[Andrew]

My pleasure! Here is the feedback Steven ( @SGWarren ) left for Johanna for those who didn’t get a chance to see/read it 🙂

Hi Johanna, I’m glad you’re enjoying the course and I have to say you really have nailed the melodic etude!! The key thing is that it feels natural and I can see from your playing that it totally does. It has that all-important fluid, rhythmic flow and as long as you can achieve that it really doesn’t matter how you get there. The parallel hand position is just to help ensure that the single string picks are nice and clean and don’t catch the strings either side. Sure, your hand isn’t quite as parallel as mine but you are hitting those single strings really cleanly so it doesn’t matter that you are ‘less parallel’.

The same goes for the curled fingers. As these fingers are pretty much redundant with this technique it doesn’t really matter what you do with them – just whatever feels comfortable (for some strange reason fully extended ballerina fingers feel comfortable to me!). Everyone will have slightly different physiology so as long as you’re achieving the desired result (which you totally are) then just go with what feels right. It certainly won’t affect things as you progress with the course and won’t be a disadvantage in any way.

The slightly larger range of movement with your strumming isn’t a problem either. Your hand movements are still very well controlled and the thumb and forefinger are correctly doing most of the work. The hardest part of this piece is controlling the index down strum to just catch two strings at a time and you have totally mastered that!

So, in summary I’m loving what you’re doing! It looks and sounds great so just keep doing what you’re doing. I’d love to see your rendition of Out in the North when you get to that stage 😉

Keep up the great work,
Steven

P.s. that Flight Victoria sounds great too – lovely uke 🙂

[Andrew]

@lynnwatson – Well played! Watch out for the half note in the last bar before theme 3, as I’m hearing you play it as a quarter note. Try to count 3, 4 when you hit it to not rush the note. But overall, your timing is excellent. From here, I’d increase the tempo by 5 or 10 bpm to start challenging yourself to go faster to build speed. Keep up the great work!

[Andrew]

@johanna2509 – I fixed your post 🙂 I removed Ode to Joy since it’s not a choice for this challenge, but you can def share it here.

[Andrew]

@samash07 – No need to worry, Sami you did great! I have 2 tips for you. The big thing I’d work on is timing. When I recorded it, I tapped my foot to help keep the timing as steady as possible. You can try that, but also play along with me in the tab player. My playing will act as a guide to keep you steady. And try sections at a time – like 8 bars.

#2 – Watch out for the rhythm in bar 14. Double check the video lesson as I went over that with counting as it’s tricky.

[Andrew]

@aloooy – Well played, Marlo! Good feel & phrasing throughout! One thing I wanna point out – and it’s the hardest part of this song IMO. Compare the first bar of theme 1 to theme 2. Look at the end of it, in theme 1 the pick up starts on beat 4 and in theme 2 it starts before beat 4. The latter feels very unnatural, b/c it’s quite syncopated. Double check the lesson video for that part, I remember going over it quite a bit cause it’s tricky.

[Andrew]

@cncamacho – So cool to see you play Robin’s song! And you played it beautifully, well done! 🙂

@effortless – I like the changes! The strum section sounds much more developed and keeps the flow going from the fingerpicking section. Great work!

[Andrew]

Glad to have you on-board, @yeryspl 🙂

[Andrew]

Bravo, Daniel! Performance has a great feel, you’ve made excellent progress. Keep up the great work! 🙂

[Andrew]

Thanks, Art! Please add that request here.

[Andrew]

@pennwarr – I like your song, Penny! It’s got a very cute folksy sound to it 🙂

[Andrew]

Hi Chuckie, I think Robin hit the nail on the head. Keep at it, everything gets easier in time 🙂

[Andrew]

@pennwarr – Your video is set to private, can you make it public?

And thanks for the heads up Robin, I fixed her link 🙂

[Andrew]

Matt taught a live lesson on this topic. He shared lots of good tips for memorizing music 🙂

[Andrew]

Happy to help, but can you upload the video to YouTube and share the link? Our upload feature is only for photos.

[Andrew]

Grace, you can work on anything you want to in a private lesson. And if you’re not sure what to work on, we can help figure that out with you. Stephen teaches our private lessons 🙂

[Author]

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