How does one become 'good' at the ukulele?

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fingerbang

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I have been playing for 7 months now and I have seen rapid improvement, bearing in mind I have taught myself and no other people that play.

I want to be really good at the ukulele, I enjoy playing it so much.

Essentially, what does one have to do to be a good ukuleleist?

Kieran
 
Maybe you should look into UUU. Take one of their courses. And practice.

Welcome to UU!
 
Practice.

You will hear it again and again. Practice.

There are no shortcuts. Period. Practice.

I was reading yesterday on Harmony Central's "Lesson's Loft" forum and found a great quote. They were talking about "should I learn theory?", but it applies to everything.

If you are aspiring to be a musician, you should not try to find excuses as to why you SHOULD NOT learn something. you need to WANT TO LEARN EVERYTHING. If you don't have that curiosity and the drive to follow through with your curiosity, you should consider a career in welding instead. ~meganutt7
Click to expand...

Bingo. Practice.
 
Reiterating the idea of practice, I remember early on in my youthful guitar days coming across this quote from Ted Nugent...

"Practice, practice, practice. Practice until your fingers bleed. Then you'll know you're onto something."

Pretty straight to the point.
 
Aloha Kieran,
Welcome to the UU and our forums..check out MusicTeacher2010 and Keonepax for awesome tutorials for starters too!!
Just google them...they're on You Tube..I hope it helps!! Keep strumming them strings!! MM Stan...
Three words...Practice, Patience and Perserverence= ukulele success!!!
 
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In the midst of practice and playing...think of it more as becoming good at music...
 
luvdat said:
In the midst of practice and playing...think of it more as becoming good at music...
Click to expand...

That's a wonderful quote. +1.

I've been playing and practicing for two and a half years. It's a great experience. I want to get better so badly.
 
I will never be sure what compels me to take up completely time sucking activities, but after 38 years I am stuck.
Tonight I made clam chowder for my dad, and I washed 5 lbs of clams before hand. I looked at my fingers and there were little half moons of skin sloughing off of my pointer, middle and ring of my left hand after about three minutes of washing. Those were calluses.
They did not alarm me as I had seen it on my right hand middle finger where my yo-yo string sits.
Practice Practice Practice.
I am three weeks in, two hours a day, and happy to have weird skin problems because of my Uke already- just wish I had more hours in the day
 
Some advice from instructors that i take to heart:

Be the best form of you (meaning, you don't need to copy people and sound exactly like them). I like this because I find I like persons who personalize their style. A good musician who makes a mistake will find a way to work with the mistake instead of become upset with about it. They say you have to repeat the mistake so whoever is listening thinks its a brilliant part of the song. haha.

Art and freeflow. That seems to be what I try to strive for. Improvisation is what I like.

Emotion. James Hill said it in his Workshop. Play the song in the same emotion that it was written. If you watch a musician that gets wrapped up in the song, then it feels like an experience and not a recital.

I have only been playing uke for 2 months and my sole goal is to make my wife laugh and feel good when I play uke. That's my best for right now. My other goal for best is to be able to have a 10 song repertoire to cause kids to get wound up into a frenzy of singing.
 
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My advice is don't practice, because you'll become fed up with it. Practicing is playing for the sake of playing; if you're into the uke or any other instrument then you'll play it since you enjoy it. It's best to just play and enjoy it.
 
I think it's a matter of perspective, I am a relative newbie to the Uke, 7 weeks now, I enjoy playing it, I can play a few tunes, I have started fingerpicking a few tunes, I would be happy to sit with friends and family and play and sing with them. My wife now says to me " You're gettiing good on that thing ".....I love the setting goals answer, I see some others playing and think wow ! they are awesome, It is for everyone to decide how "good" they want to be but never lose sight of the fact that you are already better than you were a month ago and a great deal better than those that have never played a Uke who look at you and say, " You're getting good on that thing ". We will all be learning the Uke forever, let's not forget how far we have already come.
 
TCK said:
I will never be sure what compels me to take up completely time sucking activities, but after 38 years I am stuck.
Tonight I made clam chowder for my dad, and I washed 5 lbs of clams before hand. I looked at my fingers and there were little half moons of skin sloughing off of my pointer, middle and ring of my left hand after about three minutes of washing. Those were calluses.
They did not alarm me as I had seen it on my right hand middle finger where my yo-yo string sits.
Practice Practice Practice.
I am three weeks in, two hours a day, and happy to have weird skin problems because of my Uke already- just wish I had more hours in the day
Click to expand...
Aloha TCK,
Those callouses are a badge of honor for me!!he he
 
I have improved rapidly and I not hesitant to add I improve week on week. But What I want to know is: What should I be learning? Should I be learning scales for an hour a day? learn one song per week? Experiment with progressions?

Like you TCK, I wish I had more hours in a day! I enjoy playing so much, it really is a labour of love.

Kieran

Oh and thank you for the welcomes :)
 
I played guitar for over forty years,before discovering the joys
of the ukulele;over that period,I frequently assured people that I
was 'pretty good','brilliant' an 'excellent guitarist' etc.In fact after
forty odd years,I was HAPPY with what I played! All the previous
comments in this thread get it right,play what makes YOU happy,
what you enjoy,what makes YOU feel good.And to heck with any
thing else! You play your ukulele because you want to.If it makes
you happy,'nuff said!
 
Search UU for the practice advice from Marsalis. I believe the first thing he advises is to find a good teacher.

"fingerbang" LOL. Takes me back to some good ol' South Park.

jeff
 
I agree-- play, don't practice.
One thing that may be useful is to play while doing other things, eg watching TV. That goes counter to what people will tell you about conscious practice, but I've found that just picking up a uke and noodling around on it while reading my email, watching the tube, etc. is great training for muscle memory. Subconsciously, this seemingly aimles playing will ingrain your instrument's fret positions and chord shapes into your memory. It's fun too.
 
I try to remember that at some point in their own learning curves, there was a moment when great players like Jake Shimabukuro and James Hill played as poorly as I do now. Of course, they were both probably 6 years old at the time and that moment probably lasted all of 37 seconds, but there's something comforting about remembering that although some people have more natural ability and inate talent than others, nobody is born great, and the people who are great now were also newbies once and have had to navigate their own learning curves.
 
Thank you for this thread! It's been great to read all these responses! I can't ever imagine after only 2 weeks, getting up and playing in front of people. On the other hand, I can see how much I have learned in the past two weeks and know that as long as I keep playing, I will only get better and better!
You all so inspire me and give me hope, someday I will be able to make these chords I am practicing actually make a song.. so far not much luck. Only simple songs with single notes. Hey two weeks ago I couldn't even do those! Here's to fun, and improvement!
 
I find that I am fairly decent when I'm practicing.

Once I am in public and some person asks me to play a song, I kinda freeze and forget everything and so now, I'm trying to "embed" a startup procedure. haha.
 
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