What Do You Do With the Blank Space?

I signed up for ukulele lessons. I was ready. I had the ukulele, I had the enthusiasm, and I had a chord sheet for the first song we were going to learn.

There was just one problem. I’d never heard the song.

I stared at the sheet. There was a chord at the beginning. Then a lot of blank space. Then another chord. I had no idea what was supposed to happen in between. Was I supposed to keep strumming? Stop? Hold the note? Switch faster? Slower?

Luckily for me I had a keyboard so, being resourceful, I downloaded the sheet music and started plunking out the song, decoding the rhythm note by note before I’d even touched the ukulele. It worked, technically. It also took forever.

I did this for a few songs in our beginner songbook before the obvious hit me: nobody else was doing this. My fellow beginners were just picking up the ukulele and playing. No piano. No sheet music. No forensic investigation.

I had invented a completely unnecessary — and unsustainable — step.

What I actually needed wasn’t more information. I needed to see the rhythm. Not read it, not decode it, not plunk it out on another instrument first. Just see it, right there on the screen, so I could play along with a song I’d never heard before.