Music Blog #4 (legitimate)

My goal (according to my growth plan) for the next learning evaluation is to be able to play the intro to “Fast Car” by Tracy Champman. My ultimate goal for this aspiration is to be able to pick (this is a group of hand and finger techniques a string musician uses to set strings in motion to produce audible single notes) the intro to “Fast car” in a fluid, audible way and then to play and sing the rest of the song with the simple strumming chords and pattern. Today was one of our personal growth days where we were allowed to go off on our own to practice for our final evaluation. I decided that my ending goal for the day was going to be to very scarcely learn the chords and the picking pattern for the introduction. Today was also the day that I learned what picking even was! I had no idea that it required both chords being played and individual fingers both plucking by themselves and all together at the same time. I also was forced to learn how to read what a picking pattern sheet music looks like, however, I ended up still getting very confused by the numbering of the sheet music and usually ended up listening to my online youtube tutorials more instead of trying to read the music. I find that the video tutorials are the easiest way for me to learn how to play these songs, and the video I chose to use to learn Fast Car was  a YouTuber who went by the channel name “Ukulele  Cheats” https://youtu.be/EEJQjs76qf8This YouTuber I found to be very helpful because they showed the tutorial firstly playing the entire song, then they introduced the chords breaking them down and then intro picking section and then playing them over and over again, and finally they ended with demonstrating the beginning and explaining how to pick each line. By the end of the free-play session (about 1 hour), I was able to play the intro to Fast Car while picking. The picking was in no way fluid and might have very much been only audible to me, however, it was a huge accomplishment in my ukulele playing and gave me confidence that I will not have a problem playing this in a little over a week in front of a screen. I feel this confidence because after I pick the intro to the song I am going to play the rest of the song just strumming the chords and singing, I chose this because It gives me the opportunity to match my voice to the instrument and to worry about my singing more. For the next few weeks, I hope to become more fluid in this intro bit and to get the confidence to play without looking at my notes.