Hitting the body while strumming

Ride

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Hi there,

I realized that when I'm strumming some chords eventually I hit the body (or the fretboard sometimes) with my index finger. It's specially annoying when I'm trying to record myself.

Some piece of advice to solve this?
 
Be more careful. :p

I do that a lot. Especially if it's a fast or complicated strum. When you figure out how to stop it let me know. :D
 
One tip is to hold your ukulele at a consistent angle. To find the best angle for you, start by keeping your ukulele's soundboard as perpendicular the ground as possible. Good posture will help.
 
I think that as you play more your brain will just automatically know where to place your hand to get a clean sound. Just keep practising and soon it will be as natural as walking.
 
Practice your strums in slow motion, paying careful attention to what's going on. Once you get the right muscle memory down you can work on bringing the speed up without changing how your fingers brush the strings.

That said, sometimes "chunking" the body is actually a good thing. Only when you mean to, though, and you should learn a good clean strum first.

John
 
It's a practice and experience thing. Soon you will look back and it will be natural to you. When that happens, you can start to use body hitting as percussion - very cool, and employed by the likes of James Hill and Honey from B and H to name but two
 
One tip is to hold your ukulele at a consistent angle. To find the best angle for you, start by keeping your ukulele's soundboard as perpendicular the ground as possible. Good posture will help.

Great tip, I will try that. I did find that in my over-exuberance, I was "accidently" doing triplets, which I am now actually practicing.
 
Practice your strums in slow motion, paying careful attention to what's going on. Once you get the right muscle memory down you can work on bringing the speed up without changing how your fingers brush the strings....

This is the true way to "learn" how to do it. Practice, practice & practice (SLOWLY!!!) Then gradually speed up.
 
Hi there,

I realized that when I'm strumming some chords eventually I hit the body (or the fretboard sometimes) with my index finger. It's specially annoying when I'm trying to record myself.
Some piece of advice to solve this?

You're in pretty good company. I just watched a video of Eddie Vedder performing live on Letterman and he was beating the living daylights out of the top while he was strumming.

My suggestion is play closer to where the neck meets the body and lighten up with the right hand. It takes time. You'll get it.
Regards,
Ray
 
I was hitting the body a lot too, but I realized it was because I had the uke angled up towards my face to see my left hand. Angled the body back down to perpendicular with the floor and problem solved.
 
Thank you all for your advice.

It's clear that I do have to practice more strumming, slow down my speed, and concentrate more. Also I'll check the playing position, I'm sure the uke isn't perpendicular to the ground while I'm playing.
 
Probably everyone does it during their playing, some more noticeable than others. Some ukuleles bear the marks of years of this, gouges from fingernails and repeated strikes on the lower bout where neck and body meet, even the pros.

Position or angle at which the instrument is held seems to alter it a bit. I recently went to a funeral celebration where Kawika Trask's Trio was the music. Kawika holds his Ukulele almost to his shoulder level and gets perfect sound, when I try it, I feel like a dork...;-) Try as mentioned by other posters, changing your playing position a bit. It can't hurt and you can always go back to your original position if it alters your play too much.
 
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