Progressing your skills?

I started playing ukulele about, 6 months ago and have played non stop since. By now I am almost intermediate, I have a Kala Teme-3 Tenor which I love. But I get to a point that I just feel like I am practicing the same stuff, and that I am not progressing! Like hitting a wall. Does anyone have any tips or resources that could help me in any way? Or is it just a case of playing and playing? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Pick a style of music that excites you, speaks to you. What kind of music do you like? Listen to music in that style. Research the components of that style. And practice those components. Try to recreate and expand on those components. Its more than just playing and playing. Music communicates emotion. Tap in to the emotion. If you're stuck in a rut, listen to music. Allow yourself to become inspired and go from there.

If you are at least intermediate level, you should be comfortable sitting in with other musicians, ukers, etc., even if at Church. Sure is a lot more fun to learn from others and play with others.

I love that answer HoldinCoffee haha, I will be sure to take a few hours out for that, you're right I need inspiration! And @PhilUSAFRet I am but I am maybe 1 of 2 people I know that play uke, my dad plays guitar but I rarely play with him and I do not know of any other opportunities to play with someone so I find it difficult.

Please feel free to use the practice sheets in Ukulele Boot Camp (link below my signature).

They should give you chord and chord-changing practice and help you become familiar
with chords in 5 different keys.

The FREE Songbook will also give you a system for learning and practicing unfamiliar or even
familiar songs with new chords.

Enjoy and keep uke'in',

Uncle Rod Higuchi said:

Please feel free to use the practice sheets in Ukulele Boot Camp (link below my signature).

They should give you chord and chord-changing practice and help you become familiar
with chords in 5 different keys.

The FREE Songbook will also give you a system for learning and practicing unfamiliar or even
familiar songs with new chords.

Enjoy and keep uke'in',

Click to expand...

The songbook looks to be a great way to learn songs, i am already using your boot camp and plan to incorporate this into my practice.
Thanks Rod

HoldinCoffee said:

Pick a style of music that excites you, speaks to you. What kind of music do you like? Listen to music in that style. Research the components of that style. And practice those components. Try to recreate and expand on those components. Its more than just playing and playing. Music communicates emotion. Tap in to the emotion. If you're stuck in a rut, listen to music. Allow yourself to become inspired and go from there.

Click to expand...

Took the words right out of my mouth. Song books are great if you are already familiar with the songs, but nothing beats experimenting with the real thing. When ever I got stuck in a rut, I went through different radio stations and tried to jam along. From island to rock to pop. Went hours at a time even playing along with commercial jingles
I'd also recommend to start learning how to play chords in different ways and maybe start memorizing actual note names along the fingerboard. You can make this little guy as easy or difficult as you want, keep it up!

Andrew142010 said:

I started playing ukulele about, 6 months ago and have played non stop since. By now I am almost intermediate, I have a Kala Teme-3 Tenor which I love. But I get to a point that I just feel like I am practicing the same stuff, and that I am not progressing! Like hitting a wall. Does anyone have any tips or resources that could help me in any way? Or is it just a case of playing and playing? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Click to expand...

I used to buy books of sheet music for albums I liked. Pick something that you look at and say "There's no way I can play this", then try to play it. Use a little bit of your practice time for the things you don't think you can ever play. There's now a song or two I'll play live that at one time I never thought it would be possible for me to play. And even for the ones I never became able to play, the effort I put into trying those made me better at the things I could play, plus made me more confident as a player.

If you do any songwriting, try writing something that's at the limits of your ability. Then play it until you can regularly play it right. I have one instrumental that's not great enough that I ever bother to play it live. But it's a good practice piece, because when I'm playing it well, then I'm playing well enough to make my other songs sound better.

+1 on uke4ia and PhilUSAF - it's all about stretching. Most of us get "lazy" ... okay, to be completely fair I can only say I get lazy ... and tend to stick to stuff we know. Playing with others can really kick you out of a rut - especially if you let them pick the music - oh, and no reason it needs to be other ukers. Figuring out ways to work with other instruments can be inspirational in its own right.

Playing stuff you just know you'll never be able to play is something I've just recently started doing. Truth be told, I'm still not "there" on what I've chosen but, I can look back and see tons of progress. I'm beginning to think that one day I just may be able to play those hard pieces after all - even if not, the attempt has made other stuff that used to require concentration seem easy, and stuff that was easy something I can almost do in my sleep.

John

This more readily applies for solo pieces, but watching the video 'Practising and Performing' by Daniels Abrams revolutionized the way i practice set pieces. Before that vid i was completely blind to my learning process, relied solely on intuition and developed a horribly inefficient practice method that unmotivated me.
It's for piano but the philosophy and some of the methods apply.