Three Great Practice Techniques for the Ukulele
When I was first learning to play the ukulele I learned there are three tried and true practice techniques that could help me overcome the most difficult chords, melodies, and fingerpicking. Taking each one in succession seemed to really help me to level up my playing! Give them a try: Slow, Loop, and Chain…
Practicing Slow...
When we’re learning a new song, we want to play it now! We try to play it at tempo before we have a chance to learn it properly. The result is we tend to make a lot of mistakes and hope that repetitive practice will “fix” them.
Practice teaches your muscles to move in a certain way and if you practice too quickly you are more likely to make mistakes. And, if you “practice” mistakes, there’s a pretty good chance you risk making the mistakes a permanent part of your muscle memory!
Every time you practice you are building muscle memory - the mechanics of doing a skill correctly. And, if you focus on doing the skill correctly instead of playing a song quickly, your hand will learn the most important lesson - how to form the chords, notes, and chord changes correctly. You’ll find the fastest way to play at tempo is to start playing SLOW.
Practice slow - VERY SLOW - Slow enough that you can’t make mistakes. Focus on your hand and finger positions to make clear notes and chords. And, each time you practice slowly and work on correct mechanics, you are improving your level of play. As you get more comfortable you can begin to speed up your practice, but only speed up a little at a time to make sure you maintain good mechanics
Using Practice Loops...
One of the easiest ways to smooth out difficult changes, fingerings, or chord shapes is to “loop” them as you practice. A loop is a repetition of one small movement.
First, Isolate the problem: For instance, if changing from an Am to a G feels difficult to do quickly and smoothly, slow down the change (remember “glacier slow”?) and watch how your fingers move from one chord to the next. Can you identify where your fingers get tangled up? Maybe it is a matter of how your fingers hit the fret. Do they fall in the correct position or are they too close to the fretwire? Isolating the problem movement allows you to work on correcting one movement at a time.
Second, create a loop of that movement to repeat: Looking at the Am to G again, you might see that your fingers get tangled when you reach for the G chord. Slow down the change and make very small movements to get your fingers from Am to G. Is there a “lead” finger that can help make the change smoother?
Third, practice that movement over and over: in the “very slow” mode, repeat the movement until it flows smoothly. Once the movement is flowing better, you can try to speed up a little bit at a time.
Build a Song with Chaining...
We know from experience that when you work on the difficult bits of a song individually you are more likely to get a song “under your fingers” more quickly than if you just plow through the challenging sections at full speed.
But, once you have worked through the difficult bits, there comes a time to begin knitting the song together again and that is where Chaining can be a helpful practice technique.
You will build a “chain” of chords (or notes), adding one at a time, one section at a time, until the whole song can be played. Play at a slow tempo and keep adding chords until you make a mistake. Then stop, figure out what went wrong, and work on that issue before adding more chords to the “chain”.
You may have to stop multiple times and review difficult changes and chord forms that you had already practiced individually. Use the “practice slow” and “Looping” to help you work through the difficult passages.
It’s okay. No one learns a song in one play though! Taking the time to stop and correct mistakes is an important part of chaining. You can see where you need more practice as well as what you have already mastered.
