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In other months, I feel slightly disappointed when a difficult bar – that I had to practice hundreds of times – only gets one shot in the recording in the end. Not this time! Repeating melody A three times for the recording with the slides and mordents while keeping the tempo and keeping it light was a real challenge… Sometimes I didn’t have enough fingers and other times I just had too many on the fretboard 😀
The scarecrow almost tripped over while dancing…
Thanks for this song, I really enjoyed learning the many little tricks in it, especially the flick strum. I don’t think I would have found this song among the many others if not included in this month’s challenge.
Not my best playing, but this is the best I could record – recording still freaks me out, even if without the video part 🙁
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Thank you so much Andrew!
First sentence: “Again, what I do is tricky…” and then “So it’s a really tricky technique…”
Wasn’t surprised. LOL
But it IS a cool technique. And a new one for me.
Definitely something that I first have to get into the muscle memory, then work on timing the fingers together, and then soften back for natural sound so it doesn’t stick out of the song too much.
Time to go back to my drills now… 😀Hi Andrew,
I’m working on “If I only had a brain”. I love how cheerful the song is but it really pushes me out of my usual finger picking comfort zone…
Would you mind explaining how you strum the first chord of bar 17 in the performance version? With the similar first chords of bars 13 and 15, I’m trying to fan-strum with the top of the nails of 3 or 4 fingers, but this technique doesn’t seem to work in bar 17 for me, while I really like the sound you can create there.
Thanks in advance. BiancaHi, already submitted Spanish Romance but now adding L-O-V-E. Looked simple, proved to be challenging especially when trying to record it. Only 2 weeks in with learning. The intro is sticking and the sound needs improvement at the more complex chords e.g. around the F#dim7 with the accidental dampening (too many fingers…).
This song got into my head on auto repeat so will keep playing it after March, too, and would like to see more songs in this style of arrangement. (In the hope that eventually, through the examples I could learn how to add chords to my favourite songs) Thank you! 🙂Thanks, @Andrew 😊
Looking forward to the next one from Christopher!The melody already stands out / sings on the top of the chords. Well done.
I’m also experimenting with L-O-V-E.
May I ask what you did for the fingering of Caug (x445) at the beginning of Melody B?
The video lesson shows barred 1 & then 2 on the G string. But Christopher is doing something different (something superhuman with 2-3-4 😅) Thanks
At the moment I’m simplifying by only playing the 2x 4s…Hello
Here’s me playing Spanish Romance. Such a great arrangement from Steven. Thank you!
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Thanks for the advice. I have to admit my first knee jerk reaction was “No, I don’t need slow practice, I know the notes already.”
But yesterday I played bar 12 & 14 very slowly a million times. That’s the part of going up 0-2-3-5-7-8-10-12 and I change to first finger on fret 7.
Here is the result of the trouble shooting:
1) sometimes I’m slow and I pick the note before my finger is actually properly on fret7. It’s a fraction of a second but affects the sound.
2) sometimes I’m there on time but not with the correct hand position. I compared how I’d do bar 14 if the piece started there to how I hold my hand if I play with bar 12 in front of it. Within this part I realised that
a) sometimes it’s my arm not moving with the hand and I just try to stretch from basic position
b) with fret7 and higher frets short nails matter more for good hand position and clearer sounds
c) I rubbed off part of the varnish by now and there is a visible spot on the back of the neck that is no longer glossy and slightly trips over my thumb when moving up the neck. I guess I’ll apply some oil there.I believe you could have guessed most of these but maybe it helps a fellow uke student with their next trouble shooting 🙂
P.S. do you have a maintenance guide for ukes?
@Stephen, thank you for the review.
I had the “gap” because when I practiced and moved up to the higher frets (using the pointing finger for fret 7 again) I often pulled the A string sideways, sometimes sliding down sideways from the neck completely… so I focused on not doing that and that spoilt what could have been a nice ritardando at the end of the Melody B… 🙁
Any tips what to practice apart from scales up and down?Thanks 😊
It’s a Kala Butterfly. Soprano so limited to 12 frets which makes it challenging sometimes… Changed strings to Martin Nylon standard ones as I find they give a nicer tone to classical style finger picking pieces.
(On the “strumming uke” I have Aquila Nylgut strings.)
