Ukulele practice

June 5, 2010 by baritone ukulele  
Filed under Songs

Practicing playing the ukulele. I wanna watch to see how I play and how I can get better. I know I need to work on playing the ukulele without stopping. I ended playing with something I made up. I think I played most of the songs that my friend played on that video of me pretending to play the ukulele. Songs I played Bob Marley Waiting in vein, 3 plus up Honey baby, Justin Beiber Baby, Devotion So wonderful, Iyaz Replay, Chris Ramos Break up song, I feel love, Akon What you got, Jay Sean do you remember, 3 plus up Undercover lover.

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What’s the first thing I should practice as a new ukulele player?

May 2, 2010 by baritone ukulele  
Filed under Questions

I just bought a ukulele and began by trying to play a few songs, but I thought that it was way too difficult. What should I do to prep myself to play ukulele songs. What chords should I practice playing first and what exercises could I do? Thanks for any help.

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Ukulele Practice Tips: Set Goals for Your Playing

April 26, 2010 by baritone ukulele  
Filed under Articles

Learning to play the ukulele, like learning any instrument, is a marathon rather than a sprint. No matter how much practice you do in the short term, it is long term dedication that will determine how well you play. But, how do you keep up your level of motivation in the long term? Setting goals for yourself is a great way to keep yourself motivated.

But it also does more than this. It allows you to monitor how your playing is improving. It is sometimes hard to recognise when we are improving. If you don’t realise that you are improving, you may start to lose your motivation. Keeping track of your goals and when you reach them will reassure you that your playing is getting better and that the practicing you are doing does pay off.

Setting Speed Goals

Find, or invent, as short practice exercise. This could be a scale, a sequence of chords or a musical phrase. Set a metronome at a slow speed – slow enough that you can play it comfortably without making any mistakes. Once you’ve found that speed, turn the metronome up very slightly. Keep doing this until mistakes start to creep in. As soon as you start making mistakes, make a note of that speed. This is your new goal. Go back down slightly (to a speed at which you can play without making mistakes) and practice the phrase over and over. This will get your fingers used to making these certain movements.

Eventually, making these moves will become second nature. After practicing like this for a few days. Go back to the slightly higher speed. Can you play it at this speed now? If you can, keep increasing the speed again until mistakes start to creep in again. The big advantage of keeping track of how fast you can play is that it is very easy to measure. On the down side, playing the same exercise over and over again can become a little boring.

Setting Repertoire Goals

Adding new songs and tunes to your repertoire is a much more fun way of practicing. However, since it is less vigorous, it is not always as effective as speed practice. It is also much harder to gauge how well your playing along as there isn’t any concrete measurement.

Ideally, your practice should be well balanced between both repertoire goals and speed goals to make sure that it doesn’t become too boring.

Al Wood writes at Ukulele Hunt about Aquila strings, the Kamaka ukuleles and the Kanilea ukulele.