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Hi Rock Class 101 Community!
We are back with site member challenge #72! WOW, there has now been over 3,900+ members participating in our challenges! If you’ve sat on the sidelines, please join us for this month’s challenge! Challenges are a fun way to stay motivated and a great way to meet fellow ukulele players who are passionate about learning and becoming better players. 🙂
And I offer feedback on ALL submissions!
Please watch the video above and read instructions below carefully for details/instructions on this month’s challenge.
Pick 1 from the following 4 RC101 Classical Lessons:
1) “Swan Lake” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky * – Learn to play this enchanting melody using the rest stroke technique.
* Taught in its entirety for FREE!
2) “Study in B Minor” – Fernando Sor * – Learn a beautiful classical piece fingerpicked using the free stroke technique.
* Taught in its entirety for FREE!
Note: This lesson requires Low G ukulele.
3) “Danse Paysanne” – Ferdinando Carulli * – Learn three ways to add expression and emotion to your performance!
* Taught in its entirety for FREE!
Note: This lesson requires Low G ukulele.
4) “Adelita” – Francisco Tárrega * – This beautiful piece allows you to showcase rubato, dynamics, and the two main picking techniques of the Classical ukulele – rest stroke and free stroke.
* Taught in its entirety for FREE!
Note: This lesson requires Low G ukulele.
** If you need assistance with how to record yourself check out our FREE course on recording audio/video and/or private message me and I will be happy to help you out. **
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GOALS FOR MEMBER CHALLENGE:
1. Beginner Level: Be able to play one of the lessons as shown by Andrew smoothly and in time. Do not worry about trying to play fast; slow and steady wins the race.Recommended Piece: “Study in B Minor” OR “Danse Paysanne”
2. Intermediate to Advanced Level: Be able to play the lesson as shown by Andrew smoothly, in time, and at or close to the original piece’s tempo.
Recommended Pieces: “Swan Lake” [INTERMEDIATE] OR “Adelita” [ADVANCED]
3. Participation Goal: 40 Rock Class 101 Member Participant Videos/MP3 posted.
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GROUND RULES FOR PARTICIPATION:
1. Post your Youtube, Vimeo, or Soundcloud links of you playing 1 of the 4 RC101 Classical Lessons anytime between Wednesday, March 1st until Friday, March 31st, 11:59pm EDT.
The upload feature on the site only supports photos. Members must host their own files. Creating an account is easy and free 🙂 Here are the links to create an account:
YouTube (For Video) – https://www.youtube.com/create_channel
SoundCloud (For Audio) – https://soundcloud.com/signin
2. Submit individually, as a reply, IN THIS POST.
3. Feel free to submit more than one video for the challenge, but additional videos will not count as extra entries into the raffle for the prize.
4. Have fun and don’t be intimidated by this challenge!!! Use this challenge to help you set goals and complete them by a deadline. You can also use this as an opportunity to chat with your fellow Rock Class 101 members and share tips or tricks on this challenge that you think are useful.
5. You must perform the entire piece to receive an entry into the prize raffle. Performance must be submitted by the deadline listed (in #1) above to gain an entry in the raffle, as well as, to receive feedback.
* Note: In my opinion, it is better to show progress versus perfection with these challenges. So if you are a beginner and can only play the first couple of measures. That is completely ok. If you play two more measures of the next challenge piece than you did the previous one, you are on track to getting better. This is what these challenges are about… you learning ukulele and getting better. Remember we are all here to support you no matter what your current playing level is.
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COMMON FAQs:
1) The prize and the challenge is open to the entire world!
2) Premium membership is NOT required to participate, but will make participation easier as it gains you complete access to the full video lessons, tabs, and the on-screen tab viewer.
3) Basic membership (free) is required to submit a reply on this forum post. You can sign up for Basic Membership HERE.
4) To post YouTube video links (in which they appear embedded on the forum), simply copy and past the video URL in its own line. For example:
YouTube URL
5) If you live in the Continental U.S., we will ship the giveaway ukulele to you for FREE! If you live outside of the Continental U.S., there will be a shipping fee ranging between $40 USD to $80 USD. This fee will be collected by Uke Republic. You are also responsible for any custom fees or duties.
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Giveaway Rules:
There will be 1 winner, selected by random drawing on April 5th. To qualify to win, you must submit your audio and/or video links of your playing by the deadline listed above.
Grand Prize:
1) $249 Grand Prize: Ohana TK-70R Solid Spruce Top, Rosewood Tenor Ukulele
_______________THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR!
Uke Republic: https://www.ukerepublic.com/
Let’s crush this challenge!
WoW, I’ve been hoping you would have a tenor as a prize… it’s a beauty too. On to my 12th challenge in a row. 😊
Good luck everyone.hello! I started practicing Swan Lake yesterday, this is what I have so far:
I’m going to keep practicing the higher parts (where it goes to the 12th and 13th fret), and I am still struggling with the part where the ring finger does a pull-off from the 8th to 7th fret, so I will be practicing this too, so that I’ll hopefully learn to play it smoothly with better timing.
For this attempt I just went with the tabs and the video, but I might share an improved version later this month if I find the time to take the new course on Classical technique, but I still wanted to record where I’m at right now (even though there are so many mistakes), because to be honest, sometimes I waste so much time telling myself it needs to be better that I end up missing the challenge deadlines!!!
hope everyone has a good March, I love seeing everyone playing their ukuleles 🙂
thank you to everyone at RockClass101, my friends and family are legit soo impressed with my progress!!!! 🙂
Hi, I’m looking forward to this classical challenge, and would love to do the Adelita, but I feel that in order to fully imbibe the Classical Course I should probably practice the other pieces first. So, I’m wondering if the April challenge might also be a Classical challenge….if so….I could save the Adelita for April…..just a thought?…..thanks, Dianna…..
It’s okay if it’s is not….I’m just trying to decide how I will approach this.
@sarahmusic – Great playing, Sarah! For that pull-off on 8 to 7, try using your pinky to ring finger for it. This way, you assign an individual finger to a fret:
5th fret notes: index
6th fret notes: middle
7th fret notes: ring
8th fret notes: pinkyWe call this playing out of position 5 (frets 5-8). I also call it playing out of a box. Doing this makes playing more efficient and eliminates awkward stretches, like playing 5 with index and overreaching to 8 with ring.
Check out this exercise. It’s all about playing in boxes. You can run it as a warm up tool plus, you can do it to a metronome to work on timing 🙂
For this exercise, I want you to focus a lot on using the pinky and building strength and dexterity in it.
@dianna – April challenge will have a different theme and is the start of our Spring Kanile’a giveaway 🙂awesome Andrew, thanks that’s definitely helpful. It’s really worth taking a moment to think about how to make the playing easier and more efficient by planning out which finger does what.
I’ll definitely check out the exercises for this, thank you!
I am a Premium Member
So I got to Swan Lake in the new Course and was learning that when the “Danse Paysanne” lesson came out, and I really fell in love with and had to learn it! This song is so much fun to play, thank you!
@Sarahmusic Sounds great so far! I hope you do end up posting a follow up video showing your improvements! 🙂@jbmills07 – Pacing was excellent, Justin. Great job on the accents and dynamics too!
And sorry the post disappeared. It ended up in the spam folder. I think it’s because you tagged Sarah and posted a video. Anytime folks do more than one, tag or video, it puts it in spam. Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to relax the spam protection rules. I wish there was!
@andrew thank you!
Also, I was wondering if me tagging was causing the problem! So in the future if I want to tag a fellow student/player should I just make a separate post for that?@dianna I honestly dont think you need to learn all the songs before you learn Adelita. Adelita has all the techniques so you could just do that one if that’s what you want to do. It is technically difficult but you can do it ☺️. I skipped straight to Adelita. I’d much rather practice a song I really want to learn to keep me motivated. Just a thought….
I am a Premium Member
I love this month’s music pieces, these melody sounds beautiful. The one I choose is “Study in B Minor”. I can describe my mood in this melody by color is light blue.
Here is my video entry~
@jbmills07 – Generally, doing that has placed it in spam. I just contacted their support team to see if we can relax some of these strict rules. Such as that and the ability for ya’ll to post more than one video at a time.
@erin99 – Beautifully played, bravo 👏@jbmills07 lovely playing. You embodied the classical course in your playing. So good. Louisa
@jbmills07 that was lovely! Lovel-ily played. 😊
Not sure what song I’ll go with myself. Honestly I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and intimidated by the course, more than I expected. Hopefully I can get passed that and learn one of these in time for this challenge, because one of my sub-goals this year is to join in on every monthly challenge. We’ll see what happens. 😳😅
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