I took a break from Zoom touring songs this past week. I tried to sneak one into Ukulele Rebellion’s “Hollywood” night, but it was flagged for its TV origins. Boohoo. Anyway, I need a break to work on songs for the new year.
I’ve noticed in 8 years or so of leading songs or doing open mics, there is very little performance feedback from others. It’s not just me, I think. The most common I hear for myself is, “I can tell you practiced,” or “You have improved.” Practiced tells me that I have gotten the song essentially correct; phrasing, timing, melody, chord progression, etc. Good. To hear that I have improved is good but lacks a point of reference. Improved over what, or since when? I would not be inclined to use that phrase. At live jams, I noticed those around me if I heard something interesting like a run of notes, rhythmic change up, or good singing, and let them know that I liked what I heard. This required mindfulness; I tend to sink into self-involvement. Once, when performing “St James Infirmary Blues” at Dana St. Roasting with Glen, I made out someone to my right doing some nice improvising. When the song was over, I let him know I was impressed. He gave me a shocked look. The attendance at the various ukulele jams fell off over the years, which is useful in a way because I could now hear myself and others over the wall of treble.
The Zoom ukulele jams have brought a silver lining to leading a song. I can use a metronome as a click track. Never worked for me visually live. I can also join the Ukulele Rebellion, Oakland, and Gilroy jams, whose venues are generally too distant for frequent attendance.
Thanks to San Jose Ukulele Club, Gilroy Ukulele Jam, Ukulele Rebellion, Oakland Ukulele Jam, and Peninsula Ukulele Meetup for keeping the music in a troubled year.
Depending on Rhan’s plans for the revamped newsletter, I hope to reach you in the new year. You can always read my posts at this blog. In the mean time, have some Lavender Diamond. I like Becky Stark’s voice.
Shawn's Ukulele Stuff 
Hi Shawn,
You make some interesting points about feedback. In both live and Zoom settings, I try to be specific with positive feedback if I’ve found something specific in the performance that I particularly liked; for example, a solo, a type of strum, or even the song selection. However, Zoom jams bring their own complications. For one thing, as a Zoom jam (San Francisco Ukulele Rebellion) leader, I frequently receive more requests to lead songs than I can accommodate in a single Zoom meeting, so I find myself wanting to get to the next scheduled song leader quickly so as to accommodate as many song requests as possible.
In in-person jams, there are also opportunities to share ideas and knowledge. For example, people would sometimes opine after we played a song that a chord on the song chart sounded wrong and suggest an alternative, or suggest a different strum that better captures the rhythm of the song. But leading in Zoom is different. Although Ukulele Rebellion has a policy against strict open mic performances (the music for all songs anyone leads is shared so that people can play along), the fact is that for the person leading the song, Zoom IS like an open mic – the leader is the only person he or she can hear and the leader knows that everyone else can hear only him or her, not the entire group. So Ukulele Rebellion has adopted a policy for its Zoom jams not to *publicly* make suggestions about improving a song or the way it was led because leading in Zoom is a lot more like a performance than leading in in-person jams, where (especially in jams like Ukulele Rebellion’s, where the song leader is not miced), the leader blends into the group. We noticed early on in our Zoom journey that people would be less likely to want to lead songs if leading was met with suggestions for improvement instead of praise, and instant constructive feedback would probably discourage people from leading.
Another thing about our Zoom jams is that with so many people wanting to lead songs, people are sometimes focused on and nervous about their own songs. In addition, although Zoom has a chat function that allows you to send private messages to people, I think that using chat during a Zoom meeting is more difficult than, say, walking up to a person during a break in an in-person meeting and telling them that you enjoyed the song they led and why.
I know that Ukulele Rebellion Zoom attendees have enjoyed your contributions to our Zoom jams, but I think that the way Zoom jams work makes it difficult sometimes to everyone to show that appreciation by providing positive feedback that’s more specific than applauding and telling you that you did a good job leading a fun song.
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Mark- You effectively keep the Zooms moving; I know that takes effort. I enjoy your song leads. I have received some positive feedback on my song selections at the pre-event conversation time. I also appreciate the positive song feedback received from you.
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