Since my last blog post, I have been continuing to try and learn how to play I’m Yours I am still really struggling with the strumming pattern of down up, DOWN up, down up, DOWN up. However, I found just playing the chords without having to sing along has made it a lot easier and I am starting to be able to hit the hard DOWN strums more consistently. Sadly, it still doesn’t make the same sounds from the actual song but I am new to playing the ukulele and overall and pretty happy with the ways things are going. I’m having fun and learning something new that is quite a challenge, but I like the challenge. I think that is why I have been playing more consistently, about 5 times a week for around 10 minutes each. On Thursday I had another facetime music lesson with my uncle. I really wanted to try and learn a third thrum pattern and he suggested I tried learning the down, down, up, up, do, up strum pattern. I found this strum pattern to be quite difficult to learn at first because it was the first time that I had ever tried two back-to-back upstrokes. My uncle suggested that I just practice doing only upstrokes for a couple of minutes. So I played the chords C, G, Am, F and only strummed up. I’d always thought one of the more difficult parts of I’m yours strum pattern was the up strum, it just didn’t feel as natural as the down strums feel. By the end I after only strumming up I found that when playing the down, down, up, up, do, up strum pattern the double up strum felt a lot more natural and easier to try.
April 10, 2021