Participate in the February 2021 Member Challenge – Theme: Mixed Bag!

[Andrew]

We BLEW AWAY our participation goal with 60 members participating this month! Big congrats to each and everyone of you! Stephen and I loved hearing everyone’s performances and you guys did SO well! 🙂

So without further ado, the winner of this month’s challenge is ** drumroll **

Our March Challenge is LIVE: https://rockclass101.com/march-2021-challenge. The theme is Love Songs and we’re giving away a NEW PRIZE! Hope to see everyone in the challenge!

P.S. I left feedback below for everyone that we hadn’t yet.

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Here’s everyone on page 10.

marlongas – Bravo! Pacing and phrasing is spot-on. Great feel and well played overall!

rockmyuke – Well done! I’d slow down the tempo to focus on cleaning up the B Melody. Which is actually the same thing I’m focusing on at the moment for a blues song 🙂

andyrose – That was so good, Andy! Timing and feel were great. My only suggestion is to try not to tug down on the strings in the B Melody. Doing so pulls the notes a bit sharp. Try to keep the string parallel as best you can.

cashmpe – Great job on your left hand form – chord work is excellent! You did great on the sustain as well. That’s a big takeaway in this tune. Keep up the great work, I’m very impressed!

ldarrow – Bravo, Linda! You played it beautifully. The only thing that I would point out is to work a little bit more on barre chord form consistency.

There’s a barre chord walk-down (bars 6-8) which happens twice. If you listen to the second time you played it (end of tune), your form is better which results in a cleaner take.

The beauty of recording ourselves is that it allows us to listen back and target our practice. So I’d loop this section section and maybe do it as a warm-up exercise 🙂

santai – One of the big challenges of this tune is creating sustain from one chord to the next. And I think you aced that! So you’ve got a great base established, what I would do next is focus on one section at a time and boost the tempo a little bit.

mac1984 – Well done! You mentioned struggling with memorizing it, check out this lesson for tips.

I think you’ve got a great base established, but I would work on one section at a time with this tune. Your goals being to memorize it and increase your sustain.

Memorizing is great because it allows you to focus on how you’re playing it. Which was the focus of this lesson. For this song specifically, focus on sustain and pacing it at a nice slow, steady tempo.

joe150 – Great job, Joe! Question: Do you use the tab player? After you learn a section, I want you to take two bars at a time and loop it in the tab player. Slow it down to whatever speed you need, and I want you to match my playing 100%. When you’ve got that down, move on to the next section. And piece this song together. So 2 bars, becomes 4, becomes 8 🙂

cimarronsailor – Well played! There’s a couple of spots that need a little touching up, but I think for the most part you’re at the stage where you want to start to push the tempo. Try 5 or 10 BPM faster and take it from there. Keep up the great work!

newber – I agree with you, this song is always so much fun to play! And I thought you played it very well! Great timing and note clarity. Keep working on building speed, you’ll def get to 100%!

emiliano – Perhaps the perfect song for your dog to take a nap to, lol! Excellent feel and articulation of the notes and chords. And quite an interesting take on rubato – a lot of space. I dig it.

kirpuff – Well done, Sara! So I’ve got two things to share with you. First, I’d keep your middle finger fretted on the D note (string 3, fret 2) in the first bar of the B melody (and when it repeats) so that it helps increase the sustain of that chord/phrase.

Second, try to keep the tempo consistent between A and B. We want to seamlessly groove A to B to A.

[lhamilton]

Thanks, Stephen! I really struggled with two or three of the bar chords (strangely they were dead easy on the Baritone uke) so found this piece good training. I was looking for a way to make the second part just a bit different and thought of the harmonics — and took long enough getting the bar chords possible that my right-hand thumbnail grew a bit longer so the harmonics were easier to do). And pinch-harmonics impress my guitar-playing son :-). I’ll work on those half-notes more.

[ramiro]

Thanks for the feedback @Stephencox! The muted strums were and still are really tricky for me.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by ramiro.

[ldarrow]

Andrew, thanks for feedback. I do feel a need for working on bar chords. Not just the form, but I do not believe I have developed the needed strength in my fingers. During my practices I always play ‘Dream a Little dream of Me’ a few times to help with that since it uses many bar chords. I will take your advice and and the walk down section of “into the Maze” to help improve form. I was really nervous as it was my first participation. Was really fun and I see how beneficial it is in many ways.

[joe150]

Andrew , the truth is I am to dumb, to be able to make it work right. So, I got am Apple Mac Pro laptop, well i got to learn how to use it. I always heard that apple is easier to use. Hope fully when I get the lap top going, I I can use the tabs .

[rockmyuke]

I absolutely agree with your recommendation to slow down Melody B. I stuck with the faster pace to see if I could meet the challenge, but slowing down initially will ultimately allow me to play it cleaner as I speed up. Thanks for the feedback and for your wonderful website!
Dennis

[bibilele]

@Stephen Thanks a lot for your feedback and your tips! I love being part of this community. 🙂

[myukemylife]

@Stephen Many thanks for the tips and the feedback🙏🏻☺️

[Author]

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