Learn how to play Ukulele in 2 hours

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I can actually play the ukulele a little bit. But I can’t actually play a whole song all the way through. I wanted that to change, so for this challenge I picked a song I liked and timed how long it took to lean. I started by googling ‘top ukulele songs’ and from the list of usual suspects, (‘I’m Yours and Over the Rainbow’) I decided to pick ‘I See Fire’ by Ed Sheeran. It seemed like an intermediate to advanced level song to learn, and because I knew a bit about the ukulele already, I thought it would be the best suited song for this challenge. I am a big fan of both the Ed Sheeran and ‘The Hobbit’ movies, so it seem like the perfect fit.
To start, I typed “I see fire ukulele tutorial” into TH-cam and searched for a teacher. I found a guy aptly named the Ukulele Teacher. He also has a great app called the Tuner for Ukulele which I use to tune mine. From him, I learned that there are two main sections to this song, the chorus and the verse. The verse had a few new techniques which I had not heard of before. In the strum pattern, which is normally a variation of down, up, down, up, down, it was pinch, up, chuck, pinch, up. There was also a new chord, D, which I was not familiar with. In the chorus, there were a few new techniques as well. I had never used any finger picking techniques and I never even heard of hammer on/offs. Last but not least, I knew I was going to have to play the song and sing along as well, which was something I felt I would struggle with from the start.
I set about learning the new strumming pattern and putting the chords together. I found it difficult to begin with as I kept reverting back to the strumming pattern I already knew. I kept practicing until my hands got sore, about 20 minutes in, but when I got back to it; it started to come together. I started working on the chord progression and introduced the new chord, D. It took me a while to get my fingers comfortable stretching quickly into new positions, but I knew I would get there eventually if I kept practicing. I kept going until my fingers were fatigued again, about 10 mins later, and then stopped for the day. I essentially knew what I was doing with the verse by the end of day 1. I didn’t need my notes anymore, I just knew I needed to keep playing it over and over again until it improved.
On day 2 I started learning the finger picking techniques and the hammer on/off. I broke these techniques down in to small, easy to manage; individual chunks. Which again started to come together after about a 30 minutes practice. As I had learned them in smaller separate pieces, the main difficultly came when I needed to play them all together. I struggle to find a rhythm and pattern, and it all sounded very broken up. It me think that I should practice by playing the both techniques slowly, all the way through, and speed it up as I go along. I practiced that until my hands started to ache again. By this point I was starting to make the song start sounding somewhat like it should.
I had learned the instrumental version of the song relatively well by day 3. Now I needed to sing the lyrics alongside it. I kept playing the song over and over trying to mumble sing along side it. The main problem I was finding was that I was really out of tune. Often my hands would move too quickly for my voice to keep up with and I would find myself rushing through the song. By the end of day 4 I was close to 2 hours of practice and I had managed to find a rhythm of sorts. The ukulele song had started to come together.
As I entered day 5, I had performed so many reps of this song that I knew it off by heart. I love finishing out challenges because while I am in the middle of them, I always feel like I should be trying to get it done soon, so I can move onto the next one. With this I felt as though I had reached my endpoint, so I set up the camera; and recorded my attempt in one take. Now I am under no illusion that I can sing in an anyways decent manner, or that I can be consider in anyway proficient, but at least now I can string a few notes and mumbled sounds together. As I had a bit of experience playing before I knew I could learn a song if I just sat down and put in the practice. After all, that is the purpose of this blog. I know there are loads of things people could learn if they just put aside some time to do it. All in all this took about 2 hours, give or take a few minutes.

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