This might seem strange or unnecessary, but for those of you who are interested, I want to give links to a few ‘playlists’ that I often listen to.  Since grooveshark died, I’ve had to scour youtube for the sounds I crave while reading and writing, so here are my findings.

Animenz and Theishter:Two amazing pianists who transcribe anime music and are the reason I started playing piano (6 months ago lol)

Sam Tsui: A fantastic vocalist and a decent pianist; he often performs music videos with a variety of other talented musicians.  He does a lot of currently popular songs, and impressive mashups.

Mai Uru: An interesting singer from Japan… probably?  She performs a lot of Japanese songs, and has a beautiful voice: very melodic and very peaceful.

Pentatonix: A five person acapella band who are definitely one of my favorite things to listen to.  Each person has their own unique and addictive voice, so if you enjoy singing… definitely a good group to learn from.  Personally, I like to alternate between imitating Avi and Mitch, but my natural range is closer to Scott.  I definitely can’t beatbox, but it’s still fun to try lol.

Lindsey Stirling: An incredible violinist who often performs with other famous youtube artists: For Example, Pentatonix, covering Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.  I’ve never actually learned to play the violin, though I do kinda-sorta have one, maybe lol.  Well, it’s pretty bad, I could never even tune it, so I never really had the motivation to seriously practice it.

Jerry C: I just had to add this guy to the list, because ten years ago, when I started playing guitar, these were the transpositions that allowed me to go from being a noob, to being at least as good as him.  Of course, it took me a few years to get to that point, so don’t expect to watch a few youtube videos and immediately understand how to do sweeps in arpeggio; for that, you need to practice… a lot.  It’s a pretty simple method, and horribly monotonous, but the best way to learn any instrument, is to just watch someone else do it and copy them.  Do it slow, over and over, until eventually, you can play even faster than the people who you had originally thought were impossibly amazing.

If you don’t have fingers, are deaf, have vocal nodes, or some other kind of medical issue that would prevent you from singing or playing an instrument, then ignore my advice.

It feels kind of weird doing a post that has nothing to do with my story, but to me at least, reading is kind of boring without music to listen to.  Although, I probably write better when I’m not listing to music, because I get distracted way too easily lol.

For anyone who doesn’t care about music and would rather just watch and listen to a video about Unusually Large Animals or Adorable Cats, well, there you go :).