Category: Music

I can’t believe we are already at the end of the term! The last couple weeks have been very up and down, with a lot of changes.  It has impacted my musical growth plan a little bit in that practice time has been sporadic with all the changes in schedules and routines.  I have been able to reach my goal for my songs however, for the most part.  Below is the link to my video playing “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz.  I am mostly happy with where I got to in my learning, though I could get a little smoother in the chord transitions, and I still slow down a bit in the middle of the song as I find it tricky to sing and strum the bridge part.  I reached where I wanted to be by the end of this project, but I do wish I was able to do it a little more confidently.  I hadn’t anticipated how tricky it would be to put the strumming, chord transitions, and singing together, and I think that is what I have had the most difficulty with throughout this assignment.   I would get to where I could do each part well on its own, but putting them together was another thing and it took more time than I expected.

https://youtu.be/8AddojgUhYA

I have really enjoyed learning how to play the ukulele and would love to continue on with it.  I think it would be a wonderful skill to be able to bring into the classroom both in a music teacher role as well as in the everyday classroom.  I can see how ukulele could be incorporated into the classroom especially in primary grades.  A goal I have is to learn a few songs that would be appropriate and fun for the younger grades, and try and bring these songs into my future classroom.  Though I feel far from being comfortable playing in front of a class at this point, I think if I kept practicing, learning, and growing in confidence, I would one day be able to.  So while this marks the end of my musical growth assignment,  it is actually far from over!

Photo by Samuel Ramos on Unsplash

This last couple weeks have been very busy and finding time to practice the ukulele has been a challenge.  That being said however, things are slowly coming along in learning my second song.  I am still finding the middle section of the song tricky when there are only four beats between chord changes rather than eight.  Also, putting the strumming and singing together for this song (“I’m Yours”) is even hard than in You Are my Sunshine.  The tune is not consistent and the words don’t always match with the strums.  I am feeling a little nervous about whether I will be able to learn “I’m Yours” as well as I want to.   My focus for this week will be to work on the middle section of the song and be able transition between chords smoothly.  I also want to have the lyrics memorized so that I can practice putting the strumming and lyrics together.

It’s midterm time for my musical growth plan which means time to show what I have learned!  This first video is of me playing and singing “You Are My Sunshine.”  As I’ve mentioned before, the part that I found hardest for this song was putting all the pieces together (chords, strumming, and singing) and it was a little bit like patting my head and rubbing my tummy.  I spent quite a bit of time practicing however, and I am able to play it through fairly smoothly now.  Here goes:

I have been practicing putting the chords  and strumming together for my second song, “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz.  There is a lot more chord switching in this song than in “You Are My Sunshine,” and there are parts of the song where the chords change a lot quicker.  At this point I am able to play along with the song watching the tutorial video that I am using as it prompts me when to change chords.  I am also beginning to try and learn the lyrics of the song.  Over the next week my goal is to be able to strum the song on my own without the tutorial video, and to keep learning the lyrics.

The video below is me demonstrating the 5 chords that are played in “I’m Yours.”

Lastly, here is a video of my strumming “I’m Yours” along with the tutorial video:

Photo by Manja Vitolic on Unsplash

Ukulele practice has been going well for the most part.  It has been a busy last few weeks and so it has been a bit of a struggle finding time to practice as much as I should, but I have done my best.  I am feeling more confident with my final product of “You Are My Sunshine,” and the strumming pattern has been getting better.  That is still definitely the trickiest part of playing the song for me, but the more I practice, the easier it is getting.  For some reason it is the second verse that is throwing me off the strumming pattern because the lyrics don’t match the chords the same way as in verse one and so it throws me off every time.  If I slow down and really concentrate I can do it, but it still isn’t as smooth as I would like it to be.  I have started learning the extra chords for my second song, getting ready to start learning it this week.  I am a little farther behind in learning the strumming pattern for “I’m Yours” as it has taken me longer to feel comfortable with “You Are My Sunshine” than I thought it would.  In this next week my goal is to get the chords and strumming pattern down for I’m Yours and then start putting them together.

Photo by Raquel Moss on Unsplash

This term for my musical growth project I am learning how to play the ukulele.  I’ve chosen two songs to learn; You Are My Sunshine, and I’m Yours by Jason Mraz.  I had a bit of a frustrating start because the ukulele that I had borrowed to use had a string that would not tune properly and it ended up breaking a couple times.  Trying to figure out what was wrong with the ukulele, and then finding another one I could borrow for the term, slowed down my process of getting started on learning the chords and practicing the songs.  Now that I’ve got a ukulele that is tuning properly things are going fairly well as far as practicing goes..  At this point I have learned how to hold the ukulele properly, tune it using an app on my phone, and I can play You Are My Sunshine.  I found the chords for this song fairly easy to learn (C, F, and G), and am able to change between them smoothly.  Once in a while I have to pause on the switch from C to G as that is the trickiest transition but it is getting better.  The part of the song that I find most challenging is the strumming pattern which is down, down, up, up, down, up.  I can do it no problem when I am just practicing the strumming, but when I am strumming, changing chords, and singing all together I find it a bit like rubbing my head and patting my tummy and I get mixed up in the strumming.  For this song, it is taking me longer to get the final piece smooth than I thought it would.  I am really enjoying the process though and can definitely see myself using the ukulele in the classroom one day especially for the younger grades.