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Happy New Year everyone! 2018 was an incredible year for RC101 and it’s all because of YOUR support! I wanted to say thank you to all of you who have been following our lessons through the years and to those who have just joined our community. Here’s to a great 2019!
The video above is a compilation featuring 15 members performing Taimane’s, “Moon“, as well as, a special message from Taimane herself! The video also recaps some BIG accomplishments of 2018. If you are short on time, I will list the highlights below (video jump guide will be in parentheses).
P.S. Our BRAND NEW COURSE launches next Friday, January 4th: An Introduction to Reading Standard Notation.
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2018 Lessons Recap
A) 40 Lessons Were Released This Year! (5:26)
I have added every lesson we released this year in THIS YOUTUBE PLAYLIST.
– 4 Technique Lessons (Vibrato, Drum-Like Rhythm, Swing vs. Straight Rhythm, & 3 Warm Up Exercises)
– 1 Concept Lesson (EP009)
– Lightning Round #2
– 34 Songs, spanning multiple genres: flamenco, eastern, bluegrass, jazz, opera, classical, pop, classic rock, blues, traditional.This year’s song lessons where developed with the intermediate player in mind. This decision was made due to the feedback I received in our December 2017 survey.
B) Our Teacher Roster Grew! (5:44)
Katie, Matt, and Evan joined the team, bringing their unique teaching perspectives and excellent musical talent to the table!
Matt’s Focus: Creating beginner-friendly fingerstyle arrangements of popular songs. These are songs that would fall into our “Beginner Series” difficulty level.
Katie’s Focus: Creating vocal friendly fingerpicking arrangements of popular songs (level 1).
Evan’s Focus: Creating intermediate to advanced fingerstyle arrangements of popular songs. These are songs that would fall into level 3 and 4 difficulty category.
Stephen’s Focus: Creating original intermediate level pieces (level 2).
C) 800+ Members Have Participated in Our Monthly Challenges! (6:28)
You guys rock! To see so many of you participate month after month AND to watch you grow as players and musicians, is what inspires me to create the best lessons I can!
Check out ALL of our previous monthly challenges HERE.
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What’s Coming in 2019?
A) More Beginner Songs & Lessons – We’ll be adding 1 NEW “Beginner Series” level lesson each month starting in February.
B) Low G Lessons – Low G lessons are here! I’ll be aiming to add a new one at least once every 6 weeks or so.
C) NEW Course – While our Reading Course launches next Friday (1/4), I’m already thinking about the next one. There are so many topics we could tackle, but there are two areas that seem to be the most important at this point in time:
1) A course on technique, with a focus on the Beginner to Intermediate player.
2) A course on strumming, again with a focus on the player highlighted above.
But I am open to suggestions, let me know what you would be interested in.
D) Site Redesign – Redesign is too strong of a word, this will be more of a facelift. I did want to bring it up because it will require me to temporarily “shut down” the site. Hopefully for no more than an hour or two, but sometimes things can go wrong, and it may be down for longer. I will provide a week’s notice before this occurs which will state the exact time we will be down.
E) Your Feedback – I’d love to hear from you! Let me know what you would like to see in 2019, but please keep it constructive and discussion-based (no song requests).
Thank you for an awesome 2018! YOUR support is the reason we have an AMAZING community!
Andrew, you have touched lives around the globe in such a positive way.
We all have learned so much from Rock Class 101 & formed amazing friendships.
Congrats, jackypoo & best wishes learning from Taimane. Awesome.
The absolute best to all this coming 2019!Thank you Andrew for everything you and the other instructors have taught us this year. You’re an awesome teacher – I have learned so much from RC101.
The main thing I would like to learn in 2019 is how to compose fingerpicking duets. Strumming and picking sound very nice, but it’s really cool to watch when two people fingerpick a song.
It would also be fun to learn songs that used a looper. I’ve been practicing but it’s tricky to get the timing right.
Thank you again for all the great lessons! Looking forward to the reading course!I’d like to see some technique videos. There are no videos I can find on youtube covering Scottish/ Irish ornaments. (On guitar or ukulele, I found them on tin whistles but it doesn’t translate as well to me..) More music style specific things like rasguedo. (I never thought I’d be saying that when I started practicing it lol!) Maybe nothing long, but something we can practice like the coarse examples for hammer ons and pull offs etc.
Side note: Keep on showing the little chord diagrams in the youtube lessons, it’s so helpful when you can see it on screen. The older videos that don’t have it are harder to use.
A short exercise to practice, to build up the ability to succeed at the bum-ditty so it can be applied to songs!
(Thank you soooooo much for the stretch chord exercise btw! I would have been up a creek without a paddle without that, learning NG’s Lament. Huge stretch chord in that. 7,10,12 using pointer middle ring fingers but I can do it now, just not in time yet lol! :D)
Perhaps one more forum for things that don’t quite fit into the other forum headings? I don’t know if others would want that though? I feel uncomfortable asking for help from the community or teachers, over things you guys didn’t make in ‘lessons’ for example. I love rock class songs but realistically there’s songs out there we want to learn that aren’t covered here but might need help on tricky bits… (Don’t kill me for that one 🙁 Seems easier to ask for help on a bit rather than ask for a whole new arrangement in some cases.)
One last totally doable request: If the site goes down for an extended period, could you holler on YouTube since not all of us use social media like instagram, facebook, twitter, etc?
Anyway thank you to everyone!
What a great video! Congrats, Jakeypoo…looking forward to seeing you play with your new autographed uke.
I really like the idea of a course on intermediate/advanced strumming techniques. If there’s a way to include a couple of tutorials on old-timey ukulele songs like Ain’t She Sweet, Five Foot Two, etc with that kind of Roy Smeck or George Formby strumming patterns. They just seem like super fun, potential show-off pieces!
I also really appreciate the advanced song tutorials; I’m having a ball now learning Magic Ukulele Waltz. So while I like learning beginner and intermediate songs, please throw in an advanced song or two as well.
Many thanks, Andrew, and Happy New Year!
Congrats Jakeypoo!
I don’t have any requests. I love the direction you have been heading, especially getting multiple teachers with different focuses. Keep up the good work!
@biggoomba has suggested it in another post thread, but I would also love to see lessons or songs that can be performed on the banjolele.
so, more bluegrass-y country style lessons on occasions (and in the meantime, I will just practice other songs on it too, even if they sound terrible 🙂 )
Some Rock-a-billy would be great too.Thanks for everything you do.
You give us a fantastic site for learning, and with your teaching style I have finally found someone that I can “relate” to and learn from.
And congratulations for achieving your dream which truly benefits US.I love the bricks and mortar that this place was built on. Chord melody songs and lessons in a variety of genres and levels. There could never be too much of that. I love the standard ukulele progress I’m making through these songs and lessons.
I know there are so many things one could do but I love the basics. Additions like singing and ubass and such aren’t of interest to me. When there are too many other things going on, it can take a longer time for something new to come out that’s more standard.
You’re an amazing teacher, Andrew. We’re learning a lot, and your teaching keeps improving too. I can see quite a difference from your earlier lessons (they’re still great but the new ones are even better!)
I can’t wait to see the baddest course!
Thank you for all you do.
Keep doing what you’re doing, Andrew – it’s all great!
I will echo miztaken’s request to add lessons in styles that sound best on banjolele. I got a book of fiddle tunes for banjolele, but it is harder to learn without your example and instructions for fingerings that make the playing smoother, etc. Would be great to be able to use the tab viewer to start slow and get fast fingerpicking songs up to speed.
I want to reinforce, while you’re thinking about priorities for next year, that your feedback on our performances is important. Keep that coming!
Happy 2019!
Hi Andrew,
I’m so happy I found RockClass about 6 weeks after I started playing the Uke. I feel really lucky because I had learned a few things but didn’t feel like I had structure or a plan for where I was going. I knew I wanted to learn chord melody and fingerstyle playing but was fumbling around. I stumbled across your Canon in D video on YT and joined immediately.I don’t have any specific requests; I really enjoy what we have here (there is alot)…and with the Standard Notation course coming, that will keep me busy along with the challenges, weekly songs and a few I want to learn that are out there now. I feel like I have options with beginner and intermediate songs…and can push myself when I’m not traveling as much in a month.
I love your teaching style and the addition of others with specific focus is great. I’m glad more Low G songs are coming….I feel like I neglect my Low G uke a bit!!
I’m excited for 2019. I can’t wait to see where we’ll all be at by next December.
At this minute, with a new baritone sitting right here, I would say some baritone lessons would be nice.
I add that I would like the many Etudes to earn titles. They’re some of my favorite pieces and they deserve names 🙂 Remembering I can do 12 and 13 but not 11 is hard. Coming up with a name is hard too…
This is simply a fantastic site, the best for clarity, detail, organization, pace, resources, breadth, depth, and friendliness.
I’d love to see much more for u-bass, but, honestly, I love it all and wish I had FAR more time to spend here!
Happy New Year, Andrew!
Thanks Andrew and everyone. I’ve had a lot of fun this year and my playing has moved forward. I’d like to learn more ways to strum and finger pick while singing – I have my standard two or three ways and would love to move that forward. Also more low G classes would be wonderful.
Looking forward to a uke filled 2019
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I want to touch on a couple things. Stephen and I have actually talked about doing “Dueling Banjos”. We definitely want to do it, we just haven’t gotten to it yet, but it definitely will happen. Seeing as there’s an interest, I’ll make it more of a priority.
Speaking of requests, I forgot to add this in the main post, but I’d like to start letting you guys vote on which songs we arrange. The request list is beyond huge, and in the past I’ve picked songs that have been requested multiple times. But it’s ballooned past this, so voting on a song seems like a lot of fun and a logical way to make more folks happy.
I’m not sure on the frequency of the voting, but I’ll see if we can get something started for this around Spring. Most likely, it will be themed (for ex: movie themes) and you guys vote on 4 choices.
Back to banjos, that’s an instrument that requires specific technique. Stephen has more rhythm technique that is translatable to that instrument, so I’ll see that the next one he does for us can feature some of this. 🙂
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Baritone – this is something I will not be tackling this year. There just was not enough demand when I surveyed folks in Dec ’17 (link above). I do want to add lessons for it at some point, but we will be at least a year or two out from that.
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Roy Smeck – I was working on bringing in someone that plays this style. Things didn’t work out, but I’ll see what I can do. I love this playing style, but I’d love to bring in someone that can do it (and teach it) authentically.
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Another course idea: Teach the subtleties of playing, things like: how or when notes/chords are meant to be articulated (for example, with staccato [detached, short notes] or accents [notes played boldly]), or if dynamics (degrees of volume) are to be used. In other words, teaching how to put “feeling” and expression into your playing.
I think this would make for a really interesting course 🙂
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