Just a warning: this post really has nothing to do with photography or anything that I might usually blog about. But it’s for charity, so you’re not allowed to complain. 

Anyone who has the fortune to know me may already be aware of my new-found hobby – learning to play the ukulele.

I have never learned an instrument properly before. I dabbled a bit with keyboard playing when I was at school, but was far too impatient to see it through to the end.

Having always wanted to play the guitar,  but scared off by the number of strings, when my good friend Sarah suggested having a bash at the ukulele and showed me a few basic chords I became hooked and bought my own. It also helps that ukuleles are cute, especially mine… it’s turquoise and has a dolphin on it.

This year is cancer charity Tenovus’ 70th year. Another good friend of mine, Liz, who has featured on this blog prominently regular fans, works at this wonderful charity. Having done a spot of  (award-winning ;)) work for the charity myself, I wanted to do something to raise some money to celebrate the charity’s birthday in 2013.

One of the many events that’s happening this year for the special celebrations is The Big Singalong. I think you can now see how my new-found penchant for ukulele playing and this particular charity could be related.

I wanted to do something that would  be a proper challenge, but would also be quite fun and hopefully help me learn a bit faster. So – I’ve come up with the idea of doing a “30 day song challenge.”

This was originally a meme that went around Facebook a couple of years ago, whereby people posted a song on a given theme every day for 30 days. To make this an actual challenge, I propose to record and post a new song I’ve learned every day for 30 days. For someone who can so far just about play three songs, and someone, despite being Singstar champion, is not the best vocalist in the world, this is going to be quite the toughie, right?

By the way you can see how far along I am in my learning with this rather dubious cover of the marvellous White Stripes song, “We’re Going to be Friends.” Sorry Jack.

I’ve only  been learning for around seven weeks, so I’m giving myself another two months to improve my playing, pick out the 30 songs and try my best to learn them to a half-decent standard. I should also have acquired a guitar during this time, so if I can get anywhere with it, some covers might be on that…. just to make it even harder eh? I’m really hoping some of my musically inclined friends will make cameo appearances too.

For purposes of convenience, I will start this challenge on 1st July 2013 and it will run for 30 days. I will try really hard to record each song on each day of the 30, but if something comes up whereby I need to be away (and can’t pack the uke), I’ll record the song(s) in advance and post them on the relevant days.

To be honest, at the moment I’m struggling most with the concept of picking the 30 songs – I’ll post a list at the end of this post. Perhaps because it’s relatively far away, the idea of learning 30 different songs doesn’t seem too daunting… but I’ll keep you updated on that.

I’d be really chuffed if you could find a couple of quid to chuck in this direction by way of sponsorship for this slightly crazy task. As a way of gratitude, anyone that sponsors can vote for what they’d like to hear covered as Song 26. Though, frankly, any suggestions you’ve got for any of the songs, I’d love to hear.

You can read more about the wonderful work that Tenovus does over at their site, and more about the Big Singalong too.

Donate here

List of songs:

Have a look at the current list of ideas/possibilities…. any suggestions welcome.