For this blog post, I decided to refresh my knowledge of strumming and fingerpicking! To refresh my knowledge of strumming, I practiced playing Stand By Me, a song intro that I learned earlier in the semester. 

Here is a video of me practicing: Stand By Me

Then, I learned some more chords. These chords are A, D, and E. I found diagrams on AustinBazaar. There were 6 chord diagrams, but I had already learned C, F, and G. This website also includes multiple videos about learning chords, as well as techniques and tips! These would be super beneficial for students to use if they were learning the ukulele. 

Below I have attached some videos of me playing these chords while strumming: 

Strumming A Chord

Strumming D Chord

Strumming E Chord

After practicing some old chords and learning some new ones, I moved onto fingerpicking. I attempted some finger picking using the chords that I learned: 

Here are the videos of my attempts: 

Fingerpicking A Chord

Fingerpicking D Chord

Fingerpicking E Chord

My thoughts on chords: 

A – This one was super easy! It was similar to the other chords that I learned earlier in the semester. 

D – This one was more challenging than A. While I was able to do it, I struggled. 

E – This one was super hard! I found this one the hardest of all three. 

With D and E, I found the hardest part to be pressing one finger down to cover multiple strings.

After this practice, I thought that I would give learning a song with both strumming and fingerpicking a try! Then… I became very overwhelmed with how fast my individual fingers would need to move to play the pattern and change chords. I do not think that I am quite ready for that, yet! Someday I will accomplish this, but I am proud of my work and effort for learning some new chords!