Secrets

Brad Bordessa

Brad Bordessa

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I'm curious as a teacher and a player what people find to be the most mysterious part of playing 'ukulele? What secrets seem to be elusive to you?

For me, jazz feels like music's biggest secret at the moment. Real jazz with bebop scales and such seems so chaotically abstract that I can't wrap my head around it quite yet.

I'd love to hear everyone's response. If there was a genie in a bottle who could clear the fog regarding one area of confusion for you, what would it be? :confused:
 
My brain sees music theory as a math problem..............it's hates math. Everything is more difficult for me. Annoying as hell to see the young'uns get it almost instantly, while I struggle. Hell, even when I learn something, I forget it shortly anyway If I don't use it often enough. Getting old is hell.
 
I'm a beginner, so everything is a mystery to me! Smooth chord transitions are what I am struggling with and strumming patterns. I know... Practice, practice, practice! Hopefully the fog will lift soon for me.
 
I'm in the same boat as Phil. Never understood math or music theory. Even tabs give me the willies! I play blues guitar
and have no idea of the notes I'm playing or their relationship to one another. Right now I having fun with C-F-G on the
Ukulele. Tried lessons, no good.
Phil, look at this way, getting old beats the alternative.
 
I'm just the opposite of some of you folks - the theory is cake. Performance (and memory, like Phil) is an entirely different story. I basically have to understand something before I can make it work because I have no memory for picking things up just by rote.

John
 
Clean barre chords.

Seriously. I can't do them without developing wrist pain that lingers for hours.

Oh, theory too.
 
People keep talking about circle of fifths..... I don't drink, :)
 
I never really struggled with chord transitions because I played the violin for a long time before I picked up the uke, but strumming was insanely hard for me to get. Once I got it, though, everything became a million times easier. My advice for you is to sit in front of the tv or something and pick a simple strumming pattern to start out with. Mute the strings with your left hand and just practice the muted strum over and over and over until its almost automatic :) Thats how I taught myself. And then every time you need to learn a strumming pattern just do that and you will probably notice that it takes less and less time to get a strumming pattern the more you practice :D Eventually you will be able to pick up strumming patterns in seconds! Good luck! Hope I helped a bit!
 
When I learn something new it tends to sound mechanical, if that makes sense. Eventually, after I've internalized the piece enough, I can feel it while playing, and it sounds pretty good.

I know this both conceptually and from experience, and yet, every time I learn something new, I'm frustrated by this part of the learning process (the proficient but mechanical part, I mean).

What's fascinating to me (especially as a teacher) is that I'm consistently frustrated by the same part of the process, and yet I somehow still trust the process itself.

What secret do I want revealed? How to hear something and just play it, without apparent effort and with complete and total cool.
 
yourmomsunicorn said:
I never really struggled with chord transitions because I played the violin for a long time before I picked up the uke, but strumming was insanely hard for me to get. Once I got it, though, everything became a million times easier. My advice for you is to sit in front of the tv or something and pick a simple strumming pattern to start out with. Mute the strings with your left hand and just practice the muted strum over and over and over until its almost automatic :) Thats how I taught myself. And then every time you need to learn a strumming pattern just do that and you will probably notice that it takes less and less time to get a strumming pattern the more you practice :D Eventually you will be able to pick up strumming patterns in seconds! Good luck! Hope I helped a bit!
Click to expand...

Props on your username. Made me laugh.

Great responses, everyone! Should have asked this long ago...
 
Hippie Guy said:
I'm curious as a teacher and a player what people find to be the most mysterious part of playing 'ukulele? What secrets seem to be elusive to you?

For me, jazz feels like music's biggest secret at the moment. Real jazz with bebop scales and such seems so chaotically abstract that I can't wrap my head around it quite yet.

I'd love to hear everyone's response. If there was a genie in a bottle who could clear the fog regarding one area of confusion for you, what would it be? :confused:
Click to expand...

I have a very avant garde approach to music, and the ukuelele.
I make ambient/drone/minimalist music. I like the idea of using
a folk instrument to make music that its not normally used for.
I also play a steel string electric baritone ukulele which also is not
very conventional, so the secret to what i do is having an open mind
and my ability to experiment with instruments and using them in ways
most people wouldn't think of.
 
After a few decades of playing guitar, I finally internalized the reality that slow, deliberate practice yields exceptional results. Yet on the guitar, I still find that process to be a chore. For some reason, the uke is different. I approach new material very methodically and know that no matter how elusive it seems at the time, I'll master it with deliberate practice and eventually speed and nuance will come. I find the whole process on the uke rather exciting and fulfilling. Even so, I struggle with some of the more rapid and elaborate strum patterns. If I had a tutorial on them I could work them out, but simply watching old George Formby videos and the like doesn't unlock it for me. I can come close, but am still missing something. I'll keep searching for a good tutorial, and in the meantime, experiment until I get it right, or come up with my own style that works for me.
 
playing more than one instrument is helpful. i started ukulele because you can only practice trumpet a limited time per day without wasting your chops. anyhow. you get a double edged exposure to jazz, chords, and all that playing an instrument that makes a note at a time, and then going to a keyboard or guitar/uke that forms chords.
working out pretty good with the ukulele too i am getting the feel for strings.
 
I go to an open mic in one pub or another pretty much every week, and quite often a jam happens at the end of it, or people just join in with other acts anyway.

I'd love to one day be able to have someone start playing a song I don't know, shout out a key, and then jam along with it and make it sound good. I can do it if someone's playing the blues but not much else.
 
RAB11 said:
I go to an open mic in one pub or another pretty much every week, and quite often a jam happens at the end of it, or people just join in with other acts anyway.

I'd love to one day be able to have someone start playing a song I don't know, shout out a key, and then jam along with it and make it sound good. I can do it if someone's playing the blues but not much else.
Click to expand...

I don't know if this will help, or even make sense, but remember that the basic structure of a key is Major chords for the I, IV, and V. Your ii, iii, and vi will be minors, and the vii is diminished. The vii usually is a suspenseful chord that resolves to the I. If you can work through the chord structure in your head, you'll know what to play. Ask what the progression is going to be. Once you get comfortable with it, you can embellish with 7th, 9th's, 13th's, etc.
 
KevinV said:
I don't know if this will help, or even make sense, but remember that the basic structure of a key is Major chords for the I, IV, and V. Your ii, iii, and vi will be minors, and the vii is diminished. The vii usually is a suspenseful chord that resolves to the I. If you can work through the chord structure in your head, you'll know what to play. Ask what the progression is going to be. Once you get comfortable with it, you can embellish with 7th, 9th's, 13th's, etc.
Click to expand...

Does help, just need to knuckle down and remember my scales really.
 
Hippie Guy said:
I'm curious as a teacher and a player what people find to be the most mysterious part of playing 'ukulele? What secrets seem to be elusive to you?
Click to expand...

Getting my wife to like it as I do....

Nothing mysterious in the playing: it's a combination of practice, style, preference and ability. I can't play real jazz or classical music, but then I can't read Latin or Greek. No mystery... I'm a tad too lazy to learn them.
 
I wish I could wake up and do proper rolls. Strumming is not my strong suit, either. And I don't enjoy practicing those things. Now, give me a song to fingerpick and I'm happy as can be.
 
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