I forgot to mention the video I just posted wasn’t meant for a review. It was more of to track my progress.
WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO TEACH ALDRINE? WHY?! Haha.
This stage of learning music is so mildly infuriating because I know the secret is just to play more songs and gradually try more complex songs. It is so gratifying to learn a new song and I can tell I’ve grown because most songs Priya hands me I can breakdown really quickly.
I thought your playing was really clean and the song was really pretty. I think one thing you could work on is how you hold your chords. Your wrist is bent out for a lot of chords (G chord for example). Aldrine always talks about try to hold the neck of the ukulele in the “pillow” of your hand ( the area between your pointer and thumb).
Rewatching your video I see the following chords: G, C, C7, Am, F…etc. All of those chords can be done will holding the neck in that little pillow. Check out the close-up of Aldrine in this video at 1:00 for a great example (notice his thumb wrapped around the neck). It may feel awkward at first but it saves a lot of energy!
*note* The pillow doesn’t work for every chord (ex. Bar chords) but it is super useful. My wife plays a lot of rhythm for me and it helps her play for hours!
I made an account on the free forum but when ever I post it either doesn’t work or says I don’t have approval to post. I have tried multiple times to fix it. I ended up just posting here more since Aldrine and the UU+ crew tend to respond on their podcast.
After looking over the TLL Podcasts on chord melody I’m going to try to figure out the chord progression and see where the melody notes are. Then I’ll due any necessary chord inversions so that the melody note is on the A string. Then I’m going to try substituting octaves, major/minor thirds, 6ths, and triads to make the song more dynamic. For simplicity I think I’ll try to work of the guitar cover I posted earlier. The biggest hurdle right now figuring out the key and chord progression. I know I can probably figure it out from the melody but it feels super tempting to just look at guitar tabs and adjust the key. xD
Iron Mango has Lopaka Colón (percussion) and Jon Yamasato (guitar/vocals) who are both from Pure Heart. Aldrine joked on Thursday live that if they ever had a song that included Jake would they be called Iron Mango featuring Jake or Pure Heart featuring Kalei.