This one was surprisingly very similar to last week's because they both were in they key of C (which most songs on the ukulele are) and they both used the same exact chords. The chords for this song were as follows: Cmaj, Em, Fmaj, Em, Fmaj, Cmaj, E7, Am, and then it basically is just a 2-5-1 progression from that point onward. Again, the trickiest part for me like last week, was the switch from Cmaj to Em. Neither are very complex chords, but it does require you to move your entire hand to play each chord because they only share one of the same notes.
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This week really proved to be a challenge for me because it forced me to spend a little more time on each of the songs, because they get progressively more difficult. For this specific one it required me to switch from the C major chord to the E minor, chord which is a common progression. The problem I faced was that there was not a lot of time for me to switch to that chord. With some practice, though, I was able to perform it good enough to make the song recognizable.
I finally decided to get out of my comfort zone this week and push myself. The song that I learned this week is "Island in the Sun" by Weezer and most of the song consists of 4 repeating chords. Since I could not play anything but those four chords, I just played that a few times and called it done. The song is in G major, and it consists of a repeating chord progression of Em, Am, D7, and back to Gmaj.
Ever since I started working on the Genius Hour project, I knew that this would be one of the songs that I play. It was much harder than I originally anticipated, and so I had to spend more time on this one than I have in the past. The song is called Riptide by Vance Joy. The most difficult part about this piece wasn't the rhythm, but the chords themselves. I found myself more often than not stumbling on the chords and having to stop and reposition my fingers. I used a tablature I found online to play this 3 chord piece, which is in the key of C major.
In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to learn the song "Spooky Scary Skeletons". This song was slightly more difficult than last weeks, but difficult enough so that I still feel like I have progressed since last week. The version that I played was by ear, and I did not use any sheet music to read along with. The version that I played was in the key of D minor, which was interesting because this is the first time I have played a song in a predominantly minor key.
Everyone's heard the song Old MacDonald before. This song was slightly more difficult than the last one, since it requires a little more precision in the picking. The hardest part for me in this song was the "here a [noise], there a [noise], everywhere a [noise noise]" part of the song because it was hard to pick it quickly enough while also not making it sound sloppy. I thought about picking that in a two finger "walking" style, but later settled with just strumming it with a single finger for simplicity's sake. The rendition of Old MacDonald that I did was in the key of F and used standard ukulele tuning. I only played a single verse and chorus because playing the entire song would have gotten redundant very quickly and you can get the gist of it in about 30 seconds.
The first song that I tackled on my project was Happy Birthday. There are several different ways to going about playing it, with the options being to play the background chords and rhythm, or alternatively play the melodic part. I considered my options and decided that I would just play the melody of Happy Birthday, as it is recognizable as a standalone piece. The specific arrangement that I recited was in the key of C and was played on a standard ukulele with standard tuning, with the exception of the E string, which I tuned down to D for more chord options. The G string was the only string used in this song.
For this first week, I mostly just messed around with the ukulele. Whenever I got bored, I'd pick it up for a while. I can play a few chords and I'm getting better at picking individual notes a little better each day. That being said, I still have a long way to go before I can play anything remarkable. I used this chart to learn a few chords in the key of C, since that's the key the strings are in when played open.
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November 2020
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