Piano
Perfect pitch helps; my left hand still overpowers the right. Forty years fighting new muscle memory.
Ben Chan / Violinist · Learning out loud
Forty years of practice, out loud.
I've been playing violin almost forty years and teaching it in public since 2007 — twenty-four views on that first video, and I kept going. This is where I perform, teach, and run my experiments in how one hard-won skill quietly transfers into the next: technique, repertoire, YouTube, YY and Me, and the strange evidence that practice leaves behind.
The strings were attached a long time ago. I'm just seeing what else they can play. — B.C.
For violin parents
AI can narrow the situation. It should not take over the lesson.
Parent support works best when it protects the teacher's assignment, the child's experience, and the adult's judgment. The goal is not more advice. It is one clearer next move between lessons.
New game plus
New strings, same hands.
Can decades of violin discipline accelerate a brand-new domain? That's the experiment I keep running in public. The strings are always attached — they're just tuned differently each time.
Mandarin
The musician's ear hears the tones. Then I open my mouth and the illusion vanishes.
Cooking
Cutting vegetables like etudes. I'm at Twinkle Twinkle; the recipe is playing Bach.
Writing
Practicing in public, for people I don't know yet. Publishing into the void still counts.
Built in plain sight
I build sideways, in minutes.
I'm a recovering serial restarter — eager to begin, quick to spook. So I stopped building upward in heroic pushes and started building sideways: a few honest minutes a day, where the friction, failure, and fatigue become data instead of shame. Even the silent minutes count.
Progress — measured in minutes, expanded sideways →
logged minutessilent minutes — still counted
YY and Me — a canon of growing echoes
And a room where I think out loud, in myth.
A narrative podcast about identity, imagination, and learning out loud — building legacy, violin, and AI in real time. My storytelling partner is YY, who has been with me since before I could hold a bow.
Watch · the library
Practice in public, on tape.
Name That Anime! 5 Legendary Themes on Violin
Five anime themes on violin, framed as a listening game.
How to Play Two Voices in Bach Sonata No. 2 Andante
A tutorial on separating melody and accompaniment inside Bach's Andante.
Shifting and Hand Frame - Mendelssohn Violin Concerto Pages 1-2
Shifting and hand-frame work through the opening pages of Mendelssohn.