I have now received my grade back for the music midterm demonstration along with the feedback and I would say I am pleased with the results. One of the comments mentioned in my feedback was that some of my strings were out of tune and now that I have read that it makes sense as to why my strings were making such weird noises. When I originally got the ukulele, I tested all the strings on an online tuning website and they were all in tune. I honestly didn’t know strings could go out of tune for no reason and I also didn’t know what it sounded like when a ukulele was out of tune so it didn’t even clue in to me to check again if the strings were in tune. Now that I knew that my strings were out of tune, I went back onto the website to test the strings and lo and behold two out of four were out of tune. This website gives you the option to press each tuning peg and it will play a sound to show you what each string is supposed to sound like and then there’s also the option to press a microphone and strum your ukulele strings and it will tell you what note you are playing. I tried turning the G string one way but it was making it worse so I tightened it and tightened it and it was finally strumming at a G note. I did the same with the A string and now when I strum my ukulele it doesn’t sound wacky anymore!

Below is a link to the website I used to help me tune my ukulele:

https://ukebuddy.com/ukulele-tuner

I think I am done learning “Riptide” by Vance Joy! This past week was reading break which means I had more time to practice the ukulele. I have now memorized which strumming pattern to use and when. I have practiced and practiced and I think I’ve got it down pat! Now I am onto learning my third and final song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. The strumming pattern for this song is DDU UDU. This song also includes dynamics, meaning I am supposed to do a soft strum on the first down strum and a louder strum on the second down strum. The chords used in this song are C, Em, Am, F, G. I already know how to do the strumming patterns along with the chords, so now it’s just about knowing the order of the chords.