Practice

Ukebottom

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While practicing a song, I have a tendency to start over every time I make a mistake...is it better to push thru? I’m doing James Hills Ukulule Way and am having fun, but it takes me a while to get it right. Think my practice habits need tweaking, so any advice would be appreciated!
 
While practicing a song, I have a tendency to start over every time I make a mistake...is it better to push thru? I’m doing James Hills Ukulule Way and am having fun, but it takes me a while to get it right. Think my practice habits need tweaking, so any advice would be appreciated!

I'm no expert, but I find it is best to push through. If you stop, you are reinforcing the habit of stopping. I'd push through to the end, but then practice the section that I was stuffing up a few times in isolation before trying the whole song again.
 
Guitar, uke or piano, I find I vary when I’ve messed up. It depends on the mood I’m In.

If I stumble, I tend to just run through the fingering or whatever I’ve tripped over for a few seconds until I get it right, then go back to start at the beginning to hopefully NOT trip up at the same place next time. I find this helps me keep the flow of the piece.

Overall, although I’m FAR from expert enough to give advice, I’d suggest just going with the flow and doing whatever YOU feel works best for you.
 
While practicing a song, I have a tendency to start over every time I make a mistake...is it better to push thru? I’m doing James Hills Ukulule Way and am having fun, but it takes me a while to get it right. Think my practice habits need tweaking, so any advice would be appreciated!

In my experience with other instruments and from watching tuition given to my children the correct (or should that be recognised) method of handling difficulties with any piece of Music is to break it down into small sections and work on them individually. So don’t push through but focus on what you can’t do would be the ‘classical’ advice, but I would also suggest some playing of the piece through and so keeping a sense of enjoyment about things.
 
"Practicing consciously and slowly. Whatever they are practicing, awareness of every single note and its quality should be the goal." - Celil Refik Kaya
 
The best thing that works for me is work in sections, slow, slow, slow. Little by little add the sections together.


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OK, I'm coming from the standpoint of creating an 'arrangement' of a song I want to learn to
sing and play.

So I select a song; experiment with keys (locating the higher [pitches] and lower sections of the
melody line; then select a key.

I then 'push through' until I have the general chord structure/progression from beginning to end.
I try to notice and remember those sections that will need more work to support the melodic
changes with more subtle chording [that is, besides Major chords, looking for minor 7ths, diminished,
agumented, etc].

So now I have a general structure for the song - very rough perhaps, but something a song circle
might choose to use to get through a song as a group. Then I work through the song again, slowly
to make sure I like the chords/chord progressions I've selected. I make changes, add more chords,
etc to further support he melody as I hear and remember it in my head. I'm not pitch perfect, and
I'm mostly just interested in strumming background chording to support my singing.

if I come across a particularly challenging section, I work on that until I have a progression I feel
is good enough to get me through the song. Then I put everything together and see what it sounds
like. [Now, I have been working on paper - mostly a lyric sheet with space for writing chord names,
crossing them out to add or change chords, etc]

my goal is to end up with a usable chorded lyric sheet I can use to play/perform the song for myself
and others, and possibly to share with others or our full group [that is, add it to the next volume of
our Songbook].

I may not be finished yet, but for all intents and purposes, any changes will now be fewer and farther
between... unless someone locates an error or has a better suggested chord progression.

So how does this relate to 'Practice'? As mentioned in the beginning, i'm coming from creating a song
sheet versus learning from a song sheet. However, I think some of the processes might overlap a bit.
I try to get a general OVERVIEW to begin with, then work on Specific Sections that I feel need more
work - either because I haven't yet figured out the 'best' progression, or I need to master the chord
changes for that section.

I hope this is helpful :)

keep uke'in',
 
biggest problem I have when playing for others is that I stop when I make a mistake. So, yeah, it's something that's become second nature when practicing.. but you have to unlearn it when performing and push through ... most people don't even know you've goofed.
 
A long time ago, I had to make an effort to quit stopping every time that I made a mistake. A mistake is only a mistake. If one can remember where it happened he/she can go back and figger out why it happened and fix the problem if necessary.

An error is only a big deal if it happens over and over. :eek:ld:
 
mistakes are wonderful for helping us find out where we need to focus our attention
in order to get better... for ourselves.

we can either pay attention to them and work on 'fixing' them, or simply ignore them
and keep on 'enjoying' what we're doing, but possibly at the expense of continually
making the same 'mistake' again and again :(

Bottom line, it's all for our own enjoyment, although if we are playing with and for
others, we should probably take more personal responsibilty from the standpoint of not
making others 'pay' for our mistakes (by having to hear them repeatedly, or having
to explain them away to others for us) :)

keep uke'in',
 
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Certainly, if one keeps making the same kind of mistakes over and over, then he/she needs to solve whatever is causing them.

But mistakes are a part of human life and thus of music. Very few of us are perfect. :eek:ld:
 
Divide the song into chunks. Learn each chunk well, and then practice the transitions between them.

If you keep going back to the beginning, you’ll get really good a the start and struggle through the end.

Oh! And try mixing up the rhythm of complex melodies or strumming patterns. If you’re fingerpicking a run of 8th notes, try them straight, swing em, then do dotted rhythms (both long/short and then short/long). Confusing yourself makes you a stronger player faster than just doing the same thing over and over.
 
Great videos Camsuke, thank you for posting!

I love the piece he plays in the second one; almost makes me want to get one of those big ukuleles... ;)
 
To my thinking, it isn't about not making mistakes, it is all about what you do with the mistakes when to make them. I practice for what I do, and what I'm doing doesn't work if I stop and start over all the time. So I don't practice that.
 
Its an interesting video, but I don't think I am in agreement with it fully. If you are playing a piece with that many mistakes, stop and play it much, much more slowly until you can bring up the speed to something suitable.
 
If it's a one-time stumble, I push through. If it's a mistake that I find myself repeating, I break the section down into smaller parts and practice each separately. Years ago I studied classical guitar under Joe Fava, and he reinforced this habit. Otherwise, he said, I was "practicing a mistake."
 
Its an interesting video, but I don't think I am in agreement with it fully. If you are playing a piece with that many mistakes, stop and play it much, much more slowly until you can bring up the speed to something suitable.

That would apply if you're practicing a piece, but in the video they are talking about a performance - and by more than one person, too
 
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