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Does it say in the first 17 pages what tuning the uke is supposed to be in? Maybe it has a picture of the uke with the string names?
I have three (budget) ukes I need setups on to lower the action mostly at the nut and I’m so tempted to get some files from StewMac to try it myself. I don’t know of any luthiers in my area and it’s almost not worth paying the price of getting each done when the ukes themselves were fairly inexpensive, but I know it can also make a world of difference in the intonation. I started to explore fret recrowning/filing tools and it started to get kind of overwhelming, LoL.
Maybe someday, I’ll be brave enough to try it. I figured that even if I messed one up, it’s not much of loss. What I really want to do is take a workshop or learning course on how to do setups on your own instruments and there’s one I found in California but it was over 400 miles away. 😭
Aloha, RC101 friends! 🤙🌺🌴🌊🏖️
Well, this week marks my one year anniversary of finding this wonderful site, its lessons, and community. I’ve come a long way in changing the way I practice and have learned so much, but I still have much more to learn!
I’ve never had any sense of rhythm, so when I try to play with feeling, my timing is all over the place, but when I turn on the metronome, I sound more like a robot. ::sigh:: Always a work in progress! I usually play along with the tab viewer in synthetic mode to keep me on track, but Andrew said that becomes a crutch, so I changed it to just the metronome (and sometimes still get off track). 😉
Please excuse the muted (missing) notes or buzzing…I promise I know this song inside and out by now, but I can’t seem to ever get a clean take. AND IT IS SO HOT in my apartment that I have three fans going.
I AM A PREMIUM MEMBER.
p.s. – Andrew (or Stephen), before you say anything about the first chord in bar 16 sounding funky, I don’t know what happened there, but that’s me playing through my mistake. Haha. I know what I was supposed to play, but what came out was something else. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I learned that something as simple as changing the angle of your thumb (or finger) can drastically change the timbre of the strings when they ring out. It would have taken me a long time (if ever) to even think to experiment that way, but what a difference is makes in the sound!
This lesson definitely gave me lots to practice on. I’ve always found it difficult to play with emotion and dynamics, so it’ll be a work-in-progress for a LONG time.
I started working on Aloha ‘Oe. The melody is gorgeous and set at a perfectly mellow pace. The bar chords up the neck in the 10-15th fret range are especially tricky, but that chorus is so iconic…I can’t resist!
I feel like I should be on the beach sipping a Mai Tai. 🏝🍹😎
Personally, I’ve always hated long nails on either hand (even before learning a string instrument), so I keep all of them extremely short. But I’ve seen a lot of ukulele players (men and women alike) who prefer to keep long nails on their picking hand because they like the sound and use their nails like picks rather than plucking with blunt fingertips (which produces a softer sound).
I am a premium member.
I couldn’t get rid of the string noise, buzzing or muting in random places. I still have to work harder on timing and feel (really looking forward to the next live lesson).
The chord changes were tricky on this one especially with how fast it goes. If I went any slower, it sounded sad and sleepy rather than the upbeat, happy tune that it should be. 😂
Not great, but it’s okay…
Cory, I’m still amazed you play the right handed chord shapes upside down to accommodate being a left handed player (rather than restringing the uke to be lefty friendly). That alone seems like a big challenge. It’s a total mind trip to watch, but so cool.
Haha! That sounds familiar! I’ve knocked my head on the uke neck several times already when I make a dumb mistake. What’s funny is, it’s usually not in the same place of the song twice. I know the song, but playing it clean is the challenge! I’m consistently inconsistent.
I have a slow and sleepy take that I *might* end up using if I can’t get a more livelier and upbeat version by tomorrow night.
Sometimes I can memorize a piece within an hour or two after repeated play-throughs, but this one took me three days. After that, I still took another three days to smooth out just the chord transitions. I’ve been trying to clean it up for at least two weeks since then.
It’s a good thing this song is so fun to practice or I might have already quit from frustration. Hahaha.
Rickey, I’m way past keeping track the number of takes. We’ll just call it “taking forever.” I’m still trying to get a semi-decent play-through of When I’m 64 to enter in this month’s challenge without being a total embarrassment. 😂
I only have one more day! Yikes. 😬
I’m impressed by all the entries so far (especially the ones with singing…I only wish I had that capacity). They sound great!