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@brettboy, so sorry to hear about your wrist, that’s such a huge bummer on multiple levels! I hope you heal up ASAP and it isn’t too painful now. 🤗
This is just a funny thought mostly, but @Andrew, what if you composed a right-handed etude just for this occasion and added it to the challenge? That would be so funny and it’s interesting to consider if that’s possible… but your idea probably makes more sense. 😅😆
Wishing you swift healing, Brettboy!! 😊🙏❤️
Also I know that I’ve nigh on vanished but let’s just say I’ve had some things going on that are very distracting. 😅😅😆😆 Sigh. Haven’t even started this challenge, I need to get on it!! 😅😬🎶🎵🎼
I wanted to share this little snippet of this piano tune I’ve been working on for a couple months. This part took me sooooo long to learn and I’m now starting to focus more on dynamics and fluidity and things with it, so still not perfect but I thought I’d share since I’m proud of my efforts and sharing it around! And now with my fellow music enthusiast friends! I hope you enjoy! And I plan to record the whole thing and share once it’s all smoothed out!! Thank you if you listen! 🥰☺️🙏
@annyuke, gorgeous playing! Was it you who said you had only been playing six months or less? Either way, very lovely playing!!
And @Andrew actually just announced that they’re doing a special challenge during the summer months with an amazing prize, an acoustic-electric ukulele! Also you don’t want to miss all the fun because the summer challenges are often extra quirky and unique!
Also with sight reading tabs / music, that definitely also takes practice! I’m not even the best at it and I’ve been playing piano since I was 8 years old and ukulele for the last five years! These things take time and practice for sure but you’re doing an amazing job even so far!! Keep going!! ☺️🙏🎼
@gi_gi_, thank you so much, my friend!! Your take was so beautiful, definitely a lot more fluid than mine was! Very pretty! Thank you, having piano back in my life, too, has been a very special thing! But it certainly hasn’t connected me to so many lovely people the way ukulele has! 🥰
@leb397, your duet was very magical!! Beautifully played! 😀I know all the other entries are equally amazing! Soon, I shall have more time! 😂
I can’t tell you how excited I was to see these new features! I was in the midst of party-pocalypse (and other issues) when you shared this, but was especially pumped to see the chord library feature! But all of them! Also, I feel like you added drop menus on the site. I don’t think that was there before – that they opened when you just hover over them. I may have imagined that though.
Thank you, @Andrew, these are all great!! 😀
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This month has been absolutely insane for me, but somehow I managed to practice Red is the Rose enough to get it fairly passable, as I throw this together last second (as per usual)! Such an incredibly beautiful version of this tune by Andrew (as @Gi_Gi_ described perfectly) and quite tricky to play, honestly! But this is definitely one I am going to keep playing and perfecting.
A few notes (not entirely musical ones):
– Wow, was my lens ever smudged or something! It also was incredibly hot and humid in there and you can almost see it on camera. Also I recorded that over Zoom, so hopefully it’s okay…
– Watching the video back, my finger positioning on the fretboard was pret-ty wild (in a bad way), LOL! Have I learned nothing from Matt?!?!?!? I was fretting on the upper end of the fret (from underneath!), especially noticeable on the 2020 chord. I need to pay more attention to that; I’m getting rusty.
– Sorry for the pauses, but considering I was sight-reading parts of it and some mega-fumbles, I think it sounds pretty a’ight (alright)!
– However, in my opinion, I nailed the trills at least!
– I really look forward to going back and listening to some of the entries this month. I could see just by the descriptions that there’s some great ones to hear! Wonderful work by everyone! 🥰‘Kay, here it is! Thank you so much for these challenges and so glad I could still make this one, despite the insanity of life! 🙂
I didn’t realize, but now you can generate custom thumbnails directly on YouTube itself! So, I used a creepy AI-generated version of me that looks kinda like me. How did it know, my face wasn’t visible?! :O
Anyway, thank you for listening and for these challenges that keep me connected to uke in the best way! Hearts to you all! 🥰
True, Andrew, that’s an excellent point! I think I just got overly excited seeing that and that popped into my head, but true you already have a classical course! I already started the Pathways course a bit! 🙂
Ohhhh, okay, with the song titles! I’ll have to look again at that, not sure how I missed it!
Thank you kindly! 🙂
Man, this is really neat! I was very excited and surprised to see this, but I’m definitely going to give this a whirl! Awesome idea!!!
I had a thought – could you also do a version of this with classical tunes only? I think that would be so awesome. Beginner to advanced classical tunes to teach techniques and build a classical repertoire. That would be lit, as the kids say.
I had one question, @Andrew, but do you think it would be good to list the song titles instead of “Song 1, Song 2, Song 3, etc.?” in the course menu? Maybe that would be way too cluttered, though. Just a thought. I just think it would be cool to see all the songs listed on each level of songs (beginner, intermediate, advanced). But I may be wrong and that would be too messy to format it that way.
Really looking forward to trying this! I probably still would start from the beginner level just to build a feeling of “success” in my mind before trying the harder levels. 😂
Such a great discussion on practice! I think it’s true with the idea of walking away from a song and coming back to it later, but I also don’t know the science behind it! I think I’ve heard it said that after 30 minutes or so of practice, there is diminishing returns with how your brain processes / imbibes information (I watched an expert talk on this once and that concept also applies to studying). I’m not sure that’s always the case, though, because there have been times that I’ve played instruments for hours, sometimes many hours, but then I do feel like I reach a “threshold” where I start making more mistakes and it can get frustrating, but for me I am okay with that because, like misterbones said, when I come back to it later, my brain actually did compute / retain a lot more than I thought. But then there is also the risk of “learning mistakes” if you keep playing while messing up in a brain-fog of too much playing. Just my thoughts on / experience with that.
@annyuke, I agree with others that your playing is amazing for such a short time and, in general, such a lovely take on that tune! And @misterbones, such a beautiful take on Red is the Rose! You play that one so delicately and precisely. I, like a bunch of others, am also trying to learn that one. That’s right, I didn’t wait until the very last day of the challenge to *start* learning a challenge tune, but started several days early! Maybe I’m learning. Well, maybe my aging heart can’t take that much stress anymore. 😂😆Haha!! The thing with using a flower to pick a tune, @brettboy, so glad you liked that idea! That image was just hilarious for some reason and I could so clearly picture you doing that! 😂 @leb397, mayhaps you could also use that method at some point! And thank you – there have been so many ups and downs in the past few years especially, but it has led me to a deeper connection to my Christian faith, to God, so for that I am very grateful. Whew, there have been some doozies of “events” though, the last few years. As C.S. Lewis says, “pain is God’s megaphone” and that’s so true (to quote exactly, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”). *Anyway,* I am really grateful for this community and all the kindness, support, and so much ukulele joy and fun we’ve shared through it all! And looking forward to hearing a bunch more tunes this month!! 🥰
@grannieannie, thank you so much for that, for your encouragement and kind words!! I really appreciate that so much! Sorry for the extreme delay in reply, too! 😂
To say I was thrilled by this gift is really an understatement! It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received! I think because I’ve played piano since I was a child and never really stopped, except the last five years or so when the ukulele took its place because I lost my childhood piano – it was broken and I had to sell it because it was too hard to move, as well. But I’m so glad that happened, otherwise I probably never would’ve found the ukulele, which has become such an incredibly special part of my life and helped me make so many friends all over the USA and the world, which is so amazing! I would say, the ukulele is more of an “emotional support instrument” and an instrument I can lounge and play – and piano is more like an instrument that I can play more “effortlessly,” instinctively, because I’ve just played it so much more than ukulele. Around 27 years (piano) versus 5 years (ukulele). I never learned guitar or anything, so ukulele was the first stringed instrument I ever tried learning – not counting me buying a garbage-tier violin, then breaking it multiple times and hurting everyone’s ears with it. 😂😂😂
Anyway, thank you so much! I’ll have more piano tunes to share here at some point! I’m working on Mozart’s Turkish March (Rondo Alla Turca, I think it’s originally called) right now. I knew sections of it since middle school, but am attempting to learn the rest now! It’s really fun, but also incredibly tricky! There’s a part near the end that is borderline impossible with the speed, so we’ll see what happens. I may need to modify it to suit my skill level. 😂
But the ukulele will always be a part of my life and I’m so grateful for that! Oh, I also was going to say, for me instruments are almost as much a social thing as a creative thing – both piano and ukulele. Piano is very special because two other people in my family are learning to play, including my sweet niece, so we are bonding through that. And I wrote a song (The Night of the Dangerous Camel – I think I posted here) that my brother wrote lyrics for (as his birthday present to me in May) so we’ll record that at some point and when we do, I’ll share that here, too. Also my niece wants to learn it for next year’s piano recital, so I have to work on writing that down ASAP! Lastly, to wrap up this essay, ukulele is a social instrument in that half of my experience with it is an excuse to meet new friends online and talk about ukulele as much as (if not more than) playing it. That’s why my skills have not increased very much with it, but I still love it! The End! 😂
Ah, I was wondering if y’all were doing a Live Lesson this month!
Love this topic! I’ll just say does anyone actually try to learn ukulele through chord exercises and scales? Let’s be real here. 😂 I enjoy playing scales on piano, but on ukulele they don’t really make sense at all because they don’t follow a consistent pattern that I’ve noticed. They are useful, but unless you’re a professional musician, ain’t nobody learning scales! But maybe I’m projecting.
I feel like you learn just as much, if not more, music theory and techniques through songs than exercises because almost always you’re tackling multiple technical challenges at once. But then, you do have to know a given technique before you can use it in the context of a song…
I look forward to you clarifying all this, Matt! Thank ye! 🙂
So many great choices indeed! 🙂
@brettboy, I suggest… go outside and pluck a flower. Pull out the pedals, alternating between saying “Kemp’s” and “La Vie” with each one you pull. The last pedal you pull is the tune you play!!! (That’s not usually what that is used to decide, LOL!) Also, if you do that, you should 100% film it and have whatever song wins playing over that footage (or a picture within a picture)! This is probably not helpful at all, but this is what I want to happen and that image amuses me way too much! 😂Not sure what tune I’ll choose, either! I just know, I’m definitely not waiting until the last day of the challenge again. 😆
@brettboy, thank you kindly!! I am steadily feeling better but it’s an ongoing challenge for me, honestly. More challenging than these challenges! Man, I was bummed to miss this one, though. Just really bad timing. But yes, thank you! 🙂
@grannieannie, thank you so much, friend! It’s a complicated situation that sadly I can’t detail here at all, certain aspects of it. I can say, some of it has to do with my anxiety, which is really the hardest part and the physical symptoms of that, along with migraines. I am feeling better today, but still struggling with the anxiety issues. But yes, ice cream solves all ails! 😂 Though it doesn’t count, the work I did toward learning that tune and knowing I would have made it if what happened didn’t happen, I am counting it in my heart! I will definitely join for June!! 🥰Man, this really stinks, I had a very unfortunate personal issue happen today (on the day I was going to record my usual, magical, last-second entry), so I’m not going to make this challenge. This is the first challenge I’ve missed in like four (or is it five?) years. But unlike @brettboy, I didn’t have perfect attendance from the beginning, so I guess I have to go easy on myself. It stinks because it’s a K’ challenge, but physically I can’t record tonight now. Heap that onto the steaming dumpster fire that is today (not the entire day, just the second half). When I can pray and pack literally an entire pint of ice cream into my body, then all will be well again. 😔
Really looking forward to going back and listening to more of the amazing entries others have shared, along with the epic ones I’ve already seen! Beautiful work by all!! 🥰
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@lhamilton, that was absolutely gorgeous! So beautiful and mystical with the whistling! And the baritone! Very lovely! 🥰
@grannieannie, I feel your pain – quite literally – with The Skye Boat Song. 😂 Some of those chords were pretty painful and really tricky, not going to lie! But definitely worth the effort because it sounds SO lovely once you’ve got it!To be honest, I watched that lesson when it first came out, but then didn’t rewatch it before learning the song tonight, so there may have been tips Matt gave to make it all smoother / easier, but I just didn’t have time to rewatch it. Boy, some of those were tricksy contortions, though! I have played songs in A Major (?) before because I love how it sounds on uke (though it is not always as intuitive or natural as other key signatures – is that how you say it? LOL), so some of those I knew already. I also did end up doing that “creepy” D chord because it was the easiest way, the awkward partial bar that then turned into the B Minor chord variation? It was quite painful and uncomfortable for me, but the other approaches really interrupted the flow a lot. It was good practice being uncomfortable with that, though!
I learned this entire song tonight AND recorded it. How? I’m not sure. It’s so very beautiful, though. Matt always does an incredible job laying out the harmonies of a tune – just making any song sound extra pretty on uke. If I have time on Thursday, I may try to get a better take, because I’m not 100% happy with this one, though considering how quickly this came together, it is okay! 😂
Here’s my take on The Skye Boat Song:
Really looking forward to going back and listening to the awesome entries that Annie mentioned! Thank you so much for this challenge, @Andrew, and all the hard work you and your team always do! And all the incredible music of course! 🥰
