Lilred makes her debut

On Tuesday January 11, I finished my third ukulele. This is the one made from Manitoba maple and a cedar fence board I bought at Lowe’s. It was a bit of a pain to make. The Manitoba maple is punky beyond belief and there is quite a bit of superglue holding the wood together. Still, I’m very happy with the instrument. This little instrument is full of surprises. It’s a soprano, one size smaller than the other two ukuleles I’ve made. I thought it would be difficult to get my fingers squished onto the proper frets but it isn’t. I can stretch from the first to the seventh fret without difficulty and I don’t have trouble fitting my fingers onto the small frets near the sound hole. I thought it might have a quiet, subtle, voice but it’s a loud little sucker for its size. It’s easy and fun to play. There are a couple of ‘faces’ on the back of the instrument. It seems to be saying, ‘Hello, I may be small but don’t underestimate me. There’s more than enough spunk in this little package.’ Neither of my other instruments has a name but this one got the name Lilred early on in the process, mostly because of the rich red areas of the wood. Lilred continues to surprise me.

When I realized that the Calgary Retired Teachers’ Art Show was going to take place this year, I decided, just for a laugh, to list my first ukulele for sale. I didn’t expect that anyone would actually buy it and no one did. I also brought Lilred with me to show it to some friends who have been following the progress of the build on Facebook. When I walked in, on the day of the show, carrying a ukulele case, one of the organizers asked me if I would be willing to play a bit. I mumbled that I had just brought it to show friends. Then when a second person asked me I conceded that I might play if I didn’t disturb people and if I could do it in the background. I can play for hours on my own and the minute I know someone is listening I get fumble-fingered. Those years of teaching, those years of drama training, those years of singing? They have no transfer!

I found a corner close to my display table and started plunking away. The first person who spoke to me said that he had heard a sound and kept trying to answer his cell phone. He didn’t seem upset about it and I was glad of that. I played “Side by Side” while he wandered among the paintings. He came back and told me that song reminded him of looking out from his balcony in Victoria when he was in his teens. He said it brought back memories of the sea.

A while later I was part way through Stan Rogers’ ‘Northwest Passage’ when another person approached. She waited until I was finished and then told me of a book she had just finished. I think the title was Erebus. In the book there were references to Rogers’ song and it was in her head for the duration of the book. She said she went between thinking the book was wonderful and wondering how she could possibly keep reading it. In the end it was worth it. We chatted a bit before she thanked me and continued to move among the easels.

One of my favourites to play is ‘The Log Driver’s Waltz’ and I tend to settle into it when I can’t think of anything else to play. I was playing it when I noticed a woman coming down the row of paintings towards me. She was dancing to the music. Her eyes smiled over her mask. I smiled back as she danced down the next row of paintings.

Things were pretty slow when, around noon, I took my turn at the wrapping table. I took a moment to fetch Lilred and began to play. The guy who had first asked me to play was working on the cash. I played a song and gave him the ukulele to examine. He was amazed at the rich reds of the Manitoba maple and after I played a couple of other songs, he commented on how lovely the little instrument sounded.

One of the women working in the same area told me that her mother had a ukulele that would now have been over 100 years old. She said the only thing she wanted from the her mother’s estate was that ukulele but she didn’t know what happened to it. She said growing up she dismissed the little instrument as not being cool and hadn’t paid much attention to it. Then she realized how much she associated the instrument with her mother.

After my stint at the wrapping table, I returned to my corner and played a bit more. Many people smiled as they passed and some of them stopped to say thank you. Some said they appreciated the atmosphere the music created and that they found it calming. My playing is not sophisticated and I made lots of mistakes but music has the ability to reach through imperfect performances to spark memories and to elicit smiles. What a wonderful thing that is.

Nails

I know this Covid 19 virus is driving us all a little nuts. I’ve found myself thinking about things I never considered before the beginning of March. Some of these thoughts are leading in productive directions and others range from frivolous to just plain weird.  I can’t say I haven’t thought about today’s topic, but I can say that I never considered writing about it until now. 

            I assume that most of you who read this know me. You will recognize that I’m hardly a fashion maven. If the clothes are comfy, I love them. If they’re not, I don’t. I always have resisted getting dressed up. I know that a lot of people feel special when they get dressed up. I don’t. Along with that goes a general lack of interest in make-up and fingernails. I probably had nail polish put on my fingers once or twice when I was a kid, but I’ve never bought any except to paint over the scratches on our tandem bike. On my most recent “BIG” birthday, I decided to step out of my comfort zone. I rode on the Mountain Coaster in Revelstoke BC and I had a pedicure and got my toenails painted blue. I thought that was pretty adventurous and while, blue toenails amused me, I don’t think I’ll bother doing that again.  Fingernails, however, are a different story.

            For a number of years, I took classical guitar lessons and many classical players grow the nails on the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers of their right hands. I don’t think I ever talked to my teacher about it.  I just grew four nails. I didn’t quite know what I was trying to accomplish by growing the nails but the big kids in the classical guitar world had nails, so I was going to have nails. The problem was that my nails tended to peel, split and break. When I quit playing classical guitar, I was happy to clip the nails and be done with it.

            Fast forward to the re-entrance of the ukulele in my life. I played ukulele before I learned to play guitar. It was a cheaper instrument but as soon as I could, I ditched the uke and bought a guitar. In 2015 I became interested in the uke again and bought myself one for my birthday. I played chords and then enrolled in an online course that involved some finger picking (plucking the strings with the thumb and three fingers of the right hand rather than using only the thumb or a pick). For me finger picking goes better with nails, so I started to grow the four of them again. They still split and peeled and broke but this time I paid more attention.

            With my increased diet of YouTube these last months I decided one day to look up guitarist’s fingernails. Classical guitar technique can, I’m pretty sure, be transferred to ukulele so why not take a look at what the guitarists do with their nails? I found out all sorts of interesting things. One guy, whose playing I really admire, has a video on how to reshape a nail by using a spoon and a cigarette lighter. No, he’s not snorting or preparing to inject anything. He also warns to use the technique at your own risk. Since I’m not going to be giving concerts anytime soon, I don’t feel the need to experiment with that one. One other guy goes to a salon to have acrylic nails applied. He’s been doing it for long enough that the person he goes to knows exactly what he wants. No muss, no fuss, and no broken nails. If you depend on your nails to leave the string in a particular way, a broken nail has the sonic effect of someone limping.

            I found videos on how to shape ‘the ramp’: that part of the nail that actually drags along the string before letting it go. I didn’t know there was such a thing and seeing the diagrams helped me to understand a bit more of what I wanted to do with my nails and why it works. I find it more than a little ironic that I’ve not only spent hours looking at info on fingernails but that I now have a whole kit to take care of the Fracture-less Four.  I’ve discovered that if I file or sand them a little each day, I can pretty much manage to keep them from breaking. Also, I can feel the nails catch the strings in a way I don’t like if I don’t keep them to a comfortable length and keep the edges smooth. So, most days I spend some time filing and buffing and I’ve accumulated more tools than I thought possible for the job.      

         At first, I used a diamond nail file and that seemed to work well enough. Then I came across a ceramic file that I could take on airplanes without having it confiscated. I started reading what the uke pros had to say about nail care and some of them used a beam-like contraption that has two rough surfaces for shaping nails and 4 other surfaces of decreasing coarseness to refine and polish the nails. I don’t mind that beam-like implement too much, but I feel like it’s hard to get at the underside where the string actually leaves the nail when you pluck it. I like the thinner files for that.

To complete the kit, I raided the shop for various grits of sandpaper.  I don’t bother with the really coarse stuff. The metal files and the coarse side of the beam take care of that. I start with 220 grit to remove any nicks; then I go to either the ceramic file or 320 grit paper. To take the burrs off the underside I use the polishing surfaces on the beam (I should really call it the Buff Pro because that’s what it says on it.) Or, I can use 400, 600, and 1200 grit sandpaper folded over one of the metal files. There are a number of permutations and combinations. To clean out any dust from under the nails I lightly scrape the underside with the point of the ceramic file. I don’t like the feel of dust trapped under my nails. So, with the ramps carefully shaped and the under-edges of the nails nice and smooth I’m ready to pick up the ukulele.

            You might be wondering how babying fingernails exists along with working in a wood shop. There have been nail casualties in the shop but luckily, I’m right-handed so, most of the time, I have the sharp, pointy tools held in my right hand. If fingernails are going to get hit with sharp, pointy objects it’s usually left-hand ones that get it. I have sanded down a fingernail or two on the belt sander, but the left-hand nails need to be short anyway so as not to get in the way when pressing down strings on the fretboard. If a right fingernail gets sanded I either cut the rest and begin shaping again when they grow out, or I limp along with uneven nails for a while until the short guy catches up. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter because Richard and Odie are about the only ones who have to listen to me play anyway.

            I’m anticipating another question ‘Why don’t you grow the nail on the pinky finger the same length as the others on the right hand?’ I don’t know if real guitarists do that or not. Maybe I should look that up too. I don’t do it because I find it fussy enough to pay attention to four fingernails. I don’t want to take on another one I can clip and forget.

            There now, if you’ve come this far, good for you. You can say, along with me, that Covid 19 have caused you to think about things that never would have crossed your mind two months ago. Productive? Frivolous? Weird? Your call.

Ukulele #1

Ukulele #1

Building a ukulele is a complicated process. Perhaps I should say “complex.” That sounds better but I think 'complicated' is more accurate in my case. Like many projects, on the surface it looks straightforward enough: a sort of figure 8 shaped box with a stick in one end. The trick is that the box has to look good and sound good, according to a standard western musical scale. That's where my old nemesis accuracy comes in. Is it straight? Well, it's sort of straight. Is it square? Sort of. Better get it right in the first place because the error just gets compounded the further into the build you get. Too many times to count Jake tidied up, tweaked or downright fixed what I had done. 

Sanding the sides

I learned a ton. You can translate that as I made a ton of mistakes but, as I always told my students, the only serious mistake is one from which you learn nothing. I can even claim to have made the same mistake several times in a row but eventually I ended up with a list of mistakes I won't make again. The good news is that there are countless mistakes that I haven't made yet so there's still good reason to make a few more instruments. Someone asked me the other day if I still needed help to build an instrument now that I've built one. She seemed surprised when I told her I didn't think I'd be able to build one on my own for quite a long time.

The first one is partly about learning what to pay attention to. The short answer to that is – everything! I did get some photos along the way but not nearly enough. In some ways my inelegant drawings are more helpful than photos. If I draw something I have to process it. If I take a photo sometimes I look at it and wonder why I took it. There's one photo of some masking tape on the inside of the back of the instrument. I remember Jake telling me not to stretch the tape as I put it on and I can't remember why I was putting the tape on in the first place. I think it was to do with lining up the back strip.

Clamping up the fretboard

There are many many small details that get absorbed through practice. Doing something once doesn't count as practice. I'm building two ukuleles instead of one so I can get in a wee bit more practice with each step. I'm hoping that on these two I'll be able to up my game by making smaller and different mistakes. I'm also hoping that by the time these two are finished I'll have fewer absolute blank spots in the process. It's an adventure and I'll be trying out some new things as I go.

The 3:00 a.m. rosette

At the moment I'm at work on two rosettes. The rosette is the decorative circle that goes around the sound hole in the top of a guitar or ukulele. A ukulele doesn't need a rosette and my first uke doesn't have one. Now I'm ready to give it a go. One rosette was partially made for me and one I'm making myself. A couple of days ago I got so involved with what I was doing that I didn't want to stop, and because I'm retired and don't always have to be responsible, I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. so I could see the wooden rosette mostly finished. I'm quite pleased with it so far and absolutely delighted with how much fun I'm having with it. I'm looking forward to a lot more fun on these builds. I know there will be times when I'm ready to take an axe to the whole project and I also know that if I walk away and do something else for a while I'll eventually be ready to get back into the shop and sort it out. Perhaps this time I'll be able to step back enough to invite you along for parts of the journey. Stay tuned.

Jake clamping the bridge on ukulele #1

The Boy (Girl) Who Cried Wolf

Probably you have heard the cautionary tale.  A boy rushes into his village crying, "Wolf, wolf, the wolf is coming!"  Everyone runs for cover only to discover there is no wolf. He does this so often that when he actually sees a wolf approaching the village his cries go unheeded.

Sometimes I feel a little like the boy who cried wolf. I get excited by possibilities and decide then and there that I'm going to write a book on teaching techniques, or become an expert on picture framing, or learn marquetry, or become a life coach, or publish a children's book. The problem is I don't end up doing most of these things. That doesn't stop me from talking enthusiastically about what I intend to do and, when I'm talking about it, it's all consuming. Somehow the brilliant plan gets set aside. Something more interesting comes along.  I get bogged down in the  complexity of the task and stop because I don't know what to do next or it takes too much energy to persevere through the icky bits.

I have been trying to cut tight dovetails for twelve years now. I seem to either cut plumb or cut at right angles to the face of the board. I don't seem to be able to do both at the same time and both are required for a tight joint. I've been learning to play piano for seven years and the progress is similarly slow. I can play the notes correctly or I can play in tempo. Doing both at the same time is
fundamental to making music.

Although I'm similarly stuck in both pursuits I feel very differently about them. With the dovetails I can shrug, put them away and try again tomorrow or throw them across the shop and not return to them for months. I enjoy the process of sawing or planing for its own sake. Of course I want to end up with beautiful results but if I don't, I mostly have fun anyway. Since I can remember I have always wanted to work with wood.

Piano is different. I've never particularly wanted to play the piano but a great opportunity to learn came along and I took it. The contentment in the practice in the shop is not there with piano. I want the hands to get out of the way and just do what needs to be done to make music. I have little patience when they play wrong notes or stop when the music should continue. I know I could improve with time and practice but I lack the will to push through. It's time to let go.

Music will always be a part of my life and even as I let piano go another idea takes shape.  I want to return to making door harps but I want to make the bodies differently. Making them from large thick pieces of wood means there is a lot of waste. What if I could make the bodies of door harps more like guitar bodies?  I have started to learn about building guitars. Of course I'll break a lot of wood and the burn pile will grow in leaps and bounds but what if I could develop some of the skills of a luthier and what if I could, then, make a concert ukulele for myself? The dream takes hold and I wonder if I could become skilled enough to make ukuleles for others to enjoy. What if this is a way to combine my love of music with my love of woodworking?

So stay tuned. Down the road we both may be able to laugh at another of Marian's crazy schemes but maybe, just maybe I will one day produce an instrument I'm proud of and, maybe just maybe, I'll be able to build more than one. In the meantime I hear the siren song of possibility and door harps are waiting to be built.