This past week has been a busy one! I completed my training to become a Professional Birth Doula (yay!) This has been a goal of mine for the past several years and was something I was initially considering to explore for my learning project. I am giving you this update because many of you were interested in me pursuing this topic for the course project. If you don’t know what a doula is or have other doula questions, you can check out this article, written by my training instructor.
Guitar Project
Last week I gave you a sneak preview of the work I was doing on “Under the Boardwalk” by John Mellencamp. This is the song I chose to focus on most this week. However, I did complete some other work in my Udemy course and spent time on Yousician. In my Udemy course this week, I worked on Beginner – CORE – Module 4 (~1 hour of lesson time, not including practice) which focused on rhythm and chords, and Beginner – CORE – Module 5 (~50 min of lesson time, not including practice) which focused on strumming, strumming techniques and practicing support. In the Mod 4 section, there was a mini lesson called “Advice and Encouragement” where the instructor, Erich, articulates that by this point in the course, students are probably feeling a bit of frustration with their level of progress. This echoes how I have been feeling the last couple of weeks. I haven’t felt overly frustrated but rather that I have less to report for my weekly updates because instead of working on new skills, I am improving upon skills already learned. Refining, if you will, and getting a bit more creative with strumming patterns to make the songs I already know more interesting to listen to. Erich advises that all great guitarists started in the same place I am in and that we cannot avoid the things in life that require our time. He says, if he didn’t have to sleep, eat, work, etc., he’d be a much better guitarist too! It was nice to hear some encouragement from my online instructor which validated my feelings and left me with a sense of being understood at this point in my learning journey.
Successes this week: 
- Check out my vlog update below. If you’ve been following with my learning project you will be able to hear the improvement! (I hope!)
Challenges this week:
- Finding time to practice! I found some time, but not as much as I would have liked.
Getting Techy:
- This week I figured out how to add the picture-in-picture feature and transitions to WeVideo. I was able to do this easily while using iMovie but the steps for picture-in-picture are a bit different in WeVideo and the transitions are a bit finicky if you try to copy the way it’s done in iMovie. Thanks to these two videos, I was able to add picture-in-picture and transitions easily:
- This week I also added Bitmoji images to my vlog. I’ve tried to do this before but was annoyed by the white background that would show up when I saved the Bitmoji to my phone or computer. I decided to spend some time figuring out how to remove the white background because I have seen it done before! I ended up using Photoshop which I have a paid subscription to and this video, How to Remove a White Background on Photoshop, to figure it out. I am really happy with what I was able to accomplish and hope to use this skill more creatively in the future.
I hope you enjoy my weekly vlog update! Contents include:
- Chord Workouts (I could only get one silver star on level one at the beginning of the semester, now I can get 3 gold stars on level 3).
- Sequential Chord Switches using a different strumming pattern.
- Chords for “Under the Boardwalk”
- Sporadic baby sounds, squeals, yells, cheers and rattle noises throughout.
Until next time…
Brooke, looks like you hit the same point as in my projet, the practice stage where progress seems slow and the work seems repetitive. I truly believe the good old fashioned practice is the key to learning many new skills. Keep up the good work!