Practice vs Playing. What’s the Difference?
Practice is an almost magical thing. By thoughtful repetition, your hands and brain create a marvelous interaction that allows you to play a song. But how you practice is just as important as what you practice - and there is a difference between practicing a song and playing a song. Let’s look at how they are different and then we’ll focus on three things to keep in mind while practicing.
Practice breaks everything down into hand and finger movements - forming chords or notes, changing chords or notes, and coordinating your right-hand strumming or picking movements with your left-hand fretting. Practice is mechanical. You’ll rehearse each movement until your hand and finger muscle memory kicks in. So, practice is all about learning how to move.
Playing, on the other hand, is learning how the music should flow. You’ll consider the combination of chords, notes, and tempo along with dynamics (fast, slow, loud, soft). If you're thinking about style, key, or rhythm - that is more playing. The focus is on the music rather than the mechanical movements.
Both are important work to make your ukulele playing both accurate and musical. It’s hard to convey music’s power if you make a bunch of mistakes! In this post, we’ll dive into a few things to work on in your practice time.
First let's look at what you are practicing. Obviously, you'll want to learn what is taught in the lessons: the chord forms, the chord changes, the strum, and good technique. Let's break down what to consider for each of these...
Chord Forming- You want to observe how each chord is formed. The chords themselves are made up of individual notes. Those notes blend into a unified sound. So forming the chords with the best finger position becomes important so that the notes all ring out when you strum the chord. No "thuds" or string buzz!
Chord Changes- How you move from one chord to the next will make the difference between a smooth sound and changes that break the flow of the music. Learning a few strategies on how to smooth chord changes is a good place to start. We have a blog post titled, "Make Smoother Chord Changes" LINK TO THE POST
Technique- Pay attention to what you are practicing and how you are practicing it. The worst practice is when you simply plod through the lesson in a rush and end up practicing mistakes. Poorly formed chords that buzz or thud and sloppy changes that break the tempo of the music become ingrained in your muscle memory and it is difficult to correct. Both of these issues can be avoided by developing good practice habits.
Good practice means reviewing the music and what you need to practice before you begin practicing.
Break down the music into manageable pieces - maybe just a measure or two at a time in the beginning
Identify sections that seem difficult - challenging chord changes or unfamiliar chord forms
Practice each section slowly so that you practice good chord forms and the best changes - even if it seems painfully slow. (We always say, "practice slow enough so you can't make mistakes").
Work at mastering good chord forms - use the press and release method to help your fingers "memorize" the correct position
Repeat chord changes until you can make them smoothly. Try repeating in groups of 3. Practice the change slowly three times and then go on to something else. Come back later and repeat the change 3 more times. You can repeat this sequence until you’re comfortable with the change. Limiting the number of repetitions helps to keep your focus on good finger position. When you add too many repetitions in a row, form tends to degrade!
Include hand and finger stretches and exercises to improve strength and dexterity. You can improve your finger strength and dexterity to form the most complex of chords. It simply takes stretching and practicing!
As you get comfortable with the music, you can speed up just a bit - but only if you can maintain good form.
So, you may wonder how long a practice has to be? The answer is, as long as you can afford to devote to it! Just remember to practice daily. No matter how short a time, picking up your uke and practicing a little bit every day will serve you better than one long practice session at the end of the week.
The more often you practice and the more in-depth your practices are, the sooner you'll play well. And your progress will be continual - the more you practice intentionally the better you get! By intentional I mean paying attention to the things mentioned above - chord forms, chord changes, and technique.
If you are learning to play "finger style" ukulele, these same items apply, only you will be focusing on notes and chord forms as well as fingering technique. But that is the topic of another blog post!
