What Made You a Better Ukulele Player?

This topic is for everyone, hopefully I got a very varied response as I really wanan know what helped people improve the most.. This is to the newest members all the way to Seeso and Aldrine and the likes of the most skilled here at UU.

What made you better at playing the ukulele? Was it tutorials, lessons, other members? What made you the player you are today?

I consider myself a very average player. I've been playing for about a year in a half now, and I can say that I have improved dramatically, but still not where I want to be. Not that I want to be a professional ukulele player or something, but I do want to become very good some day.

I'm starting to get bored of finding songs, finding chords, and just strumming chords all day. I want to start learning songs from tabs, because that seems like the way the best players use to play their songs.

As someone who has no musical background, I can see this being a very long journey for me. I want to be able to play Gently Weeps and Let's Dance and other very complicated, skillful songs. I want to be able to hear a song and figure it out, I want to be able to come up with my own picking pattern's and improvise a solo whenever my heart desires. I want to be able to do the funky strums Aldrine bangs away and have quick and accurate coordination of Jake S.

I want to be a great ukulele player.

I'm hoping by reading some of your stories and experiences that you put in this thread will help me figure out how to better myself at the Ukulele.

Hopefully some people add their comments to this and help me out. Just tell me what worked for you!

commitment. self-motivation. acceptance. practice.

What made me imrove.... Nothing still suck
Well... gotten a bit better maybe thanks to all the great tutorials made by other Uke playes mostly from these forums!!!
But also from beeing addicted so I have been playing pretty much everyday for 5 months between 1-3 hours

Three words...

Practice! Practice! Practice!

because pokemon taught me to be the best by catching them all.

no, all joking aside, I've always wanted to play an instrument worth playing. I have tried piano and guitar, but they just aren't my thing. The ukulele is nice and I hope that I will become even better in the future.

so self motivation and the need to be the very best.

Playing

Playing a lot a lot a lot, especially cover songs, made me become a better ukulele player.

It also helped a lot, listening to other players and watching their videos on Youtube. And, of course, exchanging knowledge and information with the "ukulele tribe" here on ukulele underground!

I think I was able to improve from when I first started out mainly due to an intense desire to learn a few Jake Shimabukuro songs, specifically Gently Weeps. I got a hold of the tabs, tried it, and found that it was within my capability to learn it. After that it was just a lot of playing songs I've learned over and over.

Aldrine has made me a better ukulele player!

Spooner said:

Three words...

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Click to expand...

Myala509 said:

Aldrine has made me a better ukulele player!

Click to expand...

Words of wisdom! :bowdown:

I grew up with music all around me, but vocals were the focus of just about everything... well, that and writing songs. So, the thing that worked best was and always has been, have a passion for music and play, play, play.

prepare for performance

I would say that preparing for making a video, made me improve the most. I have spent many hours playing many songs, which was fun, but left me without any songs memorized or any songs practiced enough to perform for others. Having to focus on just one or two songs, until you get them really good... good enough to play on video all the way through without any really big mistakes... that is what is advancing me right now.

–Lori

i think a fifth point i should add is:

persistence.

In some ways playing with the Twin Cities Ukulele Orchestra has made me a better player. That and a lot of practice -- but I still suck at it. Practice, practice, practice is good advice.

Being surrounded by music definitely played a huge role. I think the most important factor in my growth was all the other musicians that I've met and jammed with. Might it be technical skills or their wisdom, it all helped me grow as not only a musician but also as a person

Practice seems to be the best way. I read a book about how the brain process music and they cited a study where they tried to find something that united all of the Virtuosos in their respective field, (music sports, etc) and the only comon thread was 10,000 hours of doing their craft. That would be 8 hours a day seven days a week for 3.4 years of uke playing. I bet that woul piss off the neighbors for at least the first 2 years.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! :shaka:

practice

with others if possible

I'm not a better player yet.

CoLmes said:

I want to start learning songs from tabs, because that seems like the way the best players use to play their songs.

Click to expand...

Actually, the thing that the best players seem to use to play their songs is their ears. This is true on any instrument.

Which brings me to...

I want to be able to hear a song and figure it out, I want to be able to come up with my own picking pattern's and improvise a solo whenever my heart desires.

Click to expand...

That's all entirely possible for you, trust me! And it all requires developing your ears. How do you do that? Same way you develop anything else, be it your abs or your foreign language skills... by using them!

There are lots of things that I feel have made be a better musician, but there are two in particular. The first is my decision to try to figure out songs myself now and then, instead of relying on sheet music. I cannot stress enough how useful this is.

Back then, this was a bit more of necessity because there wasn't a worldwide web yet. I even remember the first song I tried to figure out. "She's Got a Way" by Billy Joel. I recall sitting on the piano bench with my portable cassette deck (no CDs back then either), playing back a snippet... plinking out notes and chords on the piano... seeing if it sounded right... rewinding the tape a bit... playing the snippet again...

It took forever. And it probably wasn't 100% right. Didn't matter. Like learning to play an instrument, learning to figure out songs by ear is something you're just going to suck at for a while, but that you eventually do get better at.

The important thing is to do it! It's never to early to start. Resist the urge to Google the chords (they're probably not right anyway).

Another thing that helped develop my ear in a big way was learning about and using the Nashville Number System. The basic gist is that instead of writing out the chords to a song as G, C, D, Em, etc... you write them as 1, 4, 5, 6-, etc. It takes a wee bit of theory to understand it, but not much. And it's totally worth it.

Not only does this make transposing a cinch (a number chart can be used in any key without modification), but it trains your ear to recognize the relationship of a chord you're hearing to the key of the song. Using numbers instead of letter names constantly reinforces that relationship.

The second thing that has made me a better musician is this book. I highly recommend it.

:shaka:

JJ

Picking up the uke every chance I had. And jamming with Kanaka916 and DHKANE every friday. Also the inspiration watching this girl Carla. She's one of the most bestest guitar and uke player I've ever seen.:rock: