For my midterm, I decided to play “I’m Yours” by Jason Maraz and “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith.

I believe that one of the biggest things I have to work on with my ukulele playing is learning multiple strumming patterns. I am a self-taught ukulele player. This is something that I am very proud of but it also means that I have developed a lot of bad playing habits since nobody was there to help me fix them. One of these bad habits is that I always resort to the same strumming pattern. No matter what song I play, I always use the strumming pattern DUDUUDU. Both of the songs that I chose to do for my midterm have very different strumming patterns. For example, the strumming pattern for “I’m Yours” is DXUUX (X=chuking) and the strumming pattern for “Stay With Me” is DDU DDU.

Even with all of the practice that I have been doing, I still found it difficult to perfect these new strumming patterns. I am able to do them without singing, but as soon as I start singing I always resort to my old strumming pattern. I hope that with more practice I will be able to fix this bad habit. As well, I found it difficult to chuk while keeping my ukulele in the correct position. I often found that half-way through “I’m Yours” my ukulele would have slipped down to my lap.

I also have been trying new strumming patterns to use with other songs on ukutabs.com. Moving forward, I want to learn even more strumming patterns and to be able to chuk with more confidence. I am able to chuk now after having to do it for “I’m Yours”, but I would like it to sound clearer.