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Hmm was on public, but I think I didn’t publish it. I’ll get the hang of this sometime. Let me know if it works
I think it sounds great! I can hear the hoarseness in your voice, but I’m glad you’re feeling better!
Your rhythm hits are on two and four and your timing is fine throughout. Having the hits on two and four keep the rhythm feel flowing. I don’t think you need to change anything.
And I dig the two bar break with the harmonic 🙂 By the way I like the song, I’ve never heard it before, who is it by?
Hi, Andrew,
Here is the link for my performance of this month’s piece.I am submitting it early as we will be away for a few days. The performance is far from perfect and is certainly not up to full speed. I still have difficulties with a several tricky chord changes even though I have worked hard on them for a long time. Polishing this piece and getting it up to speed is going to be a long term project. I seem to have poor muscle control on the fretting hand. It is easy to spread the fingers when the back of the hand is facing. However, when the hand is placed over the fret board, I find it difficult to spread the fingers, especially the second and third fingers. The pinkie also wants to lay down on stretches instead of being up on the tip. Do you have exercises that I could work on to improve this?
Attached, you will find my practise schedule. Do you have any recommendations about it?
Thank you very much for taking the time to look at my submission and for your comments.Regards,
Vida Fenton
I’m proud of you Vida, that was awesome! You are doing a great job and I continually hear you improving. Btw, bonus points for that practice schedule, very well thought out!
I think some of the areas that you struggled in was due to work around fingerings that you imposed. For example, bar 11 and 12 – it’s much easier if you play out of the full bar chord.
Now this is hard because it requires a lot of finger strength and as you’re playing a larger instrument, that requirement is amplified. If you go back and watch how I play it and teach it, notice how my way has a lot less movement than yours. When we tackle difficult songs like this one, we always want to approach playing in the easiest way possible, or the least amount of work. And this was a tip I learned from watching tutorials from the greats, specifically Joe Pass.
As far as the issue with the pinky finger, the best exercises I can direct you to are found in the lesson for Increasing Left Hand Reach.
Truly great job this month! I’m looking forward to seeing everyone else’s results 🙂
Hi, Andrew,
Thanks for the tip concerning bars 11 and 12. I tried it out tonight and found that it works very well. I just need to leave the barred fingers in place for that passage. This is no problem for me. Playing a baritone uke with low D tuning makes these pieces harder for me to do. String 4 is an octave lower than it would otherwise be, so I need to find alternate positions for notes ordinarily used on string 4 in your arrangements. Otherwise, things do not sound right. This was not too much of an issue with the song Mr. Sandman, but it is with the Brahms Lullaby that I started working on. I try to find alternates that are easiest to reach.Hi, Andrew,
If you have time, please have a look at my version of Brahms Lullaby and let me know if there are better alternates for the notes on the 4th string.
Hi, Andrew,
Here is my completion of the September Challenge. I’m satisfied with the progress that I accomplished with 2 string fretting and plucking the correct strings while not looking (for the most part). I did particularly well with moving down and up the board. Please critique me mercilessly if I’m still not moving from the 4-4 fret to the 5-6 fret correctly. I said I didn’t want to play this anymore but I’ll reconsider if someday you could instruct on playing the original George M Cohen piece. Ha.Hi Andrew,
I do not think i followed the plan due to lack of practicing time. just tried to play it along and tried to remember notes, chord progression, and not pressing too hard.
Here is a video, I am still happy to finish it with couple of mistakes in it.
Hi Vida, I had to delete your image, as that sheet music is a premium member asset only. But, I did take a look at it and can suggest that bars 7 and 11 would (not counting the pickup bar) need a rewrite as they are very hard to play. Everything else sounds great and plays fine.
Excellent job Rickey! I feel you on the not wanting to play it anymore, I too feel like after extensively practicing a piece! That transition is fine now, good work on that. I would continue to work on your dexterity of the left hand. Sometimes you use one finger to play multiple notes in a phrase, but using more than one finger would be more efficient. Overall, the piece sounds really pleasant, and you played it very well!
Wow, that was fantastic ser_ser! The feel of the first five melodies is spot-on, very very well played. I would focus your attention to the last three melodies. If you can play this song that well with limited practice, imagine what you could do if you set up a structured practice schedule to tackle it.
Hi Andrew
That was great challenge and busy month. I improved all previous songs and I can play Games of Thrones smoothly now. I also learnt beautiful Magical Waltz which was my main goal for this month and I will keep practicing to improve it.
My evidence that I can play Magical Waltz at 50-60% is 3 minutes 45 seconds long (almost 200 MB) and it doesn’t load to the server though so I pass now because (will be busy and have to stop upload). I wish good luck in the draw to other participants.
Thank you for your great arrangements, Andrew!
Finally! I recorded this just under the wire. Just had so much other stuff going on…finally got my plane in the air after solving some horrendous ground handling problems, and my instruments kept crapping out on me. Enough excuses…
For this challenge:
Song choice… too basic… by the time I had worked on it for a couple of weeks, I never wanted to hear it again. This tune shouldn’t take a month to learn
Practice schedule…for me, the 5 – 10 minutes per day was ok, but I think i would have done better with a more aggressive schedule. I have made more progress on more difficult material in less time..I must like the pressure. *grin*
The back beat..yes that came much more easily after a week or so
The performance……..Welll…let’s just say I’m not quite ready to play the Wawa Hotel.Excellent job James! Timing is spot-on and the BackBeat sounds great. The only suggestion I have for you is that the second to last strum in each measure falls on an upbeat (& of 3). A good rule of thumb is to strum down on the downbeat (1 2 3 4) and up on the upbeat (&’s). Overall, very well played! This is a great Rhythm skill to have, good job!
Here is my end of month update;
So I haven’t had nearly as much time as normal to practise, work has been bonkers! Having said that, I feel comfortable with using 3 fingers for fingerpicking which is what I set out to do this challenge. As expected, I managed to get to the intermediate piece and a video of my progress is below.
One thing I’ve noticed with my own playing is that I tend to support the uke with my pinky finger on my right hand, so I made a conscious effort to pull this finger back this month but it did make the uke a little unsteady which you can see in the video. I need to try and work out a comfortable position where the uke is supported as I progress my playing so this is something I will need to work on.
Overall I really enjoyed this challenge and it’s made me focus more on a particular technique which if I continue practising should help in the future 🙂
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