Call for Visuals: Plight of the Waspy Sting

How do you express an idea, an emotion, a feeling, a thought, or an intention? In words? Music? Visuals?

It’s not enough to express it in music. I invite you to submit the visual of something that you create to accompany my new fingerstyle piece for high G ukulele “Plight of the Waspy Sting.”

About the Visual

A picture paints a thousand words. A visual communicates more than text.

The selected visual will be used in the publication of this piece and all announcements (promotions, marketing, press release). It may even be used as the cover or in the cover (in color and black and white) of a new book of progressive pieces based on the chromatic scale. It will also be used in the video recording of this piece as playalong and tutorial.

Visual possibilities: illustration or painting (drawing, sketch, watercolor, oil, acrylic, ink, …), cartoon, photograph, 3-D (crochet, knit, mosaic, origami, …) , and video.

About the Music

“Plight of the Waspy Sting” is a spin off of Rimsky Korsakoff’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” The instrumental piece from the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan opens with a frantic descending chromatic scale, constantly moving the way a bee buzzes and annoys you in the summertime.

The ukulele doesn’t have the range of the orchestra or piano. In fact, it has very little range.

What I heard in my head after being stung by a wasp was a constant chromatic passage that moves like an ear worm drilling into my head. A chromatic scale is made up of half-steps (semi-tones). Chromaticism gives a sense of dissonance, friction, and instability.

Unlike the bumblebee, the wasp was not buzzing and flying around in this piece. The wasp had stung and left a venom in my body. What it left behind is full of surprises. First the hives. Then the itching. And there’s more.

Learning Points

“Plight of the Waspy Sting” is an instrumental solo piece for high G ukulele. Once I label the chords, the piece can be played as a duet.

Learn to

• read tablature
• read notes
• use the optimal left hand fingers to press the strings and frets
• use the optimal right hand fingers to fingerpick the strings
• practice alternating the right hand index and middle fingers to move fast
• employ “left hand techniques” – using left hand fingers that normally press the strings to move the strings and make pitched tone.
• play with dynamics and expression
• make use of the open G-string
• play fast

Premiere

I will introduce this piece in the opening warm-up lesson at 3 Chord Thursday 4th September 2025 in Zoom. If I get visuals before then, I will consider using them in making a playalong video.

How to Submit Your Visual

Use this Google Form to submit your visual or intent.

What does ChatGPT say?

I couldn’t resist asking ChatGPT. I typed the title of this piece and got some interesting results.

Got it — Plight of the Waspy Sting as the title of a musical piece. For an illustration to accompany it, we could lean into a few directions depending on the tone of the music:

Illustration Concepts

1. Literal & Whimsical
   • A wasp with exaggerated features (big eyes, skinny body, delicate wings) caught in a humorous predicament — maybe tangled in sheet music lines or struggling with an oversized musical instrument (like a trumpet or ukulele).
   • Colors: yellows, blacks, with playful accents of pastel or watercolor splashes.
2. Abstract & Expressive
   • Sharp, jagged lines cutting across a soft background, suggesting both elegance and danger.
   • Swirls of yellow and black, with a “sting” represented as a piercing stroke across the image.
3. Satirical & Social
   • If “Waspy” is meant as a play on WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), the art could allude subtly to privilege and fragility — maybe a well-dressed wasp sipping tea, startled by its own sting.
   • Done in a witty, tongue-in-cheek cartoon style.
4. Dark & Dramatic
   • A lone wasp silhouetted against stormy skies, wings spread, the “sting” glowing like a blade.
   • Evokes intensity and tension in the music.

Would you like me to generate a visual draft of one of these illustration styles for you — maybe whimsical, abstract, or dramatic?

World Wasp Day – Wednesday 24th September 2025