It has currently been two weeks since I have picked up the ukulele and attempted to learn some songs from complete scratch. With no previous experience of the ability to read music or play any instrument besides the ‘chopstick’ song on the piano, I knew this was going to be a challenge from the start. By the first week, I managed to agitate my roommates and learn a few basic chords that the simpler songs consist of. This includes C, A, F, E, D, and G as the basis for nearly all the songs I have chosen to play. During my attempt at “island in the sun” by Weezer, I was extremely excited learning to play this, therefore, I went into the first try with high motivation as this has been a personal favourite song of mine since I was young. However, I realized that the seemingly simple song with four chords played for the majority of the entire song, (E, A, D, & G), was not as easy to execute as I thought. The transition from D to G was going to take more time than I had anticipated. After constant practice with little to no progress, I decided to attempt song number two. I chose “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith as it is another favourite song of mine, as well as it came with a step by step tutorial courtesy of Youtube. The chords for this song consisted of A, F, and C. The difficulty with this song came with the strumming pattern. Although it is all down strum it has pauses in between chords where they recommend tapping the ukulele in-between to provide the correct timing. As for “Counting Stars” by One Republic the chords on there own are nothing knew (A, C, G, F), again its the transition of each chord to the next which will only get better with practice. Overall, these past two weeks have taught me that I have some work ahead of me.
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