the ukulele changed my life
follow me as I practice every day for the joy these strings bring into my life
2/5/2024
1979 practice on Kala
If you want to hear me laugh my way through this one haha
I was inspired to learn this song today - I got all excited and this is my second playthrough on the Kala app. The Kala app is actually what made playing music click for me, I use it to practice just about daily.
it’s rushed and clumsy but it was suuupppppperrrrrrr fun and I will probably keep practicing because I like the pace (and challenge!) of it!
2/3/2024
dos oruguitas - 1 week later
After 1 week of practicing the song and my last upload, I wanted to record again and compare. I hear lots of improvement! Next, I will practice the rest of the chorus and singing in Spanish - that will be my next update so, until I can do that I will keep at it!
1/26/2024
dos oruguitas
This has been fun to learn and I’m really just begun. This is the intro and first verse of dos oruguitas from encanto. My then 1 year old was obsessed with this movie when it first came out and we spent lots of time watching and listening to the album it on alexa throughout our day.
I had previously learned how to strum the chords, so now I’m trying to learn how to strum and then pluck between the notes. It’s challenging and I find I quite love it a lot!
I’ll keep practicing ^^
1/7/2024
somewhere over the rainbow
I suppose an obvious choice for learning to play the ukulele - I think just the act of playing it and singing it over and over again is a form of self-talk. I think they are words that I need to hear right now in my life, and perhaps that’s what draws me to it.
This is not a performance. This is a window into a state of flow that shows utter disregard for my usual social fears. Where I quiet my voice, or if I trip up over the strings instead of stopping in frustration I just jump back into the rhythm and finish a song. But what I love about this is that I do mess up and my voice isn’t in tune most the time but I don’t really care. It just feels good to play it and to sing it. And that’s not something I’m used to. When I stoped caring about sounding perfect or a certain way is when it really opened up for me.
Talk about dopamine! I am a dopaMINER. Give me all the goods.
There’s a part midway where I stop and laugh at myself, just from the joy of playing, even as I’m actively messing up, solicits that response in me. In this, you might hear me moving around, shaking my head. It’s just fun!