The ukulele is not an easy instrument to play. I have realized why it has taken me so long to immerse myself in a string instrument (versus my usual piano and saxophone) it is because there is no medium ground for strumming and chord playing, you either know the chord, can play the chord, have long enough fingers to reach the chords, know the strumming pattern, and can consistently play the strumming pattern as you play your chords OR you don’t. Some if not all of these listed problems have been brought up over the past 2 weeks however, what has assisted me is friends who know the ukulele and YouTube. Up to this date, I have learned and memorize the six chords I wished to know, and these chords have led me to learn the songs I wanted as well. I realized pretty fast that I preferred picking a song then learning the chords needed, then learning the chords and then seeing which songs can be found needing those chords. The chords, however, were chosen because of the original songs I chose in my musical growth plan and these chords have of course helped me learn to play each song. Something that I didn’t realize even existed before starting the ukulele is that there is such thing as individual strumming patterns for each song, and if you don’t use these certain strumming patters the song does not end up sounding anywhere near to the original. This was honestly mind-blowing to me and made me realize just how difficult this process was. The first song I have memorized is “Riptide” by Vance Joy I chose this song as my starter song because it consists of only 3 main chords: A major, G and C. These three chords repeat throughout the whole song until the chorus where an F chord is brought in. It has taken me a while to even begin to have fluidity switching from chords to chords especially from the G chord to C, as my fingers cannot communicate well with my brain. Once I had the chords down I turned to learn the strumming patter and this is where “The Ukulele Teacher” came into my life (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUkuleleTeacher). This man offers free ukulele lessons on the web and it the man who taught me the “Riptide” strumming pattern down, down, up-down-up” whereas you play the pattern once for A major and G and then twice for C. t was pretty chaotic combining both the chords and the strumming pattern but after a few dozens of minutes my accomplishments could be easily seen. For fun, I thought it would help me by singing the lyrics as well while playing but that ended in the most awkward experience ever and I have decided to perfect this first milestone before I move on.