(Worst post title ever? Yes.)

Last night we went to see Regina Spektor performing at local venue Vega. It was rather excellent to be able to walk to a concert by someone who, for us, is relatively famous and a big deal – also nice that it was still light after the concert for the walk home. Thanks, Summer.

The concert itself was a little unusual. The band (Spektor, a violinist, and a drummer) played about three songs before announcing that they were all feeling traumatised because the fourth member of the band, their cellist Dan Cho, had died only a week ago. So that was really quite an unusual aspect to the show.

On the other hand, it didn’t obviously colour the music as far as I could tell (though I may lack empathy). Instead, the concert consisted of Spektor largely playing alone and belting out pretty faithful renditions of her songs (particularly from her newest album, Far). She was great and her voice in person is even more impressive – she’s able to do a lot with it.

The beginning of the concert ended up being the most affective for me, prior to the revelation of the sad context and prior to realising it was going to be a rather straightforward performance (no audience interaction to speak of, for instance). One song in particular, One More Time With Feeling, seemed very beautiful. But I find myself wondering if it would have been so at the end of the concert when the concert felt more like a recital.

In the end, it was certainly a great thing to see Regina Spektor live, and she seemed very sweet (and sad), but the lack of connection to the audience did empty out the “liveness” of the songs quite a lot, turning it into something more like “oh, I’m standing near a famous person!” rather than a genuine instantiation of the songs in a special setting.

Yes, that’s right, I finally started playing my ukulele again this evening after a huge amount of downtime. I can feel my fingertips tingling from holding down the chords again, my shoulder’s a bit achey from it, too. But man oh man is it a neat instrument. For sheer making-music power it’s quite unparalleled I’d think. Throw in the fact that a vast number of pop songs don’t use particularly sophisticated chords or patterns and you find yourself able to clumsily make your way through some pretty cool stuff.

Playing the ukulele reminded me of just how much I like being able to make my slightly crappy brand of music. Out of nothing, even I can make some nice sounds and quietly sing along to myself, sitting here in the apartment, reading music off my laptop screen.

I’ve been thinking about happiness lately, and the various components that go into it. Pretty universally people say that social elements are key (friends, family), and that having some sense of your work being a kind of ‘calling’ is important, and that some sort of spirituality (even if it’s “just” meditation and awareness) helps out a lot too. But I wonder where music fits into all of that, because I think that we all somewhat recognise that music is magically. And being able to make it, even crudely… I’d think that would be something that would make each and every one of us happy.

Today I took the plunge and ordered a new ukulele – as in, a proper one rather than the somewhat toy-like one I already own (a Makala Soprano in dark blue, which is very svelte and which I still love). The new uke is to be a Kala KA-C (above), a concert-sized ukulele which means a bit more room around the frets and a slightly different (though still ukuleleish) sound.

It’s a simultaneously exciting and daunting thing to buy a “proper” instrument for the first time. I haven’t played music of any kind since the piano as a young’un, so this world is extremely new and, frankly, intimidating. At the same time, having demonstrated to my satisfaction I’m keen on the ukulele, I think it’s a good thing to have an instrument that’ll sound good and last a long while. That’s my story.