They say the first step is admitting you have a problem.
A couple of years ago, I started playing at open mike nights and the occasional show. After several months, an acquaintance pointed out that sometimes on the follow-through of my strum, my fingernails tap the front of the ukulele audibly. I was horrified to learn this. I don't hear it on my side of the uke, and I didn't have any idea I was doing it. Then the venue experimented with videotaping an open mike night and putting it on Facebook, and the evidence was there. I was a ukulele tapper. Oh, the shame! How could I face my family? A month later, I saw my acquaintance again and said that now that she'd pointed it out, I'd become paranoid about my tapping. She said not to worry about it, that it just came off as part of my playing style.
So now I try to adjust my strum angle a little to minimize the tapping, but I don't get worried if I do it. And in one case, it ended up working in my favor. I have a song where I go into an instrumental at the end, and on the video I was tapping so much it sounded like I was accompanied by a tabla player! I really like the tapping on that one.
The instrumental starts at about the 4:40 mark. I'm honored if you choose to watch the whole thing, but the song is literally as serious as a heart attack. I re-wrote an old song of mine with new lyrics about events related to my heart attack last year.
A couple of years ago, I started playing at open mike nights and the occasional show. After several months, an acquaintance pointed out that sometimes on the follow-through of my strum, my fingernails tap the front of the ukulele audibly. I was horrified to learn this. I don't hear it on my side of the uke, and I didn't have any idea I was doing it. Then the venue experimented with videotaping an open mike night and putting it on Facebook, and the evidence was there. I was a ukulele tapper. Oh, the shame! How could I face my family? A month later, I saw my acquaintance again and said that now that she'd pointed it out, I'd become paranoid about my tapping. She said not to worry about it, that it just came off as part of my playing style.
So now I try to adjust my strum angle a little to minimize the tapping, but I don't get worried if I do it. And in one case, it ended up working in my favor. I have a song where I go into an instrumental at the end, and on the video I was tapping so much it sounded like I was accompanied by a tabla player! I really like the tapping on that one.
The instrumental starts at about the 4:40 mark. I'm honored if you choose to watch the whole thing, but the song is literally as serious as a heart attack. I re-wrote an old song of mine with new lyrics about events related to my heart attack last year.
