Learning the ukulele for the past month has presented many challenges, but has become a rewarding experience. At first, I had trouble tuning my ukulele and, since it was out of tune, everything that I played on it sounded bad. This discouraged me. It also deterred me from practicing every day like I had planned to at the beginning of the project, which set me back by about a week. I asked one of my friends to tune it for me and he tuned it an octave too high. When I came into music class and got it tuned properly, I was finally able to practice productively. I am glad that I chose to seek help because it meant that I could start to progress in a way that I am happy with. My other main issue was that I had long fingernails for the first couple weeks of practicing which made playing exceedingly difficult. When I finally cut my nails, I had a breakthrough: I was able to play a G7 chord! After this breakthrough, I started to enjoy practicing. I found several instructional videos that helped me develop a better understanding of how to change chords quickly and effectively. I found it helpful to try to play along with these videos. These videos are were also helpful because they show you how the song is supposed to sound on the ukulele. I have linked the two most helpful videos that I found below. I became more motivated to improve, which resulted in more practicing. My goal for the end of the semester is to be able to play the song “Riptide”, by Vance joy, on the ukulele and sing along at the same time. The chords required to play this song are A minor, C, G7, and F. My goal for the midterm assessment (this submission) was to be able to play all of the notes correctly and be able to sing along. I believe that I have achieved this goal. My goal for the end of the semester is to be able to strum properly (while still playing the notes correctly and singing along). Right now, I have just been strumming based on how I think the song should sound, rather than how it is written. I also want to become more confident with my singing by the end of the semester. I was in choir for all of high school, but have sadly lost most of the confidence that I gained by doing that. I am going to make an effort to sing in front of people in order to gain my confidence back.
Here are the two most helpful resources that I found:
I have chosen not to post the video of me playing. Hopefully I will gain enough confidence by the end of the semester to post my final result!
Julia Falzon 