“Song for a Friend” by Jason Mraz on Ukulele

In response to a comment on my (one and only so far!) Youtube video, my reggae-style ukulele cover of Jason Mraz’s “Song for a Friend”, I’m going to explain the chords I used. (Shout out to Jerome Analu on Youtube for asking!) See below for the chords and explanation …

The transcription I found, which is for guitar, says the chords are Bm add11/E (024430), A6/9 (x04422), Gmaj7/13 (3×4430), G6/E (025430), and A7 (x02020).  Damn. Now those are some intimidating chord names.  Our boy Jason loves him some fancy jazz chords.

Luckily, I found that on ukulele, some simpler chords seem to work just fine.  If you listened to my version on the video, then I hope they sound good to you as well.  I personally didn’t hear any wrongness in them.  Here are the chords that worked for me on ukulele:

Bm: 4222
A: 6454 (same chord as the open A 2100, but it sounded better here to me. You can mix it up back and forth if you like)
G: 4232 (again, I like this better in this song than the open G, 0232, but they can be freely mixed)
G6: 0202
and A7: 0100

(A quick note on how to read these chords, in case it’s not immediately apparent to you: the numbers are the frets you hold down for each chord, going from the lowest (the one at the vertical “top” of the fretboard) to the highest.  So, for example, on the G6 chord, which is notated 0202, the D string (one at the vertical “top” of the fretboard) is open, you put your finger (I use my index, or first, finger) on the second fret of the C, or second, string, the E (third) string is open, and a finger (I use my middle, or second, finger) on the second fret of the E (fourth, “highest” in pitch, and the “bottom” string vertically) string.)

(I find this notation to quicker, easier, and more compact than full chord diagrams, once you know how to read them.  The guitar notations above are the same, except for the 6 strings of a guitar, instead of 4 on a uke, and from the low E to high E.  The “x”s indicate strings that are either not played or muted; not part of the chord.)

(I hope that clears up the notation for anybody who may be confused by it.)

I wrote those chords in the order they’re played for almost all of the song.  So, it goes:

Bm | Bm | A | A | G | G | G6 | A7 |
(where the | symbols delineate one measure of time)

Or, in notation with the lyrics,

(Bm) Well you’re magic he said, but don’t (A) let it all go to your head;
well I bet (G) if you all had it all figured out then you’d (G6) never get out of bed (A7).
No doubt (Bm), of all the things that I read, what he wrote me (A) is now sounding like …

(These are not necessarily 100% precise; your mileage may vary depending on the phrasing of your singing and how you time the chord changes, but it’s the basic idea and where they fall for me.)

And so on.

The only difference are those “bridge”-like parts where the chord progression turns around a bit; then it goes like this:

Bm | Bm | A | A | G | G | G6 | A7 | (regular verse)
G6 | G6 | A7 | A7 | Bm | A | G | G |
G6 | G6 | A7 | A7 x* | (turnaround verse)
Bm | Bm | A | A | G | G | G6 | A7 | (back to regular verse)

(* The “x” indicates a slight rest at the end of this measure, before it goes back into the regular verse again)

So, all together, the first verse and turnaround with lyrics:

(Bm) Well you’re magic he said, but don’t (A) let it all go to your head;
well I bet (G) if you all had it all figured out then you’d (G6) never get out of bed (A7).
No doubt (Bm), of all the things that I read, what he wrote me (A) is now sounding like I was (G) hoping to be,
Keep keepin’ it real (G6) ‘cuz it keeps gettin’ (A7) easier indeed (G6) …
(G6) He’s the reason that I’m laughin’ (A7) … Even if there’s no (Bm) one (A) else (G) …
(G6) He said you’ve got to love (A7) yourself … (Bm)

Those two patterns form the entire song.  Most of it is the first pattern, with the second one thrown in occasionally. That includes the several interludes and the end/climax part, which sounds different, but uses the same chords behind it.

Hope that clears things up, and feel free to comment with any questions, etc.

I feel like I’m fairly good at figuring out songs and/or transcribing them to Ukulele, so feel free to post any requests, though I can’t guarantee of getting to them in any particular timeframe. Of course, a small donation helps make it worth my while … : )

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How to make files/tracks play in the correct order on an RCA Pearl MP3 player

(if you want to skip my mini-review of the device and my long list of tribulations, jump straight to “the solution” below. 🙂 )

The Device

I have a couple of old RCA Pearl MP3 players.  Overall I find them to be quite nice and handy–small, takes a AAA battery (I use rechargeables, of course), and easy to manage by dragging and dropping files to and from the device, both with Windows Explorer and Nautilus in Linux.

Since I’ve more recently acquired some iThings, I find that I use them less and less, but still like to keep them around in case I need them, or in case I fill up my iThings with other junk (apps, music, podcasts, videos).  Mostly I end up using them as USB flash drives to tote around things that I need to print (since my printer is out of toner and haven’t had a chance to get more yet) or otherwise transfer between machines. (Dropbox mostly solves transfer issues for me, but sometimes I need to put something on someone else’s machine, or copy without being connected to the internet.)

Lately I used it to put some audiobooks (Hunger Games, anyone? 🙂 ) on so I could let my son listen to them without having to give him my iThings, which I’m generally using for all kinds of other stuff at any given time.

The Bug

But I ran into the annoying old bug in the Pearl’s software where, even if you’ve copied your files all over correctly, and all the metadata is clean and correct, the tracks show up and play in what seems to be a totally nonsensical order on the device (for some reason it seems to follow a pattern lots of time (but not always), like 03, 05, 07, 09, 11, 13, 14, 12, 10, 08, 06, 04, 02, 01–???).

The device in question here is a Pearl TH1611A, one of the ones with a small blue LED display. I also have an older one, a TH1100A (has a backlit LCD instead), which doesn’t seem to have this problem as much because it lets you browse the local filesystem directly instead of using the metadata to organize it by artist, album, genre, etc.  I actually kind of like that solution better; you can’t approach your files in as many different ways that way, but if they’re organized how you want to play them anyway (artist/album folders, or a folder for a playlist), then it’s really no problem. It’s actually kind of handy that way, since you can choose to play any whole folder and all of its subfolders, anywhere up and down the tree. Filesystem management — simple, intuitive, elegant. But, the buttons are all kind of sticking and nonresponsive on that one, so I didn’t really want to let my son get frustrated with that.

At first I thought maybe it was because they were encoded with a variable bit rate (VBR), and the device wanted a constant bit rate.  So, I converted them all to 32kbps CBR mono MP3s, and tried again. No luck, same problem.

Then I thought, maybe I need to copy the files to the device manually, one at a time, in order, because maybe something on the filesystem remembers what order they were copied in and uses that in the playlist. What a pain to copy just one file at a time!!  But again, no luck, same problem.

Then, I tried upgrading the firmware on the Pearl player (from the 3.1.1 version to 3.1.5)–the firmware upgrade was available from RCA’s website. Nope.

Next, I tried using the silly little media manager software that comes with the device (EasyRip or EasyRipper or something like that, downloaded from rcaaudiovideo.com).  Normally I hate having to use extra software just to get files on and off a device (I’m looking at you, Apple & iTunes (luckily, that problem is solved with pwnTunes–but that’s a subject for another post), and this was no exception. It installs 2 programs in your startup, and had to unclick checkboxes 2 or 3 times during the install process for extra junkware I didn’t want.  Finally got it to import a few folders into its music library, and tried several different ways to copy it to the device. Again, no luck, same problem.

(Not to mention that in between each step, I need to take the device out of the computer and then turn it on and wait for it to boot up so it can read files from the filesystem and add information to its local database–ugh, very tedious.)

I guess at this point I could have tried re-ripping the CDs with RCA’s little software, but I didn’t want to have to do that.  Ripping CDs is enough of a chore doing it once, not to mention having to set up all the preferences correctly in a new piece of ripping software …

Then I seemed to remember successfully solving this issue once before due to a google post I’d found that mentioned a specific ID3 tag version that the files had to be tagged with — using a different version caused the troubles.  I googled and googled but found almost nothing about it; of the few posts I did find, there was nothing specific.  That’s why I’m posting this, for not only my own future reference but hopefully to save someone else some headaches and frustration in the future.

So I dug out some tag editing software I had on my computer and from the internet, working from the assumption that it probably needed an older, as opposed to a newer, format.

I was amazed how difficult and frustrating it was to try to change ID3 versions in most of the software I used.  Most of them are working from the assumption you want to upgrade all your tags to a newer version, like ID3v2 2.3 or 2.4, and they let you do that, but going backwards is like pulling teeth.

On Windows I tried mp3tag (which is excellent, by the way, except for what I was trying to do), ID3TAG-IT, Winamp, and one other; Linux I tried gMusicBrowser, easyTAG, and kid3.

So I tried taking off all ID3v2 tags and just using ID3v1 … didn’t work. 1.0 or 1.1.

The Solution

Finally through trial and error what I found was that it wants, counterintuitively, ID3v2 2.3 tags (I left the ID3v1 tags in there, they didn’t seem to cause a problem).

Just for the reference of anyone else who might be having this issue, here is what I did:

On Ubuntu 10.04, installed kid3. Right-click on an mp3 file in the folder in question, and say “open with -> kid3” (don’t select multiple files, because then it’ll open up a new instance for each one and lag your system while it does so). Upon opening one file you get the whole current directory in the left pane of kid3. My files happened to be tagged with ID3v2.2, which is what iTunes gave them (click on an individual file and it will tell you on the right the ID3 version). First select all, then either make a small change in the v2 tag, or use the buttons to copy “From Tag 2” (to tag 1) and then copy back again to Tag 2 with the “From Tag 1” button.  A floppy disk icon will show next to each of them indicating you have unsaved changes.  Hit the “Save” button on the toolbar; then by clicking on a file you will see it’s saved in ID3v1.1 and 2.4.0. Then, select all again, and in the tools menu, choose “Convert ID3v2.4 to ID3v2.3”. Hit “Save” again, and verify the correct version by clicking the individual files.

Then I used Nautilus (Ubuntu/Gnome’s default file browser) to copy the files back to the device — and here’s another little gotcha. I had to delete and recopy the files several times while I was working this all out, and in Linux (but not apparently in Windows), it doesn’t actually delete the files till I go and empty the trash (even though it’s on a portable device). So keep that in my mind and you may save yourself the additional frustration of wondering “Why does it still let me play the files that I’ve deleted off the device, and aren’t showing in the filesystem at all?”

Hope this helps someone out there. 🙂

Mobile Frustration, or the inherent non-greenness of Apple’s outlook on software

An excerpt from a recent email exchange which begins to express  some of my thoughts on this matter. More later.

---

Aaron Wallentine, Aug 07 02:31 pm (EDT):

Hey, is it possible to get an older version of the app so I can run it on my iPhone? I know you must have had a version that ran on iOS 3. I find it frustrating that almost everything on the App Store now seems to require iOS 4 or later, when I know that most of those apps worked on iOS 3 at one time.

One of the frustrating things about Apple is they don’t seem to care much about their customers who don’t always upgrade to the latest and greatest. My old iPhone is still a great device, and quite pricey at the time, but Apple seems to want to make it harder and harder for me to use it.

/rant 🙂

Anyhow, my phone is jailbroken, so if you can even just send me the binaries, I can probably get it working. I don’t care if it’s not supported, I won’t be asking you for support. If I can get it running, I’ll be happy.

Thanks very much; hope you’re well, wherever you are.

Peace,

Aaron

—-

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Christopher Gamblée-Wallendjack <notifications-support@harvestapp.com> wrote:

## Please REPLY ABOVE THIS LINE to add comments to ticket ##

Christopher Gamblée-Wallendjack, Aug 07 02:46 pm (EDT):HI Aaron, Thanks for getting in touch! Unfortunately, no, we can’t provide anything of this nature. That said, our newly revamped mobile site will work great on your device — just go to your Secure Site in Mobile Safari, and check it out! Let me know if you need anything else. Regards, Christopher

—-
From: Aaron Wallentine
Platform: chrome 21.0.1180.60 (webkit 537.1) Windows XP

Aaron Wallentine ✆	11:57 PM (10 minutes ago)
to Support

Argh.  That’s frustrating. Any normal software program, and you can just grab an old version of the program that still works on whatever hardware you have.  This brave new world of mobile devices, while I love it, is locked into Apple’s silly software distribution model.  While it certainly benefits  developers by providing such a nice and easy marketplace to sell apps (which I can certainly appreciate as a developer myself), it locks end-users into an unnecessarily harsh and short upgrade cycle which is not inexpensive.

/rant 🙂

Thanks for the reply; I do use the mobile site, but it’s not nearly as fast, easy,  resource-efficient, or convenient as using a native app with offline storage, nor does it allow the benefit of working in those times when my device is not network-connected.

Can you at least appreciate the silliness and unnecessary heartache this sort of software model creates?  Why not allow a way of downloading older versions of an app that will still work with a given,  older, device, which not so long ago was still shiny and new?  Is it really that difficult?  You don’t even have to provide support for older devices; just provide them as-is for convenience of those so inclined, with a possible disclaimer that support is not provided, compatibility and bug-free-ness is not guaranteed?  Could even be provided as a separate entry in the app store, requiring no jailbreaking or software hackiness for end-users: “Harvest App – Current Version” and then “Harvest App – iOS 3.x Version (no longer  officially supported)”, etc etc.

I mean, why not? Really?

Tik Tok parody

That silly Ke$ha song sticks in my head so I started making up alternate lyrics, as is often my wont …

This is just a start. Silly and cheesy and needs work, but, gotta start somewhere, right?  Can’t be any worse than having Ke$ha’s version stuck in my head.

I might make this into a full parody and add it to my repertoire for busking, etc.

wake up in the morning and i’m stuck to the bed,
don’t get enough sleep and it can mess with my head …

(other parts to fill in here)

tik tok, make a frock and shove it in a clock
grab your glock, mr. spock, we’re about to storm the rock
(or: romulans in spacedock?)

minecraft, don’t be daft, chop some wood and make a raft
say oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh

eat cheese, deep freeze, zazen kinda hurts the knees
allergies, honeybees, do some neti, helps the sneeze

pick locks, isaac brock, robert heinlein gotta grok
say oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh

use chalk, don’t sell schlock, or your style i’m gonna mock

Parody lyrics copyright 2012 by me.  If you like ’em and would like to use ’em, please let me know!

so this is it

So I set up a personal blog, outside of my myspace one.  I’m not sure how much I want to share this one just yet, but I do want a place to write some stuff down.  Now that I’ve got it set up, though, I’ve lost the immediate urge to post something.

That’s OK.

We’ll see what this brings.

 

Edit 8/6/2012:  haha. Funny to see this again 4 years later. 🙂