When I first picked up the ukulele, I had a hard time strumming the instrument, as well as trying to tune it. To solve the tunning problem I donloaded an app on my phone called “tunefor ukulele and chords”. By the end of the cousre I want to be able to tune my ukelele by ear, but in order to do so I need to first learn what an intune ukulele sounds like, which is why I am using the app.  When strumming the ukulele I could not figure out which fingers to use and strumming the ukulele felt very unnatural to me. Because of this, I did some research and found a very informative video, by Cynthia Lin (posted bellow),  to help me learn how to strum it properly. I also learned that most people start off strumming the ukulele with their thumb, rather than their index finger, and when they have final mastered this, people can start to use their whole hand to strum the instrument. Personally, I found that strumming the ukulele with my index finger was the most comfortable.

 Although, on my learning plan, I wrote that I was going to learn the different chords on the ukulele before starting to play, I realized that I needed to start playing first instead, and then learn the chords. I thought that this was best because I could get comfortable with playing the ukulele through different strumming patterns. I decided that this would then make it easier to change between different chords and allow me to have a more natural flow when strumming.

I have also been finding it a bit difficult trying to play on specific days that I said I would on my music growth plan. As a result, I made adjustments to when I would play the ukulele. I still made sure that I would play the ukulele for at least two hours a week, but instead of doing an hour a day for two days a week I broke the time down into more days. I would play the ukulele whenever I had time, usually about 4 days a week, for about 30 minutes each. I found this to work very well for myself because I was still getting in the practice I needed, had plenty of time for other school work, and I was focusing on repetition of movement more often with less days not playing in between.