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.
The strings were attached a long time ago. I'm just seeing what else they can play. — B.C.
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.