D Formation

I spent the bulk of my day working at my parents cafe...called Paris Cafe located near Union Square in SF. Of course, I brought my uke along for the ride in case I got a chance to pick it up and play for a familiar face. I did get the chance to do so for a friend (Vince) who came to visit. He is an accomplished guitarist and got to strum the uke a bit.

This evening I spent some time getting through the Fretboard Roadmap book. I read through the first chapter on D formations. It goes over the D, D minor and D7 formations. The D consists of 3 notes, D, F# and A which are the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the D scale. D minor means you lower the 3rd note half a step so that makes it consist of the D, F, and A while the D7 consists of a 7th chord (D, F#, A, and C). The same page then moves on to all the different locations of all the other notes to make it diminished, 6/9, augmented, major, etc. Although I could see how just learning the D formations would reduce the difficulty in locating all the other chords on the fretboard, it was already overwhelming to memorize. But it does remind me of how much time it took me to learn the fingerings on the flute for each note. Now I can just look at the musical note and play it mindlessly. It was so long ago that I don't remember the process of learning the correct fingerings for all the notes you can play on the flute. I guess I'll have to go through this same process on the ukulele if I want to be able to read music (not just tab and chords). It will be a long journey.