Really Slow Fingers

I am trying to play some songs on the ukulele, but it is very challenging for me to switch between some of the more challenging chords (mainly the G chord) with out stopping and thinking about it. Any tips?

As unhelpful as it must seem, but: practice, practice, practice. I had the same problem, chords like G were slow to form, Em also. Switching to them always kicked me out of the rhythm. After a while of persistently practicing changing between the chords that gave me trouble (ideally in context of the chord progression) improved matters, and then eventually these chords became trivial. Forming the chords deliberately (thinking about it) is just a stage you have to go through. The brain will eventually automate the process, at which point it becomes subconscious (academics call it "chunking", not related to the ukulele technique of the same name).

This may also help:



There's a part 2 also. And Aldrine's video here is great also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep7w-KnN5OM

I picked up this tip from a guitar website. Edit: from a professional guitarist on his website. It is his recommendation for learning to play chords well.

To develop speed with chord changing, do one minute changes practice. The idea is to pick two chords in your chord progression of the song you are working on and practicing changing them for one minute. Put the timer on. Strum only once for each chord. On the guitar, i imagine its the same on uke, the goal is to be able to make 60 chord changes a minute. So yes count your changes. Do it every day and pretty quickly you will notice your speed of changing increase.

Before you start the chord change practice, practice getting the sound of the chords right, particularly the difficult chord. So take more time over chord formation and then sound each chord, and strum through once. I hope this is clear. After you've got a good sound coming out of your chord, then you can move on to the one minute changes.

When i learn a song now, i do chord change practice iwth all the chord progressions in the song. More work will be required on the more difficult transitions. This will be the fastest way out there to get good at playing difficult chords.

Oh and the other thing is having an anchor finger or how you make the transition from one chord to the next to make it easier. This is usually dealt with in other beginner courses and some tutorials. If you haven't come across this, others will probably explain it best. Or tell us what chord transition your are currently struggling with and someone will help you think it through.

This is not uncommon. Until the muscle memory is created many people are slow on their chord transitions. As previous posts have mentioned practice is the best way. It is frustrating now, but keep at it, it will fall into place. I like AndieZ's idea of timing a minute. This will give you concrete data to mark your progress. What helped me a lot when I was just starting (and I honestly re-visit it quite a bit) is Uncle Rod's Boot Camp. (http://ukulelebootcamp.weebly.com/index.html) It exposed me to a lot of chords I had not seen yet, but have since.

The Hal Leonard Chord Finder books are a good investment, they show lots of chord variations.

Developing speed only comes with practice, (I am finding this out also), there is no short cut.

Stick with the practicing, it is so worth the effort.

Something else that might help: Try to put down all fingers at once instead of placing them one by one. Realizing this (being told by a musician) was the key for me with the E minor chord, which would always interrupt my tempo. Sometimes you don't want to place all fingers at once, but in general it's probably a good idea so that you don't have those moments where you look at the fretboard (not a good idea in itself) and then think, "Okay, this finger goes here, this one there, and oh, this one here.", though at the start that is the kind of deliberate practicing you need to do before it becomes one motion. Precision is more important than speed when you are learning, because there is no difference between practicing how to do it wrong and how to do it right. Speed comes after you get the chord changes right.

An interesting book on how to the brain learns new skills is "The Talent Code". I found it insightful.

there is no shortcut

it comes from MUSCLE memory

muscle MEMORY comes from THOUSANDS of hours of practice

practice is PAINFUL for beginners

but PRACTICE is the only way to perfection.

Booli said:

there is no shortcut

PRACTICE is the only way to perfection.

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This is the hardest part. Especially in a world of instant gratification and no-wait need fulfillment.

I remember when I first started learning guitar (self taught), I couldn't make a proper barre chord for almost 2 years.
My weak hands just couldn't do it. Then another guitarist heard of my quandary and gave me a racquetball and said, "Squeeze this when you are bored."
In less than a month I was doing all kinds of barre chord shapes and my regular chords were sounding better too.
My hand just wasn't strong enough and the muscles didn't have enough individual strength to press all the strings down.

Now am I doing just the opposite, I am working on bending my ring and middle finger backwards at the top joint so I can easily make the E chord, et al, with a single finger on the uke.

Practice and patience, that is all you need.

The chords I am struggling with are Am to G, and C to G.

The joy of practice is that if you put in the time, you really don't have to worry about things like, am I making progress? Am I getting better? You absolutely are and you always will. Even if it seems like you're getting nowhere - it's not true - you're improving and you will see it next time.

speed comes with proficiency. One of the biggest problems beginners have is playing faster than their skill level will allow. Better to go slow, master the chord changes and strumming....speed comes on it's own.

spookyjia said:

The chords I am struggling with are Am to G, and C to G.

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One trick for C to G (and you will find similar tricks as you advance) has to do with your fingering. For the C chord, use your ring finger on your left hand to press the 1st string 3rd fret. This is a pretty standard way of teaching/learning this chord. Then place your middle finger on the 1st string 2nd fret. This will not change the chord at all since it is behind your ring finger, but what you will notice is now you already have one finger ready to go for the G chord. Your ring finger moves to the 2nd string 3rd fret and you just need to place your pointer finger on the 3rd string 2nd fret. Make sense?

Just take your time and go slow. One day you will make the change quickly and smoothly without even trying! It is a great feeling! (as is the feeling you get when you can finally sing and strum at the same time!)

Make your uke your TV watching buddy. Practice chord changes or tricky passages while watching TV.

That really helped! On my first day it was nineteen chord changes per minute to thirty-four per minute in about a week!

You can get some chord in a Key chart and play a simple rhythm as you switch between chords. This develops the muscle memory for the changes in a key. As you get better change on the third stroke, then on the second stroke then on every stroke. Then speed up using a metronome in 4/4 time, or 6/8 time!

Practice chords within a key helps a good deal.

spookyjia said:

That really helped! On my first day it was nineteen chord changes per minute to thirty-four per minute in about a week!

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Excellent. I and everyone who tries it, finds the improvement remarkable using this method. It sounds like here there are many who don't know this technique and therefore haven't appreciated the amazingness of it. As i said, the they guy who told me is a professional guitarist but also professional guitar teacher and you should see his website!. Its amazing. I don't know if i'm allowed to say it but as he's not really a uke teacher, (only a little bit and not sufficient to compete with Ukulele underground, i will say it. JustinGuitar. The minute changes lesson is in the beginners course. Also his advice on practice schedule is worthwhile. That's in another lesson i think.

Lots of time, lots of repetition, lots of giving your mind time to think and your fingers time to move. It gets better with time. It gets faster with lots of repetition. When working on my left hand, sometimes I will just lay my right hand over the strings and not even worry about strumming. I just concentrate on the one hand. That seemed to help quite a bit when I was first learning chords.