Practicing ‘Ukulele
Practice as consistently as you can. 15 minutes a day is better than 4 solid hours on Saturday. That way you can build upon the info you learned yesterday instead of relearning everything that you have forgotten since last weekend.
Learn when you are fresh. Your brain retains things better if you are not tired.
Focus on keeping proper technique. If you get sloppy you will be building bad habits. Practice playing clean.
Everybody seems to be “pretty busy” and don‘t have a chance to play their ‘ukulele, but most will sit and watch TV for 2 hours before they go to bed. Bring out your ‘ukulele and play it during the commercials (use the “mute” button), or better yet, practice throughout the show. You can always practice with just your fretting hand.
Practice in the dark (or without watching your fingers). Many people have to watch their fingers and if you made them look away they would mess up. This is not a good thing, but it’s easy to improve upon. One way would be to play in the dark (really dark) – it forces you to feel the notes and not see them. You can also just look away, but playing in the dark is more fun.
Repeat something over and over. The only way you can get something in your head all the way is to play it again and again. Be sure you don’t make a mistake, and if you do, start over. If you make a mistake every time you practice, you will be memorizing that mistake.
Go slowly. I see this as a problem a lot with my younger students because they want to go fast! They can nail the first three notes at 200 bpm, but fall on their face as soon as they hit the notes they don’t know. If you can practice all the parts slowly you can speed up and slowly get faster. Slow and in control is better than fast and no control. Make sure to be consistent in your speed as well. If you play the hard part slowly and the one you know fast, you are missing the point. Go slowly.
Warm up before practicing. You will already be on the top of your game when you practice. Stretching your fingers is a good place to start. After that, I personally just play some fun stuff to get my fingers moving, and then move onto the “practice” part.
Use a metronome if you can’t seem to stay in time. If the thought of a plain metronome strikes fear into your heart, try a drum machine. Just play along with it at different tempos and keep with the beat.
Transcribe songs to train your ears. Transcribing is the art of figuring out a song note for note. Don’t try anything too hard at first; pick something easy like E Ku’u Morning Dew. Work your way through the song and write it out as you go. The more you do this, the better you will get. If you need some ideas on how to start, look at the how to figure out songs page. If you have some complete and accurate tabs that you need to get out of your system, you can send them to me – if they look good, I’ll put them on the site giving you credit – or post them on UU.
Learning and practicing standard notation is challenging. I would recommend a book to start learning. My favorite is: How to read music: Fundamentals of Music Notation Made Easy. Beyond the basics like measures and eighth notes, there is not really an important order, so open to a page and start reading. To keep the material fresh in your mind, the best thing to do is just find some sheet music and work your way through.
