One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. – Bob Marley

Music has this power to connect us to those around us and to our surroundings. I am so grateful that through the ukulele I have been able to share my music with my amazing family, friends and my wonderful fans!

I have always found peace singing: in the shower, on those car rides home, at the top of my lungs in my room when I’m happy or upset. Music is my way of expressing my emotions and myself. I love the ukulele because it allows me to create an acoustic sound that completes and compliments my voice.

Every week I look forward to practicing and creating a new ukulele cover and tutorial on my youtube channel. I decided to create this ukulele channel because I was watching other ukulele tutorials and I had some criticism. But rather than just mumbling about these issues to myself I decided why not fix it! I aim for my tutorials to give you everything you need to learn: the chords, finger placement, strumming, lyrics, tempo, etc and nothing you don’t need. I want my tutorials to be precise and clear. To do this my boyfriend (co-producer of the channel) and I learned how to use After Effects so we could make the diagrams and graphics exactly how we wanted them. And then the rest is just the music 🙂

Here is one of my favorite videos I filmed!!

Ukulele Tutorial/Cover – Bubbly by Colbie Caillat

When I’m starting to film a tutorials the first step is choosing a song. I choose differently every week, sometimes its just what has been in my head all week. Or I look at the top songs for ukulele tabs or chords searched that week or maybe I try to find a song that doesn’t already have a lot of tutorials. Then comes practice, practice, practice!!! I want to make sure that its my best performance that is captured. I want my singing and ukulele to be perfect, but of course sometimes I make some mistakes. Then comes finding the place to film. I love to be in nature so I try to showcase nature as much as possible. If you are following my channels then you may notice that at first I was traveling around Slovenia and Croatia and then I returned home to the US. Virgin Islands.

Short sidenote: For those who may not be familiar with all the small islands in the Caribbean, this is St. Thomas my beautiful, but tiny, island of 32 square miles!

At least it was like this before the hurricanes. And yes I mean the TWO Category Five hurricanes! On September 6th, 2017, while I was safe from harm traveling abroad. My lifetime home and everyone I love was hit by Hurricane Irma, and her 230 mph winds touched everything in her path on her visit. Roofs blown off, concrete walls crumbled from the pressure, roads became rivers, cars made into dented balls of metal and glass, homes and all the memories it contained flying off into the wind, boats washed ashore or sunken in the ocean, cell phone communication made impossible, sturdy telephone and utility poles snapped in half like twigs, leaves, branches and trees ripped forcefully from the earth’s hold. Destruction. And then exactly two weeks later Hurricane Maria brought enormous amounts of water, wind, and flooding ruining what ever was already destroyed. I was not there for this heart wrenching experience and I am so blessed and grateful that my family and friends were not harmed physically during the storm or in the aftermath. But Irma and Maria did take the roof off my house and then everything inside of it.

This is my home…

As soon as I heard this I knew even more that my original plans to come home were changed. Now I would be returning home to help recover and rebuild resiliently. It hasn’t been easy, as I’m writing this two months later, I, like many others, still do not have power at the temporary home we were relocated to. But there have been so many volunteers and donations, from the community and also from the US mainland and abroad, all working together to give aid and relief. And those who live here have been so strong and resilient, working at impossible lengths to make things come back to some kind of normallcy.

So… how is this related to the Ukulele?

Because through it all I had the support of my fans keeping me motivated to continue my channel. They were sending me encouraging messages to stay strong and help rebuild. I would especially like to thank Love Laced Apparel who sent me clothing and donated to the families of those affected by the hurricanes this summer. And even in the midst of destruction around me, I found these pockets of beauty to showcase. There’s just too many sad pictures and stories of destruction. The Ukulele helped me find beauty and hope and I want my short videos to share this with you!

Thank you for reading this I hope it opens you to use and create music more in your life. To be grateful for everything that you have, and remember that even if you lose it all overnight, revival is difficult but always possible. To go out into nature and find peace and to love our beautiful home. And lastly to continue connecting with people around us, and to listen to their music and stories.