Hello From M in Australia

[marama]

Hello Everyone,

I just got my year membership last week! yay. I”ve been playing for a few months and am in a uke club here in Central Queensland Australia. I am comfortable strumming and singing but wasn’t gaining any technique improvement just attending a club and playing along online.

I don’t think is likely that I can play one of the member challenge songs before Dec 🙁 I’m finding some of the beginner stuff really challenging, such as the concept lessons and a lot of the songs.

I’ve done The Beginners Guide and am now working on Beyond the Island Strum and Better Together. I can now play all the parts of that song REALLY slowly and am working on putting in altogether.

The Live Lessons is Tuesday mid-morning in Australia so will have to watch the replays 🙂

Hi to all!

[rickeymike]

Welcome Mara, Go through the beginner course and learn to play “Our First Song”. That is a good start.

In general, I think that the beginner friendly Etudes are great for getting that “picking feel”

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by rickeymike.

[Andrew]

Welcome, Mara! Rickey’s suggestions are a great starting point. In addition to his suggestions, Greensleeves will be on our December challenge. Give that one a shot! And if you need any help, don’t hesitate to email me or post on our forums. 🙂

[marama]

Thanks for your response Rickey and Andrew. Ive already played our first song however and will give Greensleeve a go when I’ve finished the strumming course. I’m so slow…

[robinboyd]

Trust me. You’re not slow. It took me about a year to maintain a slow island strum while singing. You’ll get there.

[miztaken]

Hi Mara, I am also in Aus (Sydney). There are a few of us here from all over the country…
It took me a loooong time to begin to play what sounded like real music, but we all get there with practice, practice, practice. The really good thing is that Andrew has so many wonderful arrangements, half of my problem now is choosing WHICH arrangement to learn.
Just go slow, learn to play an arrangement completely increasing speed a bit when comfortable and then move on to a new piece. The one you have learned now becomes revision (musician husband is now gobsmacked because I am giving you the advice that he kept giving me, ha!).
Also – a trick I use is to keep a piece that I have completely learned, no matter how simple it is. It just has to be pretty (mine is Etude #5).
I use this when learning a new piece to “re-set” my struggling brain eg. learn a bit of the new piece, get exhausted from the struggle, play Etude #5 because it is my go-to piece. This fools my brain into thinking “I can play this”, and when I go back to the new piece – it becomes a little less of a struggle.
Hope that helps a little.
Regards,
Misty

[marama]

LOL Robin. I’ve heard my 7 year old walking around the house muttering “down, down, up, up, down….” She has a uke and is all about the beat. Must keep practising. In april I wanted to ‘get’ half barre chords so I could play a few songs I love. I noticed the other day how well I play them now. I practised them every day for months.

MIsty, maybe my song will be Greensleeves. It’s going well, I can play it at 65% percent speed ok and am just fine-tuning.

Im up late tonight because I had to move Elf on the Shelf. And now I’m watching ALL the videos on Soundslice.

Thanks for your replies.

[Author]

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