last night i made the answers/questions for okinawan jeopardy and practiced the song that is used during final jeopardy on shamisen. i'm gonna host a round of okinawan jeopardy towards the end of the month for the young okinawans. i was going to get a big posterboard and affix some index cards like some school project but i found a nice jeopardy powerpoint template online so i'll be doing this hi-tech. i think everyone will be amazed at how nice it looks and once i bust out the shamisen, it will really topple them over. the file itself is a bit ugly but since okinawa is a pretty place, all i did was put in a picture of okinawa in the background and it made a world of difference.

my ear sucks so i didn't learn the jeopardy theme song by ear. it took some geeky ingenuity. i found the song in midi format and was going to be satisfied with that. then i thought it'd be great if we could make that song more okinawan. i was trying to find a free midi player where i could change the instruments. i know there is a shamisen instrument available because i used it in my electronic music class 4 years ago. (un)fortunately i couldn't find anything that worked so i had this other idea. i opened the file in garageband which let me isolate the notes so i could transcribe them. then i figured out what they are on the shamisen and went at it. it needs work but not shabby for about 1 hour's practice for someone whose ear's hopeless.