Learning My First Two Songs
After using that website to learn the notes, I began to start learning my first two songs. First was “Land of the Silver Birch”, which I chose from MusicPlayOnline. I actually really liked this source, because it gave me the sheet music as well as the ability to listen to the actual song. Playing along with the song was way too hard at first. It went way faster than I was capable of going. So I just began playing at my own place, carefully placing my fingers in the right position. Eventually after I was able to play the song all the way through (pretty slowly at that), I began listening more to the song. As of right now, I am still struggling a bit at the transition from “blue lake and rocky shore, I will return once more” to the “boom di-di boom” part. I do think that with a bit more practice before recording myself playing this song, I should be able to make my transitions a bit smoother and keep up to the beat of the song on MusicPlayOnline. For my second song, “This Old Man”, I actually tested myself a bit. Before even opening the sheet music for this song on MusicPlayOnline, I actually tried to teach myself how to play it by ear. And guess what – I did it! I was very proud of myself for being able to find the correct notes without using any resources, and I actually did so within 10 minutes! This was a pretty great moment of revelation to me. I thought to myself, “wow, you know what, I’m actually learning and getting better at this!”. So after I miraculously taught myself the song by ear, I opened up the song on MusicPlayOnline and began trying to pick up my pace a bit. As with Land of the Silver Birch, I am still working on getting up to the proper beat and timing. This will probably take some time, but I can definitely see myself progressing!
Overall, I am actually pretty proud of myself. From the first time holding the ukulele and knowing literally nothing about it, to just about a month and a half later, I have improved quite a bit. I can confidently read the music notes again, recognize each of the note’s timing and how long to play that note, and finally, I am getting better at corresponding what I read on a music sheet to what finger placement I need to play that note on the ukulele. I am excited to see the rest of my progress from now to the end of the term!