In the most recent stretch of my musical journey, of trying to learn the ukulele, I have picked a song: I’m Yours, by Jason Marz. I’m Yours used to be one of my favourite songs as a kid and when I figured out that it had a simplified version I was overcome with curiosity and excitement. I choose the simplified version that only consists of 4 cords and the same strum pattern throughout the song. The chord progression in I’m Yours, is C, G, Am and F. Luckily, all these cords are reasonably easy to learn and I already knew F, G and Am. C was very simple considering that all you have to do is put your ring finger on the first string on the 3rd fret. There was an awesome video on Youtube that I found that explained how to start to learn the song and then eventually start to strum along to the song. Similar to what my uncle suggested I do, I started out by just counting from 1 to 4 in my head before starting to play any chord. Once I was prepared to start to strum the chords in order: C, G, Am, F. I would just the first chord C once before counting to 4 and then and then strum down for G chord and count 2,3,4 before strumming again. Rather than my original plan of learning 2 simple songs I decided to learn just 1 complicated song, I’m Yours. My biggest challenge right now is the strum pattern: down up, DOWN up, down up, DOWN up. The most difficult part of the strum is the hard down strum that happens on every second down strum. I constantly find myself forgetting to strum hard on every second down strum, or strumming too hard. However, I think it just comes with practice and hopefully, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be able to make it there. I’ve attached a little sneak peek of me trying to play the chords in order with just a simple strum pattern of down, down, down, down.
March 10, 2021