Dear Lew Dite

 January 6. 2021

Starting in March, 2020, Josh, like many students in New York City, was relegated to remote learning. This meant that he had to learn a whole new way to learn. His teachers at NYCLI were incredible! They built up his stamina for remote learning. They worked on doing almost all of the same tasks at home that he does in school: schedule following, math, social studies, etc. They spent time with him one-on-one over Zoom and FaceTime and by the end of the school year he was working almost a full day. But, even with all that work, he had a lot of time to devote to his ukulele. He built up his catalog to an almost uncountable number of songs.

Recently, he asked me if he could record songs, send them to Lew Dite, and then Lew Dite could accompany them. Lew Dite was pretty into the idea. So, since Christmas Day 2020, Lew Dite has posted 6 mash-ups of the two of them playing some great songs together. I’m sure there will be more to come!

The playlist of the “Collages” of their two songs are found here:

Collection of Joshua and Lew Dite Collages.

And Josh’s solo performances are now posted on his own page:

Joshua's Ukulele YouTube Page

Since Collage #14, Josh was asking Lew Dite for “Times Are Getting Hard Boys.”

It was one of the first videos he sent to Lew Dite for the Collage series. But Josh recorded it in D. It turns out that that was too low for Lew Dite. Josh argued with him until Lew Dite sent Josh a video demonstrating that he couldn’t sing that low. So, Josh recorded it in E. It was still too low for Lew Dite. So, as a compromise, Josh tried playing it in A because Lew Dite had once posted it in A. Turns out that A was too high for Josh.

Finally, after much cajoling, Josh recorded it in G on the evening of 2/8/21 but he was already so tired and he was falling asleep over the ukulele.

So, on Tuesday morning, Lew Dite recorded his half of the video and emailed it to me. Josh listened to the beginning and the end and then he matched the tone and pace as best he could before he got on the school bus. I sent it to Lew Dite and he edited it and posted it later the same morning.