Coordination?

I don't know if it's lack of experience or if I just lack coordination, but I have such trouble maintaining a strumming pattern. I'm a very beginner beginner, and my brain does not seem to like my hands doing 2 different things. If I start doing well changing chords, my strumming hand starts faltering all over the place. If I can manage to get a good strumming pattern going, my chord changes suffer.

How long does it take to improve this, or maybe I'm just not coordinated enough and it'll always be a struggle? Thanks!

That’s normal and will come with practice.

Try to simplify and train one thing at a time: practice strumming with a single chord (even c6) and no changes. Then practice chord changes with no (or incredibly simple) strumming. Add together once you’re confidant with the pieces.

Go slowly. Run a metronome (your phone probably has one) at a slow beat and change on whole notes. Then speed that up when you’ve got it.

Each chord change is a bit different. Pick a song and study its changes. Isolate and practice just the bits that give you trouble and don’t dwell on the parts you have, then put it all together.

How long it takes depends on how much practice you put in. It will get much better, I promise you, just have patience and keep going. Last week at a rehearsal of my seniors uke group, I was practicing a couple of bass riffs (I play bass uke) and one member came over to me saying, "You're getting much better, why?" I told her I practice almost everyday. She hung her head sheepishly and said, "I don't, guess that's why I'm not getting better."

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This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly West near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 5 acoustic bass ukes, 11 solid body bass ukes, 9 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 34)

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I keep one of my ukuleles out to play. We watch some TV and during commercials, I practice.
It is surprising how quickly something that was difficult becomes doable with practice.

And a phrase that I tell all the new players that I work with - don't stress out over the strum. Play all down or play solid down up all the way through learning the chords. After you get the transitions down, then play with the strum.

What helped me was to mute the strings with your left hand and just strum a pattern with your right hand. That way you aren't distracted with your left hand moving. Trust me, once you get a strum pattern down, you won't even have to think about what you are doing with your right hand. You will just instinctively strum.

I'm trying. Most of the tutorials on youtube go so fast, and assume too much. Any suggestions for good tutorials for beginners?

Check out Uncle Rod’s Ukulele Boot Camp at http://ukulelebootcamp.weebly.com/
It’s text and image based so doesn’t depend on keeping up with a video. YMMV—my preference is for books & audio over pure video. I grabbed every Uke book my local library had to get started. Mixing media can get the best of each.

Also consider a live teacher who can tailor advice to you.

You can slow down YouTube videos by clicking on the "Settings" (gear icon) at the lower right of the video. Click the gear, click "speed," then click 0.75 or 0.5. The pitch will remain the same. Audio can sound pretty bad at 0.5, but 0.75 usually sounds good and is much easier to play along with than normal speed.

Chording and strumming are two different skills, treat them as such. First we crawl, then we walk then we run. As adults we want to do everything good RIGHT NOW. We forget how long and how much effort it took us to learn to tie our shoes as children. Patience and dedicated practice will get you there. It took all of us longer then we wanted to learn to play an instrument.

Gary, I just figured that out yesterday, thanks to a ukulele tutorial where the instructor explained how to do that. It is helpful!

UDDave Yes you are right, patience is needed and I'm probably not having nearly enough. I do want to show improvement faster than is probably reasonable.

Bobhost mentioned something that I swear by when learning stuff like this.
Practice while watching TV.

Of course this might not be possible if you live with others, but it is a great way to learn the muscle memory stuff.. which seems a whole lot easier to me when I'm not concentrating on learning it.

Much of what you need to learn is done through nearly mindless repetition. If you're restricting your practice to time devoted only to practicing, you're more likely, in my opinion, to get tired of practicing and frustrated with your progress.

Kherome said:

... patience is needed and I'm probably not having nearly enough. I do want to show improvement faster than is probably reasonable.

Click to expand...

Sounds like me when I started....

Yes, unfortunately, you have to practice to improve, & that takes time, no short cuts - that's why I'm still a beginner.

What I do is fold a Post-it Note (sticky note) into thirds and use it to practice strumming.
Hold the folded paper by the short end and strum on something like your thigh.
Practice a common strum pattern like D DU UDU.
The paper allows you the feel and hear the rhythm.
Now here is the trick, do this when you are doing something else like reading UU or watching TV.
This helps to teach your strumming hand to work by itself.
Good luck and practice, practice, practice

I've been teaching 2 dozen beginners how to play since October. It's nearly 100% universal that beginners with no previous experience can't imagine left and right hands doing different things! It has been my teaching experience that by far, the RIGHT hand is the one people struggle with. Learning the chords with the left seems relatively easier for beginners. The left hand just takes repetition and time. The right hand takes a kind of "intuition" that not everyone possesses.

Patterns
I more or less stopped trying to teach people specific patterns like DDU UDU, because as soon as they get into the song, the pattern falls apart. What I have adopted in place of "fixed patterns" is to "feel the rhythm the song wants" by singing it. Nearly all songs easily reveal a rhythm implicit in the words and chord changes. I like to begin by teaching to put a strong downbeat on each chord change. Once they master that effect, further subtleties in the rhythm come out IF you are singing the song roughly as it should be sung, and before you know it, people have found the internal rhythm without knowing the exact DU pattern. I think of it as the organic rhythm. This only seems to work by actual singing - not reading the words mentally.

"If you can say it, you can play it" is often how that idea is expressed. Singing brings out all the accents and downbeats, and the right hand wants to follow your vocalizing. In addition to practice with the instrument, I encourage people to TAP IT OUT with their hands (drumming) as they listen to the radio or other music casually without their instruments.

Practice, little and often.

Slow tempo and accuracy are a must.

Then you build up soeed.

Try downloading and using Justinguitars 1 minute chord change app when yu feel more confident, you dial in the chirds and play as many changes as you can in 1 minute, surprizing how quickly you can change, but only when you have the muscle memoryfir the chords.