Ukulele - Intro to Stairway To Heaven, Karate, Philosophy, and BASIC Programming

There are a plenty of problems with how I play. An immediately obvious one to me is that I play like I'm programming in BASIC. 

I'm sure this is the same with learning just about everything. When we learn a kata in karate, we break complex movements up into distinct motions based on earlier kata or basic punches, blocks, etc. and string them together. A rendition of the kata starts as a robotic activity without fluidity or finesse, with the result being less than the sum of the parts. But you have to start somewhere.

As you get better acquainted with a kata, your instructor will begin replacing the robotic logic with "this is how that part is really done." This can be very frustrating until you realize you're never actually ever going to learn the correct and final "this is how that part is really done." That kata doesn't exist.

It's like concept of chair-ness. Everyone knows what a chair is. But I argue it's impossible to give a simple and complete universally accepted definition of a chair. You can give examples and describe the purpose of a chair. But can you enumerate all prior and future versions of a chair? How about a absolute and universal letter "a"? There are limits to knowledge, or perhaps to the expression of knowledge. Something about Kant and the sensory manifold. Sorry, I digress. Philosophy 101 was a long time ago.

Here's some song playing algorithm pseudo-code:

• For i = 1 to Song.Chords.Count
• Look at Song.Chords[i].ChordToPlay
• Set fingers on Song.Chords[i].ChordToPlay
• For j = 1 to Song.Chords[i].StringToPluck 
• Pluck Song.Chords[i].StringToPluck[j]
• Next j
• Next i
• ??????
• Profit!

The tutorial I'm watching doesn't explain anything verbally. Even if it did, it would be in Spanish. I wouldn't have a clue. I started out playing using the algorithm above, which kinda works. I slowed down the video playback enough so I can see the individual finger movements better and it's obvious most chord transitions are made while plucking strings. 

The string plucking finger pattern for this song is: pluck the first and forth strings, the third string, the second, and finally the first. Some chords drop off the second, third, or forth pluck. When playing the G chord, you can pluck the first and forth strings as soon as the fingers are fretting the first and forth strings and before the second string is fretted. I won't bore you with more pseudo-code.

Yes, I'm sure this falls into the category of having an amazing grasp of the obvious. But I'm going to guess that if it wasn't obvious to me there's a chance it isn't to other n00bs. 

No video today. I'm working on it, but I'm not prepared to embarrass myself yet again. I'll save that for another post.

What the hey. Recorded this at lunch. Better than the last one but not my much. Meh.

If you want to see how it should be done, check out Stairway To Heaven Tutorial (Led Zeppelin) Ukulele Chords on Ukeclases YouTube channel. Great resource for tutorial videos.

Ganbatte Kudasai!