new to teaching but old to the love of learning

Category: EDCI306A (Page 2 of 2)

Vlog #2

This is about 1 and a half weeks into the uke-ing and I am not gonna lie I’m feeling pretty good! This video above is me performing the intro picking and the intro chords to ā€œYou’re Beautifulā€ by James Blunt. This song is the first one I have chosen and attempted to pick and though it took practice I think I’ve finally gotten the ā€œharsh, rusty, angelicā€ sound James was trying to create. As you can hear I am still adjusting getting to my G chord as my little fingers still can’t process switching back and forth. Lately, I’ve been practicing switching from either an A or an F to the G to try to train my fingers into forming into position, yet it is still quite tricky for me. What you didn’t see videotaped was my attempt at signing ā€œYou’re Beautifulā€. Not gonna lie it didn’t go that well, however, I found this song easier then riptide, this might be because of the slower lyrics or because this one I can kinda cheat sing by strumming one chord per lyric (whoops). Speaking of strumming I’m this song I practiced a new strumming pattern of DDDUDU which sounded quite nice with the song. Ā Hopefully, soon I’ll be brave enough to videotape my attempts at singing but not today, unfortunately.

This video is shown after approximately 1 week of practice adding up to be about 2 hours of playing in total. If you can’t tell, the song I have chosen to begin with is “Riptide” by Vance Joy. I chose this song because it consists of onlyĀ  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 as well however my video shown is not seen with me playing through to the F chord switch. The process you can see being made from when I began the ukulele a week ago to this video, is me beginning with just learning and simply strumming each chord. It has taken me a while to create fluidity switching from the G chord to C and I am continuing this movement hoping to create less gap in the music. After getting each chord down I then moved on to the actual strumming pattern of the song, which I didn’t even know was needed until I realized how wrong my strumming sounded. To learn the strumming pattern I used a YouTuber named “The Ukulele Teacher” who offers free ukulele lessons on the web, the pattern taught is a standard one known as “down, down, up-down-up” whereas you play the pattern once for A major and G and then twice for C.Ā  It 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.

Musical growth project

This section of my blog will be about my journey with music… more specifically the ukulele! For this project, I am asked to expand my knowledge of music by learning a new instrument and create a practice plan and overall goal that will be assessed by the end of the term. I have chosen to learn the ukulele because it is a passion of mine to learn to play an instrument that is transportable and honestly just not loud and obnoxious. All my life I have been playing the piano and alto saxophone both not able to be transported easily and at least for the alto, not always the best thing to listen to around a fire. I wish by the end of my ukulele experience to be able to pull out my ukulele and play whatever and wherever I can be surrounded by friends and family. I hope you enjoy being apart of my journey and I look forward to sharing my music with you.

My first uke! I think I shall name her Leila

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