Beginner Plateau

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JessicaM

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Once you know the chords and can happily strum along & sing or fingerpick using a few finger picking patterns. What next?

I'm feeling a little bit of a beginner's plateau. I think ukulele is like so many things where it's fairly easy to learn enough to get going and you're learning so much so fast that it feels really good, but then once you've gathered all the low hanging fruit, it starts to get a little slow. Both because that learning curve gets steeper, but also because I'm not really sure what to learn next.**

I've been playing through Aaron Keim's fingerpicking book (man, it's awesome). I'm doing my scales. I'm trying to find tab for ever-so-slightly harder stuff (though I'm not quite sure where to look). I'm working on memorizing any chords I'm likely to run across. I could definitely just work on playing /faster/ and with more feeling. I could also work on intonation and some technique stuff.

(1) What next?
(2) Tips for pushing through the plateau?



**I KNOW, I know I need to find a teacher. I'm still hunting for a local one as my preference is strongly for face-to-face instruction. I've already asked a couple times for tips on finding a local instructor so I think I've bored y'all enough with that for now!
 
JessicaM said:
Once you know the chords and can happily strum along & sing or fingerpick using a few finger picking patterns. What next?

I'm feeling a little bit of a beginner's plateau. I think ukulele is like so many things where it's fairly easy to learn enough to get going and you're learning so much so fast that it feels really good, but then once you've gathered all the low hanging fruit, it starts to get a little slow. Both because that learning curve gets steeper, but also because I'm not really sure what to learn next.**

I've been playing through Aaron Keim's fingerpicking book (man, it's awesome). I'm doing my scales. I'm trying to find tab for ever-so-slightly harder stuff (though I'm not quite sure where to look). I'm working on memorizing any chords I'm likely to run across. I could definitely just work on playing /faster/ and with more feeling. I could also work on intonation and some technique stuff.

(1) What next?
(2) Tips for pushing through the plateau?



**I KNOW, I know I need to find a teacher. I'm still hunting for a local one as my preference is strongly for face-to-face instruction. I've already asked a couple times for tips on finding a local instructor so I think I've bored y'all enough with that for now!
Click to expand...

I really need specific songs to work on when I practice. There is no way that I could sit there and try to memorise chords or practice scales. I'll happily spend hours playing a part of a song though (just ask my wife about the hundreds of times I played the intro from "Under the Bridge" last week). Is there a specific song that you want to play well, that you can't quite manage at the moment? I find that Aldrine's song lessons on Ukulele Underground are a good place to look if I want to push myself. That's where I got "Under the Bridge" from, and I definitely pushed myself to learn it.
 
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I'd recommend joining a uke group in your area. If you've been playing alone, playing in a group will give you new songs & chords to learn, and give you the chance to play alongside more experienced players.

For solo skills, James Hill's Ukulele Way, available on-line or through a series of books/CDs, is good.
 
You seem to progress fairly fast, though. Have you considered joining the weekly seasons? It would give you a specific goal every week, an audience, and others to indirectly make music with.

I think playing faster and more accurately (in time, e.g. practicing with a metronome) is always something to work on. Well, at least for me. Knowing chords is the easy part, transitioning between them smoothly and in time is what is hard for me, so I work on that a lot. :)
 
Gary52 said:
I'd recommend joining a uke group in your area. If you've been playing alone, playing in a group will give you new songs & chords to learn, and give you the chance to play alongside more experienced players.

For solo skills, James Hill's Ukulele Way, available on-line or through a series of books/CDs, is good.
Click to expand...
I consider myself an early intermediate player and I felt like I was plateauing, so I backed up a bit and started with "The Ukulele Way" too. Very good for getting down some fundamental skills in an enjoyable, structured way. I'm digging it.
 
bunnyf said:
I consider myself an early intermediate player and I felt like I was plateauing, so I backed up a bit and started with "The Ukulele Way" too. Very good for getting down some fundamental skills in an enjoyable, structured way. I'm digging it.
Click to expand...

Do you feel the course is very reliant on C tuning?
 
As robinboyd said find a song that really grabs you. If you are now working on fingerpicking I suggest finding chord melody arrangments, they are beautiful sounding and fun/challenging to play. Check out the site "ukefever", it is put up by one of our members and its fantastic, great arrangments.

Going the other route and finding a uke group to join gets high marks from me, I do both.
 
Learn to play chords up the neck. Learn to strum tremolos, rolls, and triplets. Learn lead ins to songs and how to close them, hint, tremolo. Learn new songs, and start memorizing a set list of songs. Start working on presentation.
 
A great next step would be to start learning to play the chords you've been using in different positions on the neck. This becomes a real panacea for both playing more interestingly and for learning to play in other keys. When the barred chords are working, you're making music.
 
I've been playing for just over a year and I feel like I've been on that plateau for a while now :) I'm mostly pretty happy about it - I'm now at a point where I can pick up my uke and strum along to songs, and it doesn't sound too horrible.

On the other hand, it's always nice to improve, to experience some sense of progression. One thing I've been looking at is some basic music theory. I actually don't think that trying to absorb a lot of theory as an absolute beginner is that helpful, as it doesn't seem particularly intuitive and can, frankly, be a bit confusing. However, once at the plateau... the basics actually start to make some sense when looked at within the context of personal playing experience. Explanations of chord families, progressions and the circle of fifths no longer appear to be written in Chinese ;) And learning this stuff helps you to better understand the 'why' of what you're doing. And thus improves your confidence and allows you to get a little more creative in your playing, imho.
 
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Mivo said:
Do you feel the course is very reliant on C tuning?
Click to expand...

I'm most used to D tuning, but do switch back and forth w C. I recently changed over my Pono Bari to linear C Southcoasts. You can toggle between reentrant and linear. I'm concentrating on linear. I find it easier to instinctively visual where I'm going on the fretboard. If you used different tunings I'm sure it would screw up most method books. He does have standard notation (and tab) on the lessons and I am concentrating on becoming much more fluent in st.not. If you had very different tuning, I suppose you would just use the standard notation too, and just apply the lessons to where the notes would be found on your fretboard.
 
Gary52 said:
I'd recommend joining a uke group in your area. If you've been playing alone, playing in a group will give you new songs & chords to learn, and give you the chance to play alongside more experienced players.

For solo skills, James Hill's Ukulele Way, available on-line or through a series of books/CDs, is good.
Click to expand...

I really want to play w a group but sadly the local group in Columbus, Ohio, is strictly no-kids-allowed which means I'll pretty much never be able to go. I'm not at a place where I'm confident enough to start a group of my own. Someday maybe.
 
stevepetergal said:
A great next step would be to start learning to play the chords you've been using in different positions on the neck. This becomes a real panacea for both playing more interestingly and for learning to play in other keys. When the barred chords are working, you're making music.
Click to expand...

Yes! This seems like a nice baby step: playing songs I know in a different way. I remember that this unlocked some stuff for me on the guitar!
 
Mivo said:
Do you feel the course is very reliant on C tuning?
Click to expand...

I've just started James Hill's online course myself - at the start you can choose whether you want to follow C or D (I chose D as that's what I prefer), but I think you can flip to the other when you need or want to, too.

Regarding plateau, there was an interesting discussion on the subject on the Ooktown Ukulele Podcast recently (Episode 42). Well worth a listen, and James Hill was on the panel too. My own thoughts on Plateau are it's a nice place to stop and think about where to go next. Personally I've learned lots of chords, can play quite a few of the songs I enjoy, but whenever I should really do an "Instrumental" section I don't know what to do other than just play the chords again - and that's why I started James Hill's course as I feel it can teach me to do just the sort of ornamentation I need. Importantly it's not too costly either.
 
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@ JessicaM

Yes, you just have to jump in, no other way. :)

It took a lot for me to do that first one - but once you've done your first one, it gets easier. ;)

If you can do an original, kudos to you, & I'm sure it will be welcomed with open arms.
 
uke1950 said:
@ JessicaM

Yes, you just have to jump in, no other way. :)

It took a lot for me to do that first one - but once you've done your first one, it gets easier. ;)

If you can do an original, kudos to you, & I'm sure it will be welcomed with open arms.
Click to expand...

Yeah, lots of people do originals. Barbablanca does nearly exclusively originals.
 
uke1950 said:
@ JessicaM

Yes, you just have to jump in, no other way. :)

It took a lot for me to do that first one - but once you've done your first one, it gets easier. ;)

If you can do an original, kudos to you, & I'm sure it will be welcomed with open arms.
Click to expand...

Oh no, you've misunderstood ! I meant: does it have to be an original? Sharing an original would be a whole 'nother level!
 
JessicaM said:
I really want to play w a group but sadly the local group in Columbus, Ohio, is strictly no-kids-allowed which means I'll pretty much never be able to go. I'm not at a place where I'm confident enough to start a group of my own. Someday maybe.
Click to expand...

It doesn't have to be exclusively a uke group - my first experience playing with others was playing along with a piano player in the 0-5 yrs kids division at my church. The kids didn't mind if I messed up and the piano player helped cover. The leaders of the class were just happy to have music. The pianist favors a ragtime/early jazz piano style that sounds great with uke and I've learned a lot.

I've also gotten into a band that plays for the main church service once a month (1-2 guitars, me on uke, a bass player and percussionist) - that made me learn a whole different style of music. And made me learn to play in the key of E (not the easiest for me).
 
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