I’ve set out on the path of my Musical Growth Plan, and so far there are things that I both was and wasn’t expecting to be difficult about this. I will start with learning to tune, as that was the very first thing I did.

This is my ukulele. I bought her in my second year at uVic at the BCMEA conference, so she’s actually quite tied into my goals as a teacher. I named her Tallulah at the time, and haven’t forgotten it. So evidently, that is her name.

In learning to tune, I found that for some reason, it was much easier than I remembered. Perhaps I had been going about it in the wrong way previously, but I was able to use this video and download the tuning app for ukulele called Ukulele Tuner. This process took me all of maybe 10 minutes from start to finish, and since I have been easily able to tune the ukulele with the app in a matter of less than a minute. I think in the past I had tried to do it unaided, and that really hindered my ability more than helped it. In time, I think I will know the strings sounds well enough to tune without an app, but for now this is going to really help in terms of getting the process down and preventing it from becoming frustrating, which would ultimately demotivate me to play.

In terms of learning You Are My Sunshine, I have found that it’s been much more difficult than I thought. My fingers are not as deft as they used to be, which could be due to my disability and just the newness of it all. It’s definitely painful to play for longer than 15 minute spurts right now, and so the process has been very slow. I’ve learned the chords, but am still quite clumsy at swapping between them in the chord progression.

The video I’ve been using has been very helpful, though. She goes at a generous pace and takes the time to practice switching between the chords, which really helps keep me from getting too frustrated with the process of it. She’s also a teacher in the states at the elementary level, and so I’m able to learn a little bit about the process of how it might look for me to teach this in my classroom one day.