As many of of our new PLUC members have only been playing during lockdown, we thought they might find it hard to measure their playing progress. Even the more seasoned players amongst them could find something new to learn or refresh an old skill after spending time in the pandemic largely practicing alone.
To give a bit of variety and motivation, we suggested that they try the following challenges. If you fancy joining in, do let us know how you get on in the comments below:
1) How many chords do you know? Look at our UkeAbility article – you might be pleasantly surprised once you’ve measured it. It could open up a lot more songs for you to play. Or highlight where you could practice new areas, such as perfecting your bar chords or choosing moveable ones to make your playing sound more interesting.
2) Check your rhythm is steady. It’s easy to lose focus when playing solo. Can you play a full song at an even tempo, without slowing down in the tricky bits or speeding up where it’s easier? Can you sing and play at the same time? Watch Cathy Fink’s metronome tips demo. Now pick a tune you’re currently working on. How slowly can you play it accurately using this method? How fast can you play it accurately using this method? How much can you improve the tempo over a couple of practice sessions – what range do you now have? What do you notice about the difference / difficulties of playing at each extreme? Do you need to relax any tension build-up afterwards?
3) Are you progressing in your playing and learning new songs effectively? Fiona Barry’s free practice tips guide may give you new ideas to try out to reduce the mistakes you make. If you like to log your own progress, Stu Fuchs has a free practice diary you can use to track things over the year. What tips work best for you? And what are you concentrating on for the next month – warm-ups, techniques, songs, lessons / strumalongs etc?
We look forward to hearing your ‘scores’ & feedback. We’re interested to learn how far you’ve got during lockdown, what you’re currently doing musically & what you plan to work on over the next few months.
If you’ve ever been too busy to do your usual practice (or even bored whilst stuck in a queue or traffic jam) here are some suggestions of five ways you can still practice without a ukulele!
Matt Stead found that there were plenty of lessons out there for complete beginners, but not so much content for folk as they improved and wished to learn more advanced playing techniques. He decided to set up several series of free structured video courses, giving all the details you’d get from face-to-face lessons with him. He hopes to encourage people to learn those good habits at the very start that make your playing easier and stop you becoming bored by progressively honing your skills in fresh areas.
They are well worth investigating and would certainly help you spice up the tunes you do. Why not try out a couple a week in your practice to see what new methods you can accomplish over a few months?
Ukulele For Beginners – Thirty videos taking you from choosing a size of uke, tuning up, holding a uke & whether to use a strap, playing different types of chords clearly, changing chords easily, how to strum correctly, working out how to strum to any tune (without learning lists of ‘strumming patterns’ by rote!), playing in waltz time (known as 3/4 time), using sheet music, making your playing more interesting with dynamics and swing, fingerstyle, intro to playing scales, learning the fretboard and picking out melodies by ear.
Intermediate Ukulele – Twenty-five videos covering topics such as creating chord melody arrangements, adding percussive sounds to your strumming (eg chucks/chunks, muting and drumming), playing triplets, alternating thumb picking, accents & syncopation, twelve bar blues, mastering the E chord, hammer-ons/pull-offs/bends/slides, moveable chord shapes, soloing with pentatonic scales, transposing songs into different keys, circle of fifths, turnarounds and diminished chords.
Ukulele Next Steps – This course is still in development but videos so far include jazzy chords, chord melody, creating two-part harmonies and three moveable chord shapes you can play all over the fretboard.
Playing Up The Dusty End – Twenty-four videos showing you how to become more adventurous in your playing by using the possibilities of opening up the whole fretboard. Learn all the notes with simple tricks and melodies, improve your barre chords, use moveable chord shapes effectively, play jazzy songs, chord melodies and pentatonic scales across the fretboard to improvise and solo.
Uke Theory – Thirty videos imparting useful skills that help you understand how music works. Unlock the fretboard by learning about the different scales – chromatic, major, minor & pentatonic, how chords are built, common chord progressions, twelve bar blues, circle of fifths, reading tablature (aka tab), using suspended & augmented chords (sus & aug), modes, intervals, time signatures and reading music.
Warm-up Exercises from Matt’s Beginners Ukulele Course – see his YouTube Channel for more.
Many of the top ukulele players you see at festivals also run excellent workshops, where they impart their extensive knowledge to attendees. Peter Moss started playing the uke when he was eight and has been performing for over fifty years. He posts ten minute uke lessons, ukulele shorts (tips ideal for watching on a phone) and also tunes arranged in parts for groups on his YouTube channel. Unusually, on his Patreon page, one of the membership levels gives you an online monthly one-to-one lesson with him, which is excellent value!
Here’s part of his How To Play A Ukulele In 10 Easy Steps series, explaining the differences with a baritone (which is tuned differently to the other uke sizes):
At this time of year you’ll spot a number of interesting new resources to help your playing. This one is a free twenty-one day fingerpicking video course from Lisa, The Ukulele Fool. Learn different fingerpicking patterns and techniques with songs such as Amazing Grace and House Of The Rising Sun. Sign up here.
If you’ve got a new ukulele for Christmas or are considering taking up playing one, you’ll soon find there are lots of on-line resources to help you, whatever your level:
In 2018 we published a Twelve Days Of Ukemas guide to give you different things to try out over the holiday period, recommending some of the most useful sites and reliable tutors, suitable from total novice to intermediate & advanced players, and in many styles of playing, teaching & music genres. Check out each day for much more detail:
Have a general look around this website, as we pick out a wide selection of our favourite tools & tips, on-line uke lessons, songbooks, chords, music theory, forums, equipment & other website resources. In particular, my musings on what helped me when I first got my uke as a complete beginner may prove a useful summary if you’re totally new to playing.
Joining a local group is always a boost – whether you are a beginner, improver or expert player. Due to the pandemic, this might not be an option face-to-face currently – but look out for the many online gigs, strumalongs, lessons and festivals that are happening wordwide from groups, tutors and performers.
If you need advice on buying an instrument, Barry Maz has a wealth of independent reviews on Got A Ukulele as well as other handy info to help get you started.
When you are busy it can be good to find more effective ways of using your practice time. Fiona Berry from Learn Music Together runs two Facebook groups called Music Lessons & Practice: Learning & Understanding and Musician in the Making where she shares daily tips, ideas and videos from her experience as a music teacher, to help people improve their skills. In addition to answering questions in the groups, she also runs workshops & gives individual tuition sessions.
For example, when making mistakes many people either just ignore them & keep playing, or start a song again from the start. Instead, you should stop, examine where you’ve gone wrong & play that part through slowly several times until you can reliably play it correctly, working up to the correct speed for the song. Subsequently, when playing the piece you should return to the places that give you difficulty and play them a few times first, before going back to play the tune in full. This means you rehearse the tricky sections more frequently and it will become easier to play the entire song accurately & smoothly.
You can download Fiona’s free Practice Tips Guide with ten useful ideas to try out.
Written to suit any instrument, it’s particularly good if you are venturing into playing chord melody, as she gives several examples using sheet music, which would aid you to focus on the detail efficiently. But the suggestions also work well with songsheets or tab, as you can take small portions of a verse, chorus, riff or solo section and work on those individually where you are having issues with chord changes, rhythm or singing a melody.
James Hill has released a free ukulele board game called Strumble.
It’s to make practicing more fun but is very practical too, as it splits up working on a piece into: getting yourself familiar with the lyrics; singing the melody of the tune correctly; strumming the rhythm (ie with proper accentuation / dynamics, like you’d use when playing percussion) and changing chords accurately.
I enjoyed listening to him demoing it in episode #29 of his Uketropolis podcast. He picks a song with the Bo Diddley / clave rhythm and shows how focusing on just one or two areas at a time can really help, your performance, instead of rushing in & trying to master it all at once.
I can certainly see how it would be useful splitting up a new tune into sections (e.g. verse, chorus, middle eight) and practicing it this way over a few days. Or when trying to master something tricky. Why not give it a go and see how it works for you?
The other day he spotted an excellent YouTube covering the same topic from film, games & TV composer Guy Michelmore, who explains it whilst playing examples on a keyboard:
Join composer Guy Michelmore as he explains the essentials of music theory in just 16 minutes! What is an octave? How do you make scales? What are intervals? What’s the difference between major and minor? What is the circle of fifths?! All explained in less time that it takes to make and drink a fresh cup of tea.
Guy has many interesting & informative videos on his YouTube channel including a playlist of Music Theory ones; how to write music and working with sound samples.
People of Lewisham's Ukulele Club 