As a beginner on the ukulele, my musical goal was to learn how to read basic music sheets and learn two songs. This is the song I decided I was going to know how to play by midterm. The chords included are A, G, C, and F. I have been tracking my progress weekly on this website, and here re the results.
difficulties:
I had a tough time with this. For starters, I have arthritis in my left hand, which is the strumming hand. I found I could not practice for more than 5 minutes a day before it started to feel sore. I could have gotten a pick, but I thought that would be learning how to strum all over again. As you can see, I put on a compression glove that seemed to help with the pain and thankfully stopped my fingers from hurting from strumming as well as there was a piece of cloth between the chords and my skin.
I had a tough time changing from A to G in this song. It took a lot of practice and muscle memory to form my fingers’ memory to do this more smoothly. Although it is not perfect, I definitely got better as time went on.
Another hard part about this song was that there were 4 different strumming patterns between the verses, chorus, bridge, and in between verse strumming. This was ultimately too hard for me to do consistently, which is why in my video, I have demonstrated that I can perform all of the different strumming patterns but not consecutively straight through the song. This is why I decided to make a few different videos of me making the verse, the chorus, the bridge, and in-between notes.
growth:
Ultimately, I am really proud of myself. I was hesitant to start and was having a tough time with this. I got a professional music lesson and used youtube to help me through this song. I then made a music sheet of my own as such:
I did this because I am not confident in reading music. I looked at this as I played my song, remembering where each finger should be for each chord.
Although I could not perform the song consistently throughout, I am really proud of my growth.