My first song covers 🎶

It was December of last year when I decided to try learning a new instrument.

Although I still had a lot to learn and practice on the piano, for better or worse, I've always thought of myself as someone who goes wide into hobbies rather than deep.

I figured the bass would be a good instrument to start with strings since you typically deal with single notes and patterns instead of chords. I picked it up and quickly began to understand how it works.

Coming from a piano background, it wasn't hard to grasp the patterns. The frets on a bass follow the same order as the keys on a piano, so once you find a couple of landmark frets, you can figure out your way around fairly easily.

Of course, I'm speaking on a basic "gets the job done" level, as all instruments have different levels of complexity depending on how you're playing them and how fancy you want to get.

After having the bass for a couple of weeks, I figured I could simultaneously learn how to play guitar since I was already taking lessons from my teacher, Larson, who could also teach me the guitar.

I picked up a beautiful sunburst Squier, and oh boy, it was definitely more difficult to learn than the bass. Single notes wouldn't do it anymore; now, I had to learn chords, strumming techniques and patterns, and deal with the calluses that come with it. Eventually, I was tempted by Facebook Marketplace to get an acoustic guitar, so I got that too.

I thought I now had enough instruments to start covering a few songs that I liked and that I found to be "simple" enough for a beginner to play. Although I knew I still wasn't at an ideal level to actually play music, let alone sing, I figured covering some songs would be a cool way to stay motivated and see that all the lessons and practice are paying off.

So here they are. I recommend using headphones, and also note that there is a brief period of silence at the beginning of the videos.

Enjoy!

"Love's not an Obstacle" by Metronomy

"Living Proof" by The War on Drugs

And for an outro:

"How our love grows" by Tyler Burkhart

These were recorded over a period of six months. It turns out that recording the instruments is one thing, but recording video, editing, and dealing with Ableton and Adobe Premiere as a newbie also take their own time.

Special thanks to my sensei, Larson, and my producer, Franco.