Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

A-Chording to Cynthia | January 2022 Patron Newsletter (Patreon)

Published:
2022-01-04 00:59:31
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
haven't archived this post yet. have a subscription? use the importer!

Content

{Patron-only post: please click through and heart this post so I know you've seen it, thank you!}

Aloha, Patrons!!

Happy 2022!  Welcome to the first newsletter of the year (new header for 2022!).  The new year is a great time for creative energy so 👏🏽 let's 👏🏽 get 👏🏽 started!

First, a big shoutout to all the New Patrons who've just joined us!  Did you get a new uke for the holidays?  Ready to dig deeper into your creative practice?  Please see the bottom of this post for resources to get started in our community.  Introduce yourself, take time to look around, check out our Welcome Guide / FAQ post, and learn to use the Cynthia Lin Song Index to find lessons and videos.  We're so happy to have you here!

For all Patrons, what do you want to work on this year?  Ukulele-wise or otherwise?  This is more for my curiosity.  Aside from music, I want to surf more consistently, get more adventurous with my cooking (a hobby revived by the pandemic), and write more songs as part of this year's 100 Days Project.  How about you?  Let me know in the comments!

Upcoming community projects 

🗣 January Vocal Workshop starts tomorrow, Jan 4 - sign up and details here.  Learn to love your voice!  We're all born with an instrument, but many of us don't know how to use it, or  feel unsure about how it sounds.  I'm on a mission to help you hear yourself and learn to create a vocal tone that you can feel confident about.  I believe voice work is an important way to hone your ear and improve your musicality, and I'm developing a uke-based voice-teaching series, so you can use your uke skills to improve your voice skills, and vice versa.  (thanks to my December vocal students for exploring with me!)  Join me if you're interested. (Class info will be shared in a separate post later today)

💯 100 Days of Ukulele starts Feb 13 - It's a big commitment, but a rewarding one.  Hundreds of Patrons have participated in years past, posting an ukulele video everyday for 100 days.  We're each working on our own project, but we're all doing it together to keep each other motivated.  The project has been transformational for many.  Curious?  More details to come, check out last year's FAQ: http://bit.ly/100daysukeFAQ, and watch my video about How the 100 Days Project changed my life.

🏄🏻‍♀️ Easy Breezy Community Jam is back!  Jan 29 - Last year, Ukulenny and I kicked off 2021 with a newbie-focused live jam featuring songs with 4 chords or less.  Lenny is on board to do it again, so save the date: Sat Jan 29 at 12pm Hawaii Time. (search google for time conversion).  We're still formulating our playlist for this year, but let's get started by reviewing the Easy Breezy songbook in our Beginner Live Jam this Thursday.  Click here for songbook and jam replay link to review, and check out these practice videos for Roar, Twist + Shout / La Bamba, and Watermelon Sugar (the clear fan favorite of the jam).  Beginner-tier Patrons ($10+) can review the Watermelon Sugar funk strum lesson.

Some community reminders

❤️ "Keep it Aloha" - Aloha is a practice of compassion, kindness, and generosity.  I believe that we can and should lift each other up.  Please comment and share in a way that supports all forms of creativity and joy.  There is immense power in an encouraging word.   

💃🏻🕺🏻 Enjoy the journey - Show aloha to yourself.  We are all on our own journeys, and there is no rush, and no need for comparison.  The creative path is a lifelong road meant to be enjoyed in the present.  Let go of destinations, embrace the challenges that inspire you now, and know that many others in this community are on the same journey.  Ask for help, in the comments, in our fb group, in live sessions.

🙋🏻‍♀️ Community action - While I guide this community as best I can, the reason this community thrives is because of all of you.  In any community, you get out of it what you put into it.  Enjoy helping and sharing?  Answer questions for newbies.  Have an idea?  Want to lend your expertise?  The Patreon platform is just one of the places where we can gather, and I'm open to new technologies - I just need leaders to make it happen.  A big thank you to our original Community Managers Richard, Leah, Christina, and Jenny, who voluntarily stepped up to establish our app, the Song Index, our many facebook groups, and more.  I'm grateful to the many Patrons who enjoy giving back to the community, including the 100 Days moderators, our flash mob and open mic organizers, our regional squad leaders, and everyone who takes time out to share a positive word.  Want to organize a group activity, event, flash mob, song challenge?  You don't need permission to start - go ahead, see if folks are interested, and we'll let things grow organically. 

Excited for 2022!  Thank you for being here!

xo cynthia 🌺

***

January 2022 PATRON EVENTS CALENDAR

See all Patron events on our Patron Google calendar. Access this calendar and get notifications for events on the Cynthia Lin Patron App, created by our Patron Community Manager, Rich!  Download: Android app | iOS app

  • Tues 1/4 @ 10AM Hawaii Time - new Vocal Workshop series, click for more info 
  • Thurs 1/6 @ 5:30PM Pacific Time - Beginner Live Jam ($10+ Patrons)
  • Tues 1/11 @ 10AM Hawaii Time - Vocal Workshop 2nd session
  • Thurs 1/20 @ 5:30PM Pacific Time - Patron Monthly Live Lesson ($5+ Patrons)
  • Tues 1/25 @ 10AM Hawaii Time - Vocal Workshop 3rd and final session
  • Thurs 1/27 @ 5:30PM Pacific Time - Intermediate Live Jam ($20+ Patrons)
  • Sat 1/29 @ 12PM Hawaii Time - Easy Breezy Community Jam (avail to public)
  • plus tune in Wednesdays 5pm Pacific Time for my weekly 5@5 LIVE show, streaming on my new LIVE YouTube channel.

Details for all Patrons events will be posted separately.  To edit your pledge level, visit https://www.patreon.com/join/cynthialin and select your desired reward tier.  (Patreon will only charge you for the difference in the upgrade). 

For Patrons who are looking for more live jam opportunities, NYC Squad leader Jenny is hosting monthly Zoom play-alongs at both USA- and UK/Europe-friendly times via her Patreon.  Support her and find more information here.

***

December 2021 Recap - News, Patron Events and new Videos:

***

Special note for new Patrons

If you are a new Patron, welcome!  Please introduce yourself in the comments below. I'd love to hear how long you've been playing, what kind of uke you play, if you have a group to play with, what songs you've been working on, or anything else you'd like to share.

I recommend all new Patrons check out our community WelcomeGuide/FAQ post.  Please be patient as you get familiar with the Patreon platform. I promise it will get easier to use if you take time to look around. If you have a question that the WelcomeGuide/FAQ post doesn't answer, please comment there to help us continue to update the FAQ.

To find a specific song or lesson, learn to use the updated Cynthia Lin Song Index.  Thank you to the Community Managers for creating and maintaining this helpful resource.

If you have more questions about Patreon, I encourage you to post your questions to one of our Community groups. Our community has tons of friendly folks who love sharing their uke experience. Our private Facebook group is particularly active, and we've streamlined the steps to join. Request to join right on the Facebook group page, and be sure to answer BOTH membership questions so Community Managers can verify your Patron status. Scroll to the Community Notes section at bottom of this post for more ways to join and post to our Community.

Seasoned Patrons, I always appreciate it when you help me answer any newbie questions in the comments of this or any post.  Thank you! Feel free to post your questions in the comments as well.

---

COMMUNITY NOTES:

1. Join our private Facebook group: In the Facebook group, Patrons can share videos, advice, support, and encouragement!  Be sure to answer both membership questions so that Community Managers can verify your Patron status. If you wish to connect and are not on Facebook, you can share a post on the Community tab here on Patreon. If you have questions about Patreon or ukulele or otherwise, posting the question to our very helpful and active Community will generate the fastest answer.

2. More Facebook public groups - we're using Facebook as our community gathering place because it has the best community features. Find all the CL groups here, including the CL Uke Newbies group, an all-levels group, and several active regional groups (NYC / LA / the Pacific Northwest / Hawaii and more).  https://www.facebook.com/cynthialinmusic/groups

3. Learn to use the Cynthia Lin Song Index, created and maintained (and updated recently!) by the amazing CL Community Managers! The super helpful CL Song Index organizes all CL songs, Patreon posts, YouTube videos, and tutorials.

4. Download the Cynthia Lin Patron App, created by our Patron Community Manager, Rich! Android app | iOS app

5. Find all Patron events on our Patron Google Calendar

6. Find answers to many Frequently Asked Questions in our New Patron Guide/FAQ post.

7. To edit your pledge, visit https://www.patreon.com/join/cynthialin

Files

Previews only

Comments

Dorian Davis

Happy New Year, all! I'm really excited for the 100 Days Project this year! This year I hope to improve on more complicated finger picking patterns, riffs, the roll strum and songs that have more complex timing. Outside of the uke, I'd like to perfect my sourdough!

Barbara Jones

Aloha!! Excited and nervous about the 100 day challenge!

Joanna shrigley

I'm half way through a personal 20 days of ukulele finger style challenge. I'm excited about more chord melody in 2022.

Laura Woz

I would love to attend the vocal classes, but unable to make the AM time due to work (and felt too new to join the December ones). Hopefully next time!

Kathy Voth

Happy New Year! Thanks for all you do for us!

Tina Johnson

Happy New Year to the greatest uke community! I am so conflicted! I feel so connected to the 100 days community but I am not sure how to make it fresh and not a burden for the third year. To say it was transformative is an understatement and I treasure the relationships I've made doing this journey. This next year my band and I will finally be able to have gigs and I want to memorize 40 songs by March. Not sure how 100 days is going to figure in on this. I guess I have 45 days or so to figure it out or just go day by day like I did last year.

Gesa D.

Happy New Year to all! 🎆 I'm really looking forward to the 100day project! This is my third time taking part. It was easiest in 2020 because it was exactly during the first lockdown here in Germany. It was more exhausting in 2021, but it was still worth it. That's why I just can't miss it 😊 - especially because I've learned some new CL arrangements and want to learn even more. I always post my videos on Instagram (neddentante). Maybe this year with German captions to save time and energy 😅 I hope that's ok. In addition to playing the ukulele, I would like to improve my Italian a little again. You forget a language so quickly if you don't speak it, read it etc. all the time. And I want to be more relaxed, create more little moments for myself during the week, read more .. while I write it down, it sounds very ambitious for a working mother of three 😁 But, hey, it's worth a try 🙃

TimmO

Happy New Year. Thank you, Cynthia for this (huge) and rich newsletter ‼️ We have just moved from Idaho to Massachusetts, so I am having to reorganize my habits and approach to daily life. I wanted to share one idea that I have found useful in the past, and I plan to try it now (this year) to reenergize my uke practice. When choosing what to work on, be mindful of the seasons. For example, according to traditional Chinese medicine, winter is a time to focus on the inner pool, the core things in life, in preparation for spring, which of course is marked by growth and renewal. So in winter I will focus on core elements of uke playing, like learning basic chords for the baritone (DGBE), using the simple songs that I learned years ago when I first began the uke (concert, tenor, gCEA)… over many years of teaching I found that students learned more and engaged more fully when I tailored the course material to the seasons in which it was being taught. We’ll see how this approach applies to music and uke. Cheers, Timmo 😎🎵🌨🎄

Cynthia Lin
>>74967592

i feel you, Tina. making it fresh is important. maybe song memorization is part of the project? or maybe that's where it starts, and see where it goes from there. for me, learning portuguese for bossa nova was the fun new element i added last year, and made me excited to keep going. also forced me to go super slow each day.

Cynthia Lin
>>74976341

hallo Gesa! thanks for sharing here, great to connect your name with your IG. german captions are fine! maybe playing italian songs can be part of your 100 days. just one line or verse at a time - that's what i did with portuguese for bossa nova songs last year, and it tapped into different parts of my brain to work on language. :)

Cynthia Lin
>>74980294

that's an interesting insight, Timmo! winter and spring make sense - what about summer and fall? makes me wonder about how the teaching arc feels to our southern hemisphere friends... or how to adapt to consider the seasonal flip flop. thanks for sharing!

TimmO
>>74980294

Hi Cynthia, I don’t pretend to be an expert in this, but maybe instead an explorer who feels like an approach like this may have merit. It is based in 5 element theory of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). In TCM there are 5 elements (water, wood, fire, earth, and metal) each corresponding to a season and to particular organs and processes in the body. In a healthy person, the energy flow between these elements is in balance. Imbalances lead to all kinds of problems. So my naïve thought was to encourage the healthy rebalancing according to each season in the way I approach music and ukulele. I am not sure about summer, but fall is associated with element metal, and the idea in fall is to cut away the extra stuff we don’t need and preserve the core things that really matter, in a word “purify”. This process during fall prepares for the next element of winter, which is water 💧. Water then leads to wood (growth, renewal, expansion), the element of spring, as mentioned in my comment above. There is a system, a logic, that I am just learning about. Your question about Southern Hemisphere seasons is excellent, and I have no idea whether there would be challenges to overcome, for example, if you were teaching in spring (wood) mode, while down under they were in fall (metal) mode. Or did I misunderstand you? FYI, nearly all my experience with teaching was in fall, winter, or spring, where I found that certain subjects were better received if I paid attention to the energy flow according TCM in each season.

Holly W

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you had a wonderful vacation or stay-cation. For the new year, I would improve my fingerpicking and tab-reading as I am very slow with it, especially I don't know which finger(s) is best to use when tabbing, so I have to think about it for a few seconds each time. I am wondering if there are any tips we can go over in the live lessons. Thank you in advance. I would also like to connect more with my uku-playing neighbors as I miss the in-person connection.

Robbie Thedford

I got a new Cynthia Lin performance Uke for Christmas! The solid mahogany model...its sounds amazing...now, how do I get her to sign it ;) I cant wait to use it on these jam sessions....

Melanie Parker-Gagné

Hello bonjour friends from Quebec! Sending everyone best wishes for a happy and healthy 2022! ❄️☃️🤍🥳

Desmond Meduthia

For Christmas I got Ukulele Days on CD and I love it! Happy New Year!

Gay Warshaw

Hello from Maryland!! I've been playing the ukulele for about five years off and on, and am looking to up my game. My favorite uke is a Cordoba 22S soprano and I especially like to play chord melodies. I belong to the Baltimore Ukulele Club and participate in their strums when I can (via Zoom since the pandemic.) I am also a flute and recorder player :)

Jo Ann Wong

Happy New Year Everyone! I just finished watching Season 2 of “Emily in Paris” and loved Ashley Park’s song “Mon Soleil”. I think it’d be nice for you Cynthia and maybe a live lesson!

Charlene Waines Wiltink

Hi everyone I’m Charlene from West Kelowna, BC, Canada. I bought myself a previously loved ukulele before Christmas to learn to play with my (almost) grown kids! My 21 yr old daughter got hers beautiful uke for Christmas last year and my son is building one for my extremely youthful 80 yr old mom because she always wanted to learn to play! We found 3 somewhat damaged ones that be pieced together to make one working one for himself so we could put the Money into grandmas kit. He is 18 and working on becoming a guitar builder one day. I have never played a string instrument but we all have played something and know that music can help us through lots of life’s ups and downs! Looking for help on YouTube, I tried a few and Cynthia’s Aloha and 5 minutes to happiness had me spending a lot more than 5 minutes! What a beautiful gifted person! And so much fun. There’s a lot to figure out on this site but I am looking forward to it and 3 generations of ukulele fun coming soon! Aloha!

Kathy Craven

Hi! I am Kathy from St. Louis, Missouri. I recently sprained my ankle & decided to use the "down" time to learn to play uke! I am having so much fun!

Barbara_G

Hello, my name is Barbara and I am 36 years old and from Austria 🇦🇹. I started playing the piano when I was 30 years old. But since I have a little son, it is too much work for me and music disappeared from my world for some time…until my son got a ukulele last year on his 3rd birthday. Since I played guitar in my childhood, I started learning children's songs on the uke. Then two months later my husband bought me my own ukulele - a flight DUC 323. By Christmas, I was sure that this was my instrument. It's perfect, even with small children you get to play and progress quite quickly. So I bought myself an Enya K5 and I love it. All solid wood and very pretty. And now? I'm trying to teach myself to play online. Not always easy, because I often want everything at once and am often disappointed when it doesn't sound so great on my end. But I keep at it and am glad to finally be able to make music myself again. Thanks a lot Cynthia for all your work and your tutorial’s here!!!

Cheryl VanderZwaag

Hi I am looking forward to learning more ukulele I didn't know this email was time sensitive. I have had COVID I am still pretty sick so I am going to be a little slower but I want to participate where I can. Tell a little about myself have been playing the guitar for most of my life. I picked up my fathers Gretch back in 1969. My grandfather played the Banjo and Mandolin I loved the Hootenanny parties we used to have playing bluegrass and gospel music. My grandmother was baptist so grandpa had to throw in some redeeming Gospel music. Anyway I never learned to read music I just played whatever I learned from everybody else watching and listening. I discovered I really love the way the ukulele sounds so I decided to learn on my own but now being 57 almost 58 years old its not so easy to learn on my own any more so I joined Cynthia because she is so easy to learn from and very good at it. Boy this illness is no joke I hope I can catch up. Have to go lay back down now. Thanks Cynthia for all your hard work. I enjoy your soft mild voice too.