My goals for Week 9 & 10 (from my growth plan):

  • Continue practicing “I’m Yours”
  • Start learning “Like I’m Going to Lose You”
    • Learn new chord Em
    • Practice strumming pattern with 4 chords – Am, C, F, Em
    • Combine the chords and strumming and focus on playing at the correct tempo

Since I was ahead of my learning plan, I was already familiar with my second song (which I originally planned to start this week). So, during these weeks, I focused on mastering the Em chord, as well as searching for ways to make the song more challenging. The Em chord still is really challenging for me. I practiced it a lot during these few weeks, but it still isn’t always perfect when I play it.

I did a lot of research on different strumming patterns for this song; however, I was unable to find another strumming pattern, aside from down, down, down, down. So, to make this song more challenging, I decided to add different tempos. During the beginning part of the song, I only did two down strums per chord. For the next part of the song, I changed it to four down strums. And finally, for the chorus, I created my own strumming pattern that was a bit more challenging. I do one full down strum, and then two quicker half strums, and I repeat this 4 times. By making the strumming pattern a bit more dynamic, I felt more challenged, as previously I found the original strumming pattern too easy. Here is the video that demonstrated some ways to change up the strumming patterns:

During these weeks, I also decided to practice an extra song that I did not outline on my learning plan. I found a play-along video to the song “Stay with Me,” by Sam Smith. This song only has three chords (Am, F, C), in which I was already familiar with. I simply played the video and was able to keep up with the correct tempo! I knew exactly where to place my fingers since I was already familiar with the chords, and I found the strumming patterns pretty easy to pick up as well. The song starts with a few down strums, and then the pattern transitions depending on the chord. First, you play Am with the strumming pattern D DU, and the F with the same strumming pattern. Then, you play C with the strumming pattern D DU D DU. I really enjoyed this variation in the strumming. It was really enjoyable to play since it’s always changing up. I was also really proud that I was able to watch the video and play along with no problems. It shows how far I’ve come on the ukulele and how comfortable I am with these beginner songs!