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 “You’re Beautiful” 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 “harsh, rusty, angelic” 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 “You’re Beautiful”. 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.  Hopefully, soon I’ll be brave enough to videotape my attempts at singing but not today, unfortunately.
Category: EDCI306A (Page 2 of 2)
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 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 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. 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.
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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