Tomorrow, uke practice resumes!!

After a hiatus of six weeks of no-ukeing - hmm I'm not sure how I should spell that new verb i just made up - I must get back on the job from tomorrow. And then its only six weeks before I head off on my travels for a year with uke in hand.

In this six weeks, i have to gather up my song lyrics and chord charts, convert them to pdf files, then upload them to my kindle so i can learn when off the network - in my tent in a patch of bush somewhere.

I've got to record some uke lessons from you tube with my garage band, and save them to my iphone - that is after I've learnt how to use my iphone. That should be tomorrows job. Or Mondays.

I've got to get all my resources sorted and saved for easy access when far from a wifi hotspot and that could be most of the time over the next year.

Also in the next weeks, i've got to continue starting learning one new song a week. I won't get it fine tuned in a week. I need a lot more practice than that but this is what i was doing before the opera work started and it felt like a good strategy. I've just decided to go in five week blocks. Learn five songs, then stop and resolve them to performance level. When they are polished, i'll resume with a new set of five songs. This is my plan so that I can get out there and have a go at busking asap.

In this thread, i'm going to post my progress once a week in sound cloud recordings and whatever else i can show for progress.

Its going to be a bit of learning progress diary. This site doesn't seem to have a section for that so as I'm a beginner, i'm posting it here.

I don't mind if anyone has comments, suggestions, tips whatever. If there's something you think isn't working, feel free to say so. Maybe a bad chord, or something wrong with the strum pattern or a better way to change a chord or well anything. I don't mind criticism so long as its useful.

It sounds like you are taking a very organized approach.

Rlink, I'm trying to be organised because its very very easy for me to get overwhelmed and messy adn have it all fall apart.

Johnson, thanks for all that. I'm not really bothered if others don't listen to my sound clips. I have found making a public diary helps me keep momentum going. Its that accountability thing. I was doing it on the guitar site before i found this one and then had to stop playing for a few weeks. Doing this really helps organise my mind. I'm prone to jumping from one thing to another and getting nowhere. When i first picked up my uke, i spent about at least a month it seemed working hard on various stuffs and feeling like i was falling into a deep dark well. You see, i find teaching myself anything quite a challenge. I much prefer to be lead around by the nose or spoon fed. Yes i'm lazy but also as i said, i get overwhelmed.

I have been using soundcloud for a while. It's great. Its such a simple useful tool out there. If i could just upload my garage band recordings to the net, i wouldnt need sound cloud at all and likewise i can't get sound cloud recordings to my ipod so I need them both.

I can listen to the seasonistas but i can't afford the time to participate right now becuase they have a different agenda to me. I need to learn songs I need to learn rather than songs that fit their themes. And i don't have the time to do it all but its great to see those recordings. I do watch them but it seems not done to chat about them much on the thread so i post the player directly when I like a song.

Good luck Andie, you're very ambitious. You're like me, I learn the songs I want to learn, and the songs our ensemble wants to do. If I don't care for a song, I don't include it in our jam sessions either.
When I retire from this mess next year, I plan to get really ambitious with my ukes, too.
Keep it up, hope you stay in touch, I enjoy your posts!

Thanks Nickie, Yes i will but i don't want to be on every day. I want to be immersed in my travels. But from time to time, i'll have a question or a problem or something and then i'll be here. If you see me in here a lot during my travels, its because I'm being weak and useless. lol. Unable to stay off the forums. But i can say that one of the things i love about my travels is how the net is not in my life. This trip its a little different though because I will have an iphone so get connections sometimes.

I will be doing a blog but only in the rough so I don't know if i want to share that with you guys (or anyone really because i want my blog to be fully resolved when i share it) but maybe i could pop in to share about my busking experience or something on this thread. Or maybe i'll still be able to pop in to share something of general progress. Anyway i'll be coming and going. I probably just won't have time to participate in other forum convos. Travelling is so busy. I always have to so much to do when i'm on the road. And that's just getting fed, sleeping, moving from a to b, and keeping myself clean. Ah but i do love the simplicity of it all.

If anyone wants to follow my travels through New Zealand, Australian coast and outback (hiking biking and uking - ha that could be a good blog name), and finally Kenya on facebook, pm me and i'll tell you how to find me. I might post some pictures and things on there.

Great! you are so lucky to get to do that. It's what I wanted when I was young, but didn't have the ambition to figure out how. I did manage to explore Colorado with a BF, then ride my Harley from East Texas to Tucson, by myself. I was a lot younger then. I don't travel too well now.
Best wishes, I'd love to follow your travels as best I can!
(are you thinking book?)

got to record some uke lessons from you tube with my garage band, and save them to my iphone - that is after I've learnt how to use my iphone. That should be tomorrows job. Or Mondays.

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Pro tip: download the iCabMobile app. It's a web browser with downloading and file storage. Just long-press the desired video, tap Download, and it'll save a copy for later viewing when offline.

Where are you travelling to? (Edit: already answered.)

Thanks Dan. I will check it out.

And i know i've discussed this issue on here before but I'm going to bite the bullet and try out the Ukulele Way. At least as i can do it month by month, i can unsubscribe when i'm out of range. I was actually doing it today but got distracted so i haven't started a lesson yet. Might as well do the free ones first too I guess. I go start now.

Well l have said it on numerous occasions that during the opera thing, i wasn't playing uke. This is because i found it messes with my head too much to try to learn two different things at once. And that opera thing was taking a fair bit of mental energy from me. I've got all these other slightly stressful things i'm trying to get done at the moment too. Its not like i was trotting off to work to an alarm bell every day. I have to push myself with everything i do because nobody else is, and i find it quite hard, hence why i pop in here so often. I do a little, break a little and so on all day long. That way i go forward.

i'd show you some pictures but i don't know how i can upload them here. Oh hang on yes i do. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10209429543469552.1073741834.1053963778&type=1&l=c1d3369c0d

Its tempting to make a soundcloud of my song parts too lol. But i'm not sure its worth the bother.

Its not that i have been posting instead of practiceing. I just wasn't practicing uke because I was practicing something else.

I can admit that its becuase of hanging out on a facebook singing page/forum thing that i ended up making the decision to go busking and that has propelled me forwards this way. I have learnt to sing numerous new songs this year and done a ton of research and stuff. I wouldn't have done any of it or been here if it wasn't for that forum.

Well the thing with the iphone that's brilliant is that you can speak your blog and it will be converted to text. I was going to buy a keyboard to take but when i found out about that, it seemed brilliant but if it doesn't work i shall have to rethink. Not sure about the vlogging thing. I like writing.

I have to hang my head in shame. My practice this week went to s**. I got a visitor who was supposed to come for one night has been here for three and its thrown out my whole routine. I've done nothing and now I think i might even do more of nothing since I've only got one month before departure and still so much stuff I have to do that i had hoped to be done before now.

I think i will declare this thread a failure and will only post in it if by some miracle i find my mojo again before leaving. I did not notice that most of what i'd learned before has just about fallen to pieces too. I can't bear to think that i might fail at this so I'm just hopeful that when i get on the road, i will find the time to practice as although i will be busy with my usual travel routines, i will not have the usual distractions.

That said, i did get going with the theory course earlier in the week and was enjoying that. Even got one of my choir friends doing it now as well. I would like to get through that course before I leave because I think it will be too hard to do on the iphone. That said, you have to pay attention to every word and really should try to memories some of it becuase they flash over things VERY quickly. Thank god I've got the book too.

My only advice is this: while it is good to have goals, your music making and learning should be fun. Fun has to be first. If failure to meet a goal, even just a practice goal, steals your joy, something is wrong.

Your ukulele will be waiting for you when you have time for it. Any lost skill can be re-obtained (unless there has been some kind of a physical impairment, which is not your issue).

And it is certainly okay to be frustrated if you miss a goal...but grace has to be in abundance in all of life. It would be a much better world if that were the case.

My best way of improving was to have a uke on a stand & just pick it up & practice a bit as I passed by, just a couple of minutes at a time, but it certainly helped me to progress.

uke1950 said:

My best way of improving was to have a uke on a stand & just pick it up & practice a bit as I passed by, just a couple of minutes at a time, but it certainly helped me to progress.

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I agree 100%. I keep my Breedlove out of it's case for most of the day when I home. And I bring it to work because I have 2 free periods and can practice/play for 20-40 minutes at a time without interrupts, usually.

No i have to put uke practice aside for the moment. I don't have time in thsi last month. Too much too do and try to do.

Yes thanks choirguy, this is the right attitude for me at the moment. I'm off to choir tonight to help support the altos. They are weak without their main singers who are all away at the moment and Porgy and Bess is on really soon. I'm not in it this time, just going to usher but they need me for vocal strength and i need them for my social support.

Choirguy did i show you my pics from Barber of Seville? Here they are again if you didn't see them. It was a fab production but what would i know, i was out the damn back. lol but it looks beautiful as per these pictures and friends in the audience said they loved it. The musical director was such a sweet guy too. Not your Herbert Von Karajan type character just a real nice guy - german though. There were a couple more great pics i could post but I've been too lazy. The guys in the chorus (all locals too) were gorgeous in the uniform outfits.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10209429543469552.1073741834.1053963778&type=1&l=c1d3369c0d