I played for four hours straight when I first picked up the ukulele. It is a fascinating instrument. Now I feel like I miss out on something if there is a day I don't get to play.
Me too! I feel the same way.
All I can say is
DONT stop
practicing. Whatever your practice is. There are thousands of 3-chord ukulele songs to choose from.
It's been a little over a year now with the uke for me (but 35 yrs with guitar before that) and while I'm no expert, I feel that I've improved greatly compared to when I started.
After a dry spell with my songwriting that lasted almost 3 years, when i got my first uke, about 1 week later, I started writing music again. I cannot say enough how significant this was for me. It's as if the uke has given me a new lease on life. I love the way the instument sounds (except when it's badly out of tune)....and how it responds to being played...this is the sound and feel I've been chasing my whole life on the guitar, and could not achieve, but found it on the ukulele.
I have 10 ukes now (UAS always in high gear, next uke will be another baritone), some are high-G and some are low-g and some are alternate tunings, as well as mostly different sets of strings (but I'm a big fan of both Worth Browns low-g and Aquila Reds low-g on tenors, and Martin M600 and Worth Clears CL (Light) on the other sizes) and try to give them all play time over a weeks period, so even a half hour day is a confirmed habit for me. Likely It's about 30-40 mins per uke, so I start on one, and then move to another. Trying to keep agility on soprano, concert and tenor...playing them all a few times each over the week.
The baritone is an antique Harmony from the '50s given to me by my grandfather who passed in 2009 and is very special to me. The bridge is lifting, so I try to baby it until I can fix it myself without killing it, and when it's resting I slack the strings all the way down so as to minimize the stress on the bridge, but it does not get as much play time as the other ukes, but I just love the deep, dulcet tones with the Worth Browns BF (FAT) low-g set on there (tuned D-G-B-E) which is a tad slack (which is better for this uke, given the bridge situation), and has incredible sustain. (not really a fan of wound strings at all)
Most of my practice is perfecting the performance of the 9 songs I've written, in preparing to record them, such that maybe I can do it in one take (barring technical issues)...for something I hope to release on iTunes and Amazon soon...
Other than that, I go through Jim & Liz Beloff's 'The Daily Ukulele' (365 songs) and just start at the beginning of the book, and go as far as I can before my arms and fingers get tired (typically about 90 mins). Rinse and repeat, as often as possible (striving for daily). Trying to build up a library of songs to play by memory for any occasion (it helps to work from home), and hopefully at some point I'll be good enough to do an open mic night somewhere...
(aahh dreams, good to have them...)
Oh, also, about once a week I try to make a video with my iPad (sort of a diary for myself) to document my progress and certain ideas for songs.
The video helps to remember the chords since I can see them when I play it back, as opposed to just an audio recording and some mangled transcription of the strumming/picking pattern and chord shapes...(I do not like tablature and prefer to read standard notation, but I'm not good at writing it out)
- Booli