This is my last blog documenting my journey of learning the ukulele. This final song Everything I Wanted by Billie Ellish gave me the most grief, learning how to play and singing while playing. I thought about changing the song twice because it just wasn’t sounding how I wanted it to. I don’t like how the chords sound, nor the picking pattern, and it felt like it was too low for my vocal range. The reason that I chose to stick with it was because I have a tendency to be stubborn and thought that with more practice it would sound better but the reality of it was that with the many weeks and hours I put into learning this song it was as good as it was going to get.
I have never learned how to pick a song before, I have always chosen to strum because it was easier. So when it came time to choose an instrument and songs to learn for this assignment I wanted to really go out of my comfort zone and see what happened. Compared to how this song sounded my first week playing it to now, it is like night and day. My third blog that I wrote for this assignment I remember saying that it didn’t even sound similar to the actual song and at least now I can say that it does. I found that while picking I had to constantly look down at the strings which changed the position in which I held the ukulele. I also had a difficult time figuring out my timing for singing because I was concentrating so hard on not messing up.
Even with all the trouble that I had trying to learn this song I am glad that I chose to stick with it because it made me understand some of the techniques the someone has to have in order to pick a song, such as which fingers they use. It is easier to switch between your thumb, pointer and middle finger compared to just using your thumb. I also gained an understanding towards the effort that goes into learning this style of playing, and with the experience that I have now I would like to try to learn another song that uses a similar motion.
