For my personal Musical Growth Assignment, I chose to learn the ukulele. Last spring, I had the opportunity to observe a music class in an elementary school in Prince George. I got to witness groups of students practice different musical skills including playing and listening. I Also got to see a class work on learning the ukulele. They reviewed the strings (G, C, E, A) and reviewed how to read the practice songs in their booklets. I had the opportunity to work with some of the students while they practiced with their instruments and play alongside them. After this, I wanted to learn more ukulele skills so I could do this with more knowledge in the future. I decided to learn these songs and their respective chord patterns, strumming patterns, and picking patterns: Edelwiess from The Sound Of Music, Somewhere Over The Rainbow from The Wizard Of Oz, and Into The Unknown from Frozen II. I chose to learn these songs because they are familiar to young students and they are songs I enjoy listening to.

To start off, I just began by teaching myself how to hold the ukulele and the chords I needed to play the song Edelwiess. This song required the chord of C, G, Am, F, and Dm. I was then able to learn these chords and the basic strumming pattern of up, up, down, as well as a simple picking pattern. I feel that this song is somewhat simple and I think that memorizing it will be achievable. I am finding the chords to be fairly easy to understand and practice but I am currently finding it difficult to achieve a strong sound from the Dm chord as well as watching my finger placements for the chords while watching my accuracy while picking.

Photo by kychan on Unsplash

Here is the song Edelweiss that I am trying to learn: