nothing else, the lower string tension means I could purchase a pre-made traditional neck, and if it turned out to be too difficult to reinforce it, I could still use it to make a nylon string. This is in all ways a simpler construction process; traditional bridge instead of the more expensive metal bridge, etc., etc. Which might make it a better project to start out with!

Anyhow...here's the design I came up with for the steel string:

The first step will be building a mock-up to test the ergonomics. It may need to be extensively re-thought in order to be fully playable. The design actually came out of a process of abstracting and cartooning the shape of a traditional ukulele. On one of my sketches, the "pinch" of the hourglass had completely fallen away, and the resulting teardrop had an intriguing look to it.

I'm hoping the end result looks like an instrument coming out of a long but unfamiliar tradition; as if it was an electric version of some string instrument played in some remote culture for hundreds of years.

The treatment intended is chrome hardware (I'd go gold, but the bridge I have my eye on is chrome), sea-green solid-color body (probably not dyed wood, but an opaque lacquer.) The body might also have some detail painting -- foam/bubbles -- on it. The neck in this design might be built around a traditional neck, with a replacement headstock, but the best look would be a pale wood which requires, basically, hand-carving the entire thing out of ash or alder or maybe spruce.

At least the body, being solid-color, can be carved out of joined, non-appearance, and non-matching hardwoods. Meaning I can make use of what is affordable and in town, instead of spending $70 plus on a body blank plus shipment.

How Much Wood Would a Woodworker Work, if a Woodworker Would Work Wood

I'd love to have a shop. Even a garage.

I've been working my way back into building things. I have every intention of following the Pulp Adventure hand cannon, plus the medal clasps, space pilot badge, retro style headphone amp and so forth with new props. I invested in basic casting supplies and re-learned some of the technologies. I taught myself how to leverage AVRs to control servos, lighting, and other effects. I started a basic collection of home tools. It is time to start in on some projects!

I'm particularly interested in trying out the quick-fabrication technique of laminating and shaping MDF and sintra over a simple steel core, to make prop guns and swords. This is a natural task for a scrollsaw, which I have been thinking may be my next power tool acquisition.

I've already been asked to consider a stunt version of the Fury Gun, plus a display stand for the one I already made, and to finish a Lewis Gun kit for that matter (and I have a handful of smoke grenades waiting on the final part).

But I'm also very intrigued at making a musical instrument or two. A solid-body electric guitar (or uke) is about the simplest luthier project possible, outside perhaps of a nearly-finished Saga kit. Trouble is, the mechanical demands (strength, weight, tone projection) pretty much require hardwood. And that means that hand tools and a Dremel would take a very, very long time.

And there's two good reasons not to expand my home power tool collection in that direction. One is cost. The other is that an apartment is simply inadequate for sturdy benches, space to lay out, and even basic dust and noise control.




Small tools (aka, a tool that is undersized for the job) suffer from the same flaw as cheap tools; they take longer and, in the end, cost more.

(A cheap tool may get you through one project before it breaks. Try to do more than one, and by the time you finish replacing blades, handles, and finally the whole thing (with another tool of equivalent cheapness) you could have gone ahead and gotten a decent one. And the decent one would have made the cuts faster, neater, taken less clean-up, had less risk of ruining a workpiece requiring you to start from scratch, and, oh yes, less chance of ruining YOU causing you to at the very least spend a lot of money in the local Emergency Room.)

(It's the "Vime's Law of Boots" all over again, and places like Harbor Freight make a great business selling cardboard soles to those who haven't the capitol to invest in better.)

If I were to stick with smaller hand props and softer materials (aka plastics and softwoods, not hardwoods and stainless steel), I could get by with the kinds of smaller tools I already own. It still isn't as FAST, however, as having a full shop. With a full shop you have space to multi-task; paint is drying in one corner, glue setting up in another, and power tools operating in a third.

With a full shop you also have the ability to work fractally. That takes a word of explanation! If all you have is file, you can cut a shape. You just keep filing until you've removed all the wood that doesn't look like the final shape. If you have some tools but limited space, you can get out and set up a jigsaw to rough in the shape, then finish with the file. That is working fractally. But in that limited space, it isn't always worth the time to set up that other tool, and the other tool may not be capable of hogging that rough cut anyhow. So you still end up doing a lot of tasks start to finish with the same tool.

In a full shop, you can stop in the middle of filing, slap the shape on a table saw to cut off most of the excess in one swoop, carry it to the bandsaw and rough in the cut, carry it to the belt sander to do a quick round-over, chuck it back in the bench vise to finish up with a collection of rasps and files, then plug in a hand sander to clean up.

At each point in the ongoing tasks, you can divide it into zones where one tool is more appropriate, do that sub-task, and immediately shift over to the tool most appropriate for the next sub-task. This makes the work much, much faster.

With jigsaw, scrollsaw, dremel and hand files I would have three fractal levels (overlapping quite a bit) to swiftly shape wood and softer metals of smaller thicknesses. The tools would bog down on the largest cuts necessary to build a rifle-sized prop, but for the sizes under I'd be within the zone of efficiency.

These tools, however, are completely out of their weight class in dealing with the 1 3/4" thick hardwood slabs of a solid-body electric!




Right now my best options seem to be an external shop. I could try to sneak a little time in the scene shop at a place I do a regular gig at. It would be semi under-the-table, however, as their insurance doesn't cover outside workers. A better option just might be TechShop. They have the tools. To get access to them, you need both membership dues, and a safety-and-basic-operations class for each tool/class of tools. Those classes can add up quick, at $60-80 per class. And there is no test-out option.

However. The woodshop SBU at the local tech shop includes not just the band saw, table saw, and radical harm///radial arm saw (which I am very, very familiar with after some twenty years in theater scene shops), but panel saw, scrollsaw, and a couple of other things I wouldn't mind so much paying $65 to get up to speed on.

Of course, the wood lathe is another $65, and the planer-joiner and the router table are another $65, and the former is a great tool for prop-making and the later group are both assets to the luthier.

At least the check-out classes last forever; you can think of them as up-front costs. After that, you can just pay for a one-month membership when you've got a project coming up that needs it. Not as convenient for the kind of crazy schedule theater imposes, or the "work on it for a weekend, put it aside for a bit while you work on something else" style most of us are accustomed to. But if you can't afford the money or space for a 4 x 8 foot shopbot at home...



At the moment my plan seems to be to drop in at TechShop SF and see what it really looks like -- how crowded, how well set-up, how conducive to working on a project I could schedule in there. I'm also going to attempt a task breakdown for the solid-body uke to see if I can sneak the larger hogging into the scene shop on a visit or two, and complete the rest with the tools at home. And while I'm out, refresh my memory of power tools available at the local hardware stores, and check out the stock of hardwoods at McBeath.

And if it works out, get some kinds of tools that will allow me to continue on prop making that will also handle carving up a mock-up to see if my ideas look realistic for a playable instrument that would be worth the cost of building.

The cheapest I can get this thing to happen is still over $200. The fish-tail design I came up with requires custom headstock and with that, and quality hardware, the price increases to at least $300 parts and materials. One way or another, I think I need to add another $200 for tools -- whether that is TechShop membership and class dues, new power tools, or (most likely) a combination of the both.

And seems very much sensible that into that matrix of options I need to throw those combinations of tools and plans that have me building a couple of items I KNOW I'm getting paid for.

I'm (Still) Dreaming of a Uk-U-Le-Le...

So there are a couple of other options for building my own solid-body uke. Like, start with a Grizzly Soprano, ditch the fingerboard, have a new one slotted up at LMI in 14.7" scale length, carve a body from MDF (the purists howl, but listening tests show many people can't hear the difference), and set the bridge back to make the scale length come out. I'd still have a narrow Soprano neck, though. Oh, yes...and carve a shallow slot in the pre-made Grizzly neck for a carbon-fiber reinforcement rod, and otherwise trust my woodworking skills to achieve a proper setup.

Add to this, cheap guitar tuners, a re-purposed guitar bridge of the most basic kind, and either a guitar pickup or a hand-wound one. And, yes, I do find it mildly intriguing to hand-wind a pick-up.

But even though the Grizzly kit is a mere $22, you can get a mahogany neck (with rosewood fingerboard) in CONCERT scale length and width from Mainland Ukuleles for a mere $35. There's not enough space in a traditional uke neck for a full truss rod, but you could still slot it for a carbon-fiber reinforcement rod. Of course it would still be a glue neck, not a bolt-on, (unless you got real clever about the butt.)

But on the gripping hand, Uke Builder's Workshop has a Honduran Mahogany neck blank for $16 (who knows what shipping will come out to with all these things, though!) That could be carved to a custom headstock shape, and set up for bolt-on neck, and of course be set for any style or reinforcement all the way up to double-action truss rod. Or just carved thick enough to take the stress. I'd still need power tools for some of the steps, though -- and I'd really rather not carve a neck without a spoke-shave, too.

Unfortunately, neither Shapeways nor CNC (via Ponoko, Big Blue Saw, or even TechShop) are going to be much help here. Either the parts are large thick hardwood with compound curves, or they can be found cheaper already manufactured by people who get economies of scale in their machine-shop endeavors. Except for perhaps something like a complex shape for a fingerboard, or scroll-work, or laser engraving. Or an acrylic body -- I'd rather not cut that out myself.



Which segues into design. The basic design parameters are that it plays well and feels comfortable. Ergonomics trump all other considerations. Following that is general aesthetics; it should look nice, with clean workmanship and attention to detail. The lowest-ranking element is stylistic. For that there are several directions one could go:

Ukulele-like: an all-wood construction, stained and sealed, with as much as possible ukulele body and headstock shape and even details such as bridge and nut style, headstock angle, fret length, etc.

Minitele: a miniature Telecaster; body shape, headstock (changed enough to avoid attention from the lawyers, of course!) and Fender-style pick guard, pick-up ring, bridge, knobs, jack, and so forth. Done in something typical like candy-apple red gloss.

-Ish: designed towards a striking "look" in some style or other; Steampunk, Futuristic (aka acrylics and built-in lights), Diesel-punk (metal, rivets, toggle switches and tubes), Lantean, organo-tech, etc. These are probably the options that most leverage my existing experience in prop building, metal working, casting, and electronics.

Stylized: the shape of a traditional or pineapple uke, but abstracted and cartooned; a Cubist uke, with sharply slanting headstock, emphasized contours, and so forth.

Like No Instrument We've Encountered Before: done with the kinds of materials and attention to detail of a traditional instrument (acoustic or otherwise) but with contours and details that are unique; like Spock's Vulcan Lyre.


I'm leaning more towards the latter two at the moment. In all cases, of course, the first test would be to carve a mock-up body from cheaper material (like blue foam) and even temporarily mount a neck and nylon bridge on it so I can test the ergonomics thoroughly before committing to the actual build.



As far as all that goes, however, I have a couple other musical instrument projects for a rainy day. A cheap "garklein" style recorder with horrible intonation that needs to be cleaned out and tuned. A fipple-flute based MIDI breath controller -- I have the pressure transducer already and just need to find time to bench test the concept.

And other, more useful semi-musical gadgets. I am looking at possible wacky instruments showing up in the pit for Pirates, and I think Willy Wonka should be a total immersive sound design. And I really have to, one of these days, finish wiring up my dedicated Qlab controller surface, with or without the MIDI-over-USB I finally have the software tools to achieve.

And then there's more ordinary props. Compared to the steps, tool work, cost of materials and hardware, and necessary precision of work for musical instrument (even a solid-body ukulele), something like a laser pistol with "sound and lights" electronics inside is SIMPLE.

NO UKE FOR YOU

I took a little time to look deeper at the idea of making a ukulele. Okay, sure, I have a uke already. A cheap Rogue with friction pegs, veneer top, and horrid intonation. I've been meaning to upgrade to a concert scale anyhow (slightly larger fret and string spacing but the same tuning). But I've also had a certain desire to try an electric instrument.

You can buy an electric uke. Most of them are electric-acoustic which is NOT the same thing. Of the steel strings, there are only a few options and most of the decent ones are expensive. What I want is something with the curves and shiny paint of a Strat or Tele, that plays like a uke, and when someone asks where I got it, I can tell them I made it. Or at least assembled the kit.

So I did some research. I could build a cigar-box uke without too much trouble. One downside to that is would probably be less playable than my Rogue; cheap materials and simple construction often leads to less-than-lovely tolerances, and for musical instruments tolerances matter. The other downside is that there's no point in having a second cheap uke. I want an upgrade.

Once you go steel-string, though, even with a solid-body, the mechanics become much more difficult. It is the same problem I had with the "Fury Gun" I built last year; in that case, it was five pounds of good Krups steel on 30" long barrels and I needed proper machined parts to keep it from falling apart under it's own weight.

And then add the problem of it being, well, a ukulele. I'm not going to be happy with string or fret spacing from an electric guitar (even if the tuning worked out, which it doesn't), or even an electric mandolin (for which you can find fairly inexpensive kits.) This was going to be a uke, dammit. Re-entrant tuning and all (unlike a guitar, the lowest pitched string is in the middle, not on the bottom).

So this means I need bridge, nut, and tuners that can handle steel strings. That's a bit of cost already. There's a company that makes a good bridge for a steel-string uke for about fifty bucks. A set of tuning machines will of course cost 20-40 dollars themselves. And you still need ferrules and so forth.

The tension of those steel strings is too much to trust a glued wood neck to. It needs reinforcement, preferably a double-action truss bar (so it can be adjusted to flatten the curve of the neck to within the close tolerances needed to make a properly set-up instrument). And no-one, of course, makes a uke neck with a truss bar. So that's either hand-carve one from twenty bucks of hardwood, or slot a pre-made neck -- as little as another twenty bucks for the pine neck of a cheap Grizzly kit, or a decent mahogany one for 35 to fifty dollars. Plus the truss rod of course!

And that doesn't necessarily cover the frets, which might require some time with fret wire. I am not a masochist, though; if I have to make my own fingerboard, I'll buy one pre-slotted (and pre-cambered).

A guitar pick-up has the wrong spacing and too many strings. You could hand-wind your own. Or you could get a decent four-string pick-up from Almuse for about fifty bucks. And add another twenty-thirty bucks for the basic electronics, and the cheapest set of parts that makes a decent electric uke comes out to at least two hundred bucks.



A temptation appears at this point; to go the other way and accept the challenge of making the cheapest possible electric uke. Scrap and salvage wood. Threaded steel rod for a truss rod. Actual wires for fret wires. But there are two big problems with this scheme. One is that time and money graph against each other. if you want to do it cheap, it will take longer. Perhaps much, much longer -- when you are talking about things like making your own tuners from scratch. The other is that cheap and substitute materials are too likely to end up with, again, a uke that is nearly unplayable. And more than any other goal, I want a decent instrument I can continue to learn and grow on.



So. As another alternative, could Frankenstein a Grizzly soprano kit ($22) and a Saga electric mandolin kit ($116) and make an instrument. At the end of it, though, you'd have a mandolin bridge -- not a solid-body guitar or uke style -- lousy electronics, and a soprano fretboard. And there's no guarantee you can hack a decent Les Paul teardrop out of the pre-carved mandolin body, or re-purpose the Saga truss rod into a Grizzly neck of an entirely different shape.

So it pretty much looks like you need to go the route of purchasing Moongazer bridges and Almuse pickups and Grover tuning machines from Stew-Mac, rent some shop time to fit a truss rod and carve a body from a nice chunk of hardwood, and spend a few bucks on top of that for epoxy paints and chrome miscellaneous hardware like strap pegs -- oh, yes, and shape a nice pick guard.

So the total cost in parts and tools is very likely to exceed $300. The time commit is not THAT bad, not with pre-slotted fingerboard and carved neck and pre-shaped bone nut and so forth. But all in all does not seem an appropriate project to start at this time.

Ukulele!

The last microphone order I put in, I added a clearance-priced soprano uke "set" as an impulse buy. I have been thinking about adding a string to my collection of instruments, but hadn't been actively looking (okay...sometimes I dreamed of an erhu...)

And I LOVE the instrument. Not so much the model I just picked out, although after sanding down the nut and letting the strings settle in it became quite playable (I've got some Aquilla strings getting shipped from Hawaii...those should improve the intonation and tone.)

I'm already thinking of moving up to a nice Lanikai. But, really, I need to keep at practicing. I'm still working on getting the changes smoothly on the first strummed song I'm learning, and I'm even further from getting through the full song without a stumble on any of the finger-picking melodies I've been working on.

Discovered several sites for tablature, foremost being Ukulele Hunt (for just plain being a fun site) and Tropical Storm Hawaii (for being a giant clearing house of tabs). And I discovered reading tabs was easier than reading sheet music -- I almost sight-read through the first tab I tried (a single-note version of the theme from MASH).

So the last several days, since the UPS guy came by, I've been reading about ukulele, listening to ukulele, practicing ukulele. The lighter strings are a bonus to me over guitar; even with carpentry and rock climbing to toughen them my fingers refuse to callus properly. The small size of the soprano uke is a bit of a challenge, but then, I also play sopranino recorder (and I've tried a garklien, which I can actually finger with difficulty).

I can't express how much I love this instrument. The tone is charming and wonderful, with a real naturalness, a wide expressive range, and all those humanizing bits of noise (clicks and scratches and squeaks) that get left out of keyboard synthesizer playing. The instrument is flexible and challenging, with all manner of different tone production and harmonizing and musically useful ways you can use it. And it's extremely portable (and cheap, too, so you don't have to be scared toting it around with you.)

Me being the way I am, although I'm still stumbling on the F to Bb change, I'm already trying out hammer-ons, tremelo, the "ras" strum borrowed from Flamenco. But then I think that's a good way to learn; always have at least one thing you can barely do at all, and as you get it, it brings back technique you can use to improve the things you merely do badly.

Since I do have some improvisational background, I'm not restricted to following the tabs I find as written. I am freely changing to alternate fingering when it makes it easier for my current ability to handle chord changes...but also adding in flourishes when those fall within what I can do that I find musically useful.

Pretty soon I'll need to stop practicing all day, and get back to the paying work. But for the moment...!