My ukulele progress in 10 months - Greensleeves

[Oldscruggsfan]

Solo instrumental of Greensleeves/ What Child Is This

Self-critique:
1. Focus on:
. . . positioning thumb pad entirely behind the neck.
. . . strumming / plucking more softly.
. . . restricting arm movement to my wrist.
2. Improvise fill-in / transitions / augmented notes.
3. Add two chord melody variations beyond 5th fret.
4. Practice making barre chords smoothly and fully (for those higher-fret variations).
5. Learn this and all other tunes in two additional keys.
6. Buy a Snark digital tuner specifically for the office.
Other constructive suggestions, please?

 

[Bill Sheehan]

Solo instrumental of Greensleeves/ What Child Is This

Self-critique:
1. Focus on:
. . . positioning thumb pad entirely behind the neck.
. . . strumming / plucking more softly.
. . . restricting arm movement to my wrist.
2. Improvise fill-in / transitions / augmented notes.
3. Add two chord melody variations beyond 5th fret.
4. Practice making barre chords smoothly and fully (for those higher-fret variations).
5. Learn this and all other tunes in two additional keys.
6. Buy a Snark digital tuner specifically for the office.
Other constructive suggestions, please?

Very nice, OSF! Your Donner sounds good!

I definitely agree with your suggestion #6-- you can never have too many Snark tuners laying around!

It sounds like you're tuned one-half step above the "gCEA" tuning, is that correct? No issue there, just wondering, as that's often a nice sweet spot for a soprano, especially if you're playing solo. It adds a little extra tension and helps reduce the "squiggly" feel that the "gCEA" tuning can sometimes have. I also like to tune up an additional half-step to "aDF#B", which really seems to brighten the tone and improve intonation.

Just very generally, my advice would be to just sit and "tinker" with the song that you're learning and developing at any given time, and try not to "think too hard" about mechanics (though they're important). Kind of like in golf-- sometimes you do better when you just walk up to the ball and hit it, rather than stopping to think about all of the things you're "supposed to be doing"-- all at the same time-- as you address the ball.

Often it's fun to just pick one song, and one song only, and resolve to devote a few consecutive sessions just to it. Just relax and run through it slowly, and repeatedly, and before you know it, little "tweaks" will occur to you, and you'll incorporate them, and after a while you'll discover nice alternative chord voicings, little connecting riffs, etc., and you'll start to feel more and more confident and smooth. In essence, you're "exploring" the song, until you settle on how YOUR version will sound, and it's a fun journey!

 

[clear]

Other constructive suggestions, please?

Practice with a metronome. Just a minor suggestion if you've not tried it.

Your Greensleeves song sounded pretty good for just 10 monthes on the uke!! Keep up the good work.

 

[Oldscruggsfan]

Very nice, OSF! Your Donner sounds good!

I definitely agree with your suggestion #6-- you can never have too many Snark tuners laying around!

It sounds like you're tuned one-half step above the "gCEA" tuning, is that correct? No issue there, just wondering, as that's often a nice sweet spot for a soprano, especially if you're playing solo. It adds a little extra tension and helps reduce the "squiggly" feel that the "gCEA" tuning can sometimes have. I also like to tune up an additional half-step to "aDF#B", which really seems to brighten the tone and improve intonation.

Just very generally, my advice would be to just sit and "tinker" with the song that you're learning and developing at any given time, and try not to "think too hard" about mechanics (though they're important). Kind of like in golf-- sometimes you do better when you just walk up to the ball and hit it, rather than stopping to think about all of the things you're "supposed to be doing"-- all at the same time-- as you address the ball.

Often it's fun to just pick one song, and one song only, and resolve to devote a few consecutive sessions just to it. Just relax and run through it slowly, and repeatedly, and before you know it, little "tweaks" will occur to you, and you'll incorporate them, and after a while you'll discover nice alternative chord voicings, little connecting riffs, etc., and you'll start to feel more and more confident and smooth. In essence, you're "exploring" the song, until you settle on how YOUR version will sound, and it's a fun journey!

Thanks for the input. I’m probably at least one step above gCEA because I shot the video during my lunch break and didn’t have an electronic tuner on hand. So, I started by tuning the C string where it sounded right, then tuned the other 3 relative to it. I’ll definitely work more on the same tune and will tweak it as I go.

 

[Bill Sheehan]

Thanks for the input. I’m probably at least one step above gCEA because I shot the video during my lunch break and didn’t have an electronic tuner on hand. So, I started by tuning the C string where it sounded right, then tuned the other 3 relative to it. I’ll definitely work more on the same tune and will tweak it as I go.

Ah... now I understand why you want a tuner specifically for office use!