I decided on doing my free inquiry project on the ukulele. I love teaching myself new instruments so I think it will be fun to document my weekly progress. Having this blog will allow me to always be able to go back and check on all of my accomplishments.

I was able to borrow a ukulele from my mom’s friend which was nice because I didn’t have to pay for it! When I opened the bag it came in I was immediately brought back to memories from elementary school of when we learnt the ukulele in music class. I remember taking all of my lunch breaks to go into the music room to practice because I loved it so much. I would constantly have blisters on my fingers because of how much I played. Sadly, after that year in elementary I never played the ukulele again, so I forget everything and anything about the ukulele. Once I got the ukulele out of the bag I wondered if it was tuned, so I went onto a ukulele tuner website and turned on my microphone and strummed each string individually and, drum roll please, it had already been tuned! I was so excited that I didn’t have to tune it myself.

This past week I practiced my strumming and quickly realized I needed to cut my nails because it was difficult to get a good and solid strum. Once I was able to strum properly I started learning strumming patterns, such as “down, up, down up,” and “down, down, up, up,” and “down, down, up, up, down, up,” and a few more. I have also started learning some of the basic chords. I learnt and memorized A minor, G, C, and F, you can actually play a lot of songs with those four chords but I need to learn how to switch between chords smoothly before I can play any songs nicely.

The link I have included shows the finger placement on the ukulele strings of the four chords that I have learnt! https://www.google.com/search?q=a+minor,+c,g,+f+chords+ukulele&safe=strict&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALeKk03ArY-fF__j6WbDRxwlfnlzhwxW-A:1601347875545&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXjKLarY3sAhUcFTQIHdOmDXUQ_AUoAXoECBcQAw&biw=1440&bih=721#imgrc=FMiCg6TlCFw78M

Thanks to Hannah Busing for sharing their work on Unsplash.