The last Tales of the Uke installment was in February. I’ve worked on a few songs since then that were more about gaining technical skills than learning and polishing to a performance level. The one exception was an Easter piece in April. Onward to something new!

At one point last year as part of my music education, Trevor had me work on a songwriting exercise. It was foreign territory but fun. I wrote the music notation on composition paper, starting with chords and building a simple (very simple!) melody from them. I kept my day job, but it was insightful to see and hear how songs are built. We talked about doing a video recording of ourselves performing the piece but got busy with other songs.

My lessons during the health crisis are done via video distance learning, which is a bit challenging. The lessons have not been in real time so feedback hasn’t been either, but Trevor suggested I try the songwriting exercise again. He set parameters and gave me a week to come up with something. The rules were as follows:

Section A – Should be on the melancholic side, so emphasize minor chords. This part should be strummed. Pick a strumming pattern.

Section B – Emphasize major chords, and use fingerpicking in this part.

Section A Prime – Repeat Section A, but make slight variations on a few chords.

Section B – Exact repeat of first Section B.

Section C – No guidelines. Whatever you want that fits.

Here is the world debut of the end result. I call the song, Pandemic.

It took a few days to get the verdict, but Trevor liked what I assembled and suggested doing this exercise on my own from time-to-time with different parameters. As I already mentioned it’s good to hear how song elements and structure go together. The ear training and learning of new chord progressions is invaluable.

Coming up next, a Dean Martin song from 1953.