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AndrewKeymasterAnne, my heart weighs heavy for you. Your family will be in my prayers.
March 27, 2019 at 11:59 am in reply to: Participate in the March 2019 Member Challenge – Irish Songs! #25931
AndrewKeymaster@hotmilktea – Here is what Katie said 🙂
Great performance! Singing and playing the fingerpicking part can be difficult due to the extra embellishments that don’t follow the melody. Because singing and playing at the same time can be difficult to navigate, so here are few tips that I give my students in order for them improve. It is common to forget to support your singing as you play because your concentration is divided. As you continue to practice, be mindful of your breath and make sure you are breathing deeply from your diaphragm. Focus on filling the bottom part of your lungs first, the sides expanding the ribcage, and then the very top. Keep your shoulders down and relaxed.
From there, over annunciate your consonants and open up on the vowel. This will help with your breath support as well because your air will not escape out of your mouth as quickly leaving more air in your lungs to support your voice.
As you are singing, imagine the air coming up and out of the top of your head like a dolphin instead of out of your mouth. That helps you not to over sing and use less air. Place your hand over your mouth and sing “gloria” like you normally would. You will probably feel lots of hot air against your hand. Now try it again but this time think about the air coming out of the top of your head instead of your mouth. You’ll feel less hot air hitting your hand as you sing. People have a tendency to imagine their air coming straight out of their mouths while singing and use too much air. That cuts their phrases short. It also might help imagining a candle in front of you as you sing. The goal is to imagine the flame barely flickering in front of your lips while you sing. I wish I could make video for you because this would make more sense, but I hope that this helped. Let me know if you need anything else.
AndrewKeymasterOh, wow that’s nice!
March 24, 2019 at 5:22 pm in reply to: Participate in the March 2019 Member Challenge – Irish Songs! #25892
AndrewKeymasterlaurasil – Beautiful playing! Here is a video on some ideas to vary your strum attack to produce timbres. And here is the lesson on the mechanics behind the “flick” strum I mentioned.
AndrewKeymasterHi guys, we released the lesson today! 🙂 All of the songs Anne suggested where awesome, but in the end we chose, “When I’m Sixty Four” by The Beatles because it has such a fun, playful melody!
Hope you enjoy it, Anne!
March 20, 2019 at 5:24 pm in reply to: Participate in the March 2019 Member Challenge – Irish Songs! #25868
AndrewKeymastererino7 – Courtney, that was amazing! It was an honor sharing that in our email and social last week 🙂 I also sent it to Katie, she loved it!
So there’s only one thing that kind of stuck out a little bit to me, in terms of me offering feedback. So you used a 3 finger approach for fingerpicking, which is totally cool, but if you watch the video, notice how your ring finger sticks straight out. Try to keep it curved in (like your other fingers; and as you can see in the photo). This way it’s always in position to be engaged, which will be ideal for when you tackle a 4 finger pieces.

deadbuggy – That was awesome, Sara! You aced the first melody, clean playing and a great feel/timing. So I’d turn your focus towards the second melody. Take it a little bit slower and work it up to speed. But overall, awesome job and the tone of your uke is beautiful!
becky7777 – Beautiful playing! I think your focus should be on transitions. So when I listen back, I hear quite a few pauses between phrases. Target these areas and practice transitioning from one phrase to the next. But bravo on this, keep up the great work!
gstriph – Here is a video with a couple tips on timing for you 🙂
stianukulele – Wow! That was beautiful and I love the bass! Very well done 🙂
stinyuke – Bravo to you and Robin! Absolutely gorgeous rendition. I will definitely be sharing this in our email on Friday 🙂
casadot349 – Bravo! Here are 2 lessons I want you to check out. And I made a short video for you too 🙂
1) Proper Left Hand Form
2) Proper Right Hand Formcncamacho – Well done! So for the Chord Melody intro, I’d focus on getting the transitions from one phrase to the next, as well as the timing, a little smoother. So what you want to do is just slow it down and play along with either the metronome or the tab player. Work on one or two bars at a time.
And I know you know exactly how to practice because the finger-picked vocal part was excellent. Great timing in that section! So a little bit more work for the first part and you’ll be rocking it!
hotmilktea – Very impressive! Playing wise, that rocked! I don’t have any suggestions for improvement there. Vocal wise, it was a bit pitchy on those high notes. I don’t sing, so I’m not really sure what you should be working on other than suggesting ear training. But I’ll send this to Katie and I’m sure she can provide something more constructive for you.
AndrewKeymasterWelcome, bohous!
AndrewKeymasterWow! So beautiful 🙂
AndrewKeymasterSo the harmony is only meant for accompaniment and is not taught in the course. The course only covers the melody.
The melody note on beat 1 in bar 2 is a G note, played at the 3rd fret. The harmony chord (G7) also contains the note G, but one octave lower, which you will learn later in the course in: Notes on the G String.
The notes are as follows:
5 (D – 1)
7 (B – 2)
5 (F – 3)
0 (G – 4)Which make up a G7 chord:
G (1) B (3) D (5) F (b7)
AndrewKeymasterAhh, yes you are reading it backwards.
0575 – string 4 to 1. 🙂
As you fret chords, work your way from 4 to 1.
AndrewKeymasterHmm, I’m not sure I’m following. Every note for that melody is played in position one, never moving beyond fret 3. So each finger has its own assigned fret.
0 = open
1 = index
2 = middle
3 = ringAm I misunderstanding your ?
AndrewKeymasterHi Alousia, those were made using the old version of Guitar Pro. Formating of tabs were slightly different using the old version, which may explain the difference you’ve noticed. Unfortunately, I can not find a feature to edit the number of lines per page, only bars per line.
An idea would be to print the tabs on a sheet larger than 8×11 (I believe that’s the standard size). You can set a printer’s setting to fill the page, which would expand the size of the bars. Perhaps a specialty print shop has such a printer.
AndrewKeymasterThx for the suggestions! So for number one, that is already built in, you can find the search bar on the forum homepage, above “Introduce Yourself”.

2) I don’t believe this is possible. This forum is run using bbpress, which unfortunately, is pretty bare bones. Other forums you may have used have some really cool features that I hope they integrate in the future. But, I can double check.
AndrewKeymasterPlease post a harp/uke duet, that would be SO COOL! And welcome, glad to have one of stinyuke’s friends join us 🙂
AndrewKeymasterWelcome, Sara! Glad you are enjoying the site 🙂
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