Setting Up a Practice Session
How was your practice this week? You know you need to practice, but maybe not quite sure about what to practice. In this post, I'll set up a couple of practice outlines and indicate the priority activities for different levels of uke players. Then you can build your practice time in a way that is both comfortable and effective for you. Let's jump right in.
For a beginner, sore fingertips are an issue and practice can actually hurt! If this sounds familiar, reduce your practice to just 5 minutes at a time. Your fingers are building callouses with every practice, so practicing for a short time but more frequently will move that process along.
So, let's set up a bunch of 5-minute practices for those sore fingertips and then several 10-minute practices to try.
A Practice Outline with Notes for Beginners and Progressing Players
Prepare for your practice time:
Hand and finger stretches to build strength and dexterity (do this any time - you don't need a uke for this)
Fretboard exercise to increase finger dexterity and help with finger placement
For a beginning player, you might want to stretch each practice and work on the fretboard exercises just a few times each week.
For a progressing player, you'll want to do both stretches and fretboard exercises with every practice session.
Review your music
- Identify chords you know and those you need to learn. Identify any tricky chord changes or where there are rapid chord changes. You'll need to break the music into practice segments. Practice one segment at a time, master it, and then move on to the next segment.
For beginning players, choose one segment of a song to work on for the whole week. When you are comfortable with that segment you should move on to the next segment - even if that means staying on one segment for a week or two.
For progressing players, you'll review your music for each week's practice, and assign a segment to each day of the week. But, the same philosophy applies: don't move on to the next segment until you master the previous segment!
Chord forms
Practice getting your fingers into the right position to make a clear chord.
Form chords using the press and release exercise to help finger muscle memory
Always practice both new chords and chords you have already learned (re-enforce that memory!
For beginning players, review your "old chords" first and then try the new chords. This will warm up your fingers and help you to see relationships between the chords you already know and the new chords you're learning.
For progressing players, work on your new chords first and then review all of your memorized chords just for the practice.
Chord changes
Learn to move from one chord to the next in a song.
Think about how to move from one chord to the next and how to place your fingers (can you slide into the next chord or if you have to jump, which finger should be the anchor?)
Make the chord change over and over again. Move slowly and let your fingers find their position, then gradually speed up the changes until you can make the change smoothly.
For beginning players, practice chord changes in pairs as they appear in your lesson song. Most songs repeat chord pairs, making learning the song a bit easier. [C to G7, C to F, Dm to C, G to F, etc).
For a progressing player, focus on chord changes that are the most challenging and repeat them until you can change them smoothly.
Play a song
There's no sense in practicing if you can't have a little fun. After working on your lesson song, try playing a song you have already learned, or muddling through one you really want to learn. If a song inspires you, you'll be more likely to practice.
For a beginning player, you may not know any songs yet, so just practice the few chords you know in the order that they appear in your lesson song. Before long, you'll be playing the whole song.
For a progressing player, always begin with the lesson song, but do review other songs you've already learned. You might even try a few songs from a fake book to test your chord knowledge!
Planning Daily Practice Sessions
So, breaking this into daily practice sessions: A beginning player may only practice for 10 minutes each day at first while a progressing player will probably practice 30 minutes or more each day. The pattern is the same but the time spent on each part of the practice may differ.
Monday-Friday
prep exercises (2-3 minutes);
Choose music segment for this week's practice (1-2 minutes);
Forming chords (3-5 minutes);
Chord changes (2-5 minutes),
Play songs (2-5 minutes).
That's a ten-minute session for a beginner. If your fingertips are sore, break this session into two parts, practicing the chords in one session in the morning and playing the song in the evening session.
For a progressing player, this practice is 20 minutes. You may want to add 5-10 minutes for fretboard exercises or focused practice on chords, changes, or a new song.
Saturday/Sunday
The weekends can be time to add more practice or a time to just enjoy the music. For a beginner, it might be reviewing the song play-along videos. For a progressing player, it may be just playing their repertoire and enjoying hearing their own progress. Make your practice time work for you in a way that is sustainable.
In your progress as a "ukulele maestro," you'll add practice segments for chord progressions, scales, and song embellishments. Every level of play has an enhanced practice routine.
Now that you know a little more about practicing, set up a routine that works for you and your schedule.
