It won’t come as a surprise to most people that the best way
to get better at Ukulele is to, you guessed it, play the ukulele. Its not
always easy to develop a good ukulele practice routine though.
You might not know what to practice, what you should spend
your time on, maybe you feel like you don’t have enough time, or you seem to not
be getting any better even when you do practice. All of these things can be frustrating.
In this article we’ll start by giving you a great 20-minute ukulele
practice routine that we’ve used ourselves.
Next, we’ll go through a handful of tips that will help you
if you’re not making progress as fast as you like, or even if you’re stuck.
Last, if you struggle to come up with things to practice, or don’t know what’s next, we’ve put a list together of a TON of things you can actually spend time working on!
Table of Contents
20 Minute Ukulele Practice Routine
As we said before, we used this ukulele practice routine for a long time while we started playing the instrument. The structure of the practice is what we really want you to pay attention to, because you can customize it quite a bit for your specific needs!
First thing is first, pick up your favorite ukulele!
Warm-Up Fingers – 1-2 Minutes
This can be really simple or really complex, but we always
add in some sort of “warm-up” before we touch our ukulele. This may not seem
like a big issue when you first start playing, but the more time you spend
playing the more important it becomes!
This video has some great stretches, maybe pick one or two
for your warm-up and vary them each day you play!
Play A Simple Song You Know – 3-4 Minutes
Now that you’ve picked up your Ukulele, continue to warm up with an easy ukulele song that you already know. This will get your fingers and strumming hand moving without making you think to much about what you’re doing.
Plus, most of us tend to spend a LOT of time learning songs
we like so this is a great way to have a little fun and ease into the harder
exercises to come!
Don’t know any songs yet? No worries, play some simple notes
or chords you do know that you’ve already mastered or gotten proficient at. The
point is to start moving your hands and fingers!
Chord Changes – 5 minutes
Now to the actual improvement part of practice!
In the first 5 minutes you warmed up and played easy chords or notes. Now you want to incorporate a chord or two you aren’t good at.
Lets say you’re a beginner and the only chord you’ve mastered
is the C chord. This 5-minute block would be used to practice switching between
the C and maybe D and G chords. Play C, slowly move your fingers to the G, play
the G until it sounds perfect (you may have to adjust a few times), and go back
to the C.
Strumming or Fingerpicking – 5 minutes
Now to work on your other hand! In these five minutes we want
to focus on improving what your strumming hand is doing.
For a beginner this may mean you are just strumming up and
down, focusing on hitting each string in a smooth and consistent rhythm. For a
more advanced player maybe you are working on a complex strumming pattern or
fingerpicking arrangement.
You shouldn’t be playing any difficult chords during this
time. In fact, you may not want to play any chords at all and just leave the
strings open!
We suggest you have a metronome going for these five minutes.
Make sure your rhythm is correct and you’re able to stay in time!
New Song Practice – 5 Minutes
Now, you’ve worked on some strumming or fingerpicking and a new
chord or two… put them into practice!
Now, if the song is difficult, or you just started learning
it, maybe that means that you only play the chorus, or must play it much slower
than the original. That’s ok, Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will you
become a master at a new chord or strumming pattern!
Also, let’s say you only have 10 or 15 minutes, or you have blocked out a 30-minute time slot to practice. Just adjust the time you spend in each section, just try to keep the ratios about the same.
Six Ukulele Practice Tips
Now that we’ve looked at a great practice routine, what are
some tips to make sure you’re getting the most out of your time?
Keep your Ukulele Visible
In Atomic
Habits, author James Clear says the first step to creating any new
habit is to make it obvious. So, our first tip for playing the ukulele actually
has nothing to do with playing.
Put your ukulele somewhere you will notice it every single day.
Or even better, multiple times a day. It is easy to miss a day of practice because
you didn’t think of playing, but not if you have to move your ukulele to sit in
your favorite chair!
Write Down Your Goals
To make your practice sessions as productive as possible it
really helps to know why and what you are practicing for.
If you want to learn a certain song, write it down! Then,
underneath that you can write down the different components of that song you
need to learn. Now you know which chords, strumming patterns or fingerpicking
arrangements to spend our time on!
Be Consistent
Pick a practice schedule and stick to it! Playing 3 or 4
days in a row and then taking 2 weeks off is going to make it very hard to
progress. Instead, maybe you play on Tuesday, Thursday, and both days on the
weekend.
Or, even better, play for 10 minutes every day! Or 10 on your
workdays and a half an hour on the days you have free.
It really doesn’t matter as long as you are consistently practicing!
Slow Down!
You can practice the D to G chord transition all day long
and not get any better if every time you switch between the two you are missing
notes or partially holding down strings. By doing this you won’t get any better,
you’re essentially wasting your time.
How to fix this?
Set a metronome for a VERY slow speed. Get the change right
at a very slow speed and then gradually increase the pace. If you miss more
than a few times at a speed slow it back down.
You want to make sure these transitions are perfect, so
until they are don’t try to play them fast!
Don’t Watch Your Fretting Hand
If you are learning a new chord shape then this could be ok,
but if you’re practicing playing a song then don’t stare at your fretting hand.
In fact, we like to pick a spot on the wall and focus on that. You don’t want
to get dependent on seeing what’s going on.
A fun way to do this is to practice playing ukulele in a pitch-black
room. It will be awkward at first, but it will force you maintain good posture
and technique. Not to mention this can really help you develop an ear for how a
note, chord or progression should sound!
Get a 2nd Ukulele
Ukulele’s are portable, right? Get a 2nd one that you don’t care about too much and put it in your car, office, or a place you spend a lot of time away from home. This is a great way to get a little extra practice time in while you’re away from your main instrument!
Things to Practice for your Ukulele
One of the funniest things we hear from musicians of all
sorts of different instruments is they don’t know what to practice, or even better,
they’ve run out of things to practice!!!
To help you out we’ve come up with a quick list of things to
practice when you need a little inspiration or push in the right direction!
- Scales – There are hundreds of scales, patterns
of scales, tempos and variations (skipping notes, groupings, etc) that can be
improved upon or learned. - Chords
– There are tons of ways to play
each chord, then you can work on replacing notes with a 2nd or 4th,
or omitting a note by removing the root note, 3rd or 5th. - Rhythm – Playing different timing patterns or
with other musicians. - Techniques – Hammer-ons and pull-offs, bending,
sliding, vibratos, harmonics, muting and all combinations. - Strumming – Endless combinations of strumming
patterns, mute mono and fan strumming - Ear Training – Tune your uke by ear, pick out
major, minor and 7ths on the same chord, record chord progressions by ear - Theory – Reading different notation, building
chords/scales, timing
Still not sure…. Learn a new song. There are literally millions
to choose from!