The Underground Ukulele Railroad

The overall simplicity of the ukulele makes it challenging to judge my progress with it. I have hardly touched finger picking, which in all honesty, can be as difficult as anything depending on its complexity. I know that any pop song or rock using chords and a standard progression is nothing difficult if I only need to strum, however once it becomes necessary to pluck intricate melodies along with strumming is where my capabilities end. This is where the problem of not taking lessons from a private teacher becomes apparent. I do not know the direction I should be taking myself. I have recently found  a site called "Ukulele Underground" with almost 100 lessons on songs of varying difficulties. I will most definitely be learning my next song from their library of videos.

Holding Onto You

This is seriously a percussive driven song and was an absolute blast to learn how to play. Playing this song requires the constant muting of the strings with mainly the left hand, and every once in a while with the right. The Reggae style of the piece serves to drive the song forward, complementing the sharply spoken, yet sung, lyrics. When I was learning this song I tried playing it a dozen different ways. Quickly with fast staccato words, slowly with more lyrical lyrics, and everywhere in between. In the take I have below, I am very happy with the rap section, and most of the singing sections, however I lost focus on some of the "O's" making the performance slightly muddier than it should be. The strumming throughout the song is improvisational. There are several different strumming patterns that can be used anywhere in the piece, and for the song to feel exciting I found it necessary to change between them whenever I deemed it appropriate. I did make several small mistakes in the strumming. My finger slipped on a C-chord, and in order to save the take I had to change my strum pattern to a rapid series of down strums because I had omitted an up strum where one should have been. Also, I would like to mention I am, as always, singing an octave down from what is sung by Tyler. Tyler's voice can go seriously higher than my own, granted her can't go anywhere near as low as I can. Such is the deference between a tenor and a base. As always, if you would like to give my cover a listen, you can find it down below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_3A3dxjWyx2Sl8yMDVHUXFMLTg/view?usp=sharing