1. Make sure you have a quality instrument
A quality ukulele can be purchased rather inexpensively when compared with many other instruments. However, there are also ukuleles on the market that are little more than toys. A poor quality instrument is often out of tune and much more difficult to play, which both hinders progress and increases frustration. Your ukulele teacher in San Marino can help you evaluate your instrument, or help you decide on purchasing a new instrument.
2. Set aside a time and place to practice
In order to progress with your ukulele lessons in San Marino, you will need to spend time regularly practicing. It is much easier to practice regularly and consistently if you have a particular space set aside, preferably with as few distractions as possible. Likewise, setting a regular time in your schedule will make it much easier to keep up with the practicing you will need in order to improve. Developing the discipline to practice regularly over the long term is one of the things people often find most difficult when taking music lessons in San Marino. Dedicating a time and place to practice when you are first starting out will go a very long way towards developing the good practice habits that will help you progress in your music lessons in San Marino.
3. Tune before your lesson
Though tuning a ukulele does not take a lot of time, this time can certainly be better spent working on other music during your ukulele lessons in San Marino. Even if you think you sound in tune, your instrument might not be in tune with your music teacher in San Marino, or the music you are playing along with, so it is essential to check your tuning regardless. In your first lessons, your music teacher in San Marino will show you how to do this. There are a variety of methods to tune, though two of the most common are to use a clip-on guitar tuner, or to use a phone app, which is an excellent free option. As you progress, your music teacher in San Marino might also show your other traditional methods of tuning by ear.
4. Play along to music
One of the first skills you will likely learn in your music lessons in San Marino is how to play a few common chords that can be used in a variety of songs. At first, simply being able to finger these chords and get them to sound reliably is a worthwhile goal. However, to make music, you will need to work on playing the correct chords for a song in proper time. Playing along with a recording is one of the easiest and most satisfying ways to work on playing with accurate time. At first, you may find this more difficult than playing along with your San Marino music teacher, as your teacher is able to adjust their time to match your playing. You can, however, use software or the Youtube playback settings to change the speed of the music, slowing it down to make it easier to follow at first. Playing along with something such as recording is definitely less forgiving than playing alone, but it is also one of the quickest ways to find out if you are actually playing something properly. When you are off track, you can usually hear and feel that the music is not lining up. When you are able to keep up, however, you can hear the pieces fit together, and you get the satisfaction of seamlessly adding to the recording.
5. Tap your foot
Though developing the coordination to tap your foot while you play may take some extra work at first, it can be an invaluable way to develop a sense of internal time while playing. Most people already walk with a very steady gait, so if you can develop a similar steadiness tapping your foot, you can start to synchronize your body’s motion, including your hands, with the music’s beat. Your music teacher in San Marino can help you develop this skill as well by giving you various exercises to incorporate your foot, such as starting by tapping and playing the same beat, then playing increasingly complicated rhythms along with the tapping. Once developed, however, the skill of tapping while playing can feel as natural as walking, and will certainly help your internal sense of time.
6. Use a metronome
If you are striving to make your rhythms as accurate as possible, try to play along with a metronome. The metronome provides a perfectly steady beat without other potentially distracting music, which allows you to line up your rhythms with accuracy. The metronome is unforgiving, though, which is both a strength and a weakness. If you are not already fairly certain in your playing, the steadiness of the metronome can be nerve-wracking, and is counterproductive if you are always trying to catch up to the beat. However, if you are already somewhat fluent with a piece, the metronome can definitely help you tighten up your precision. You can use the metronome very slowly sometimes to help figure out especially complicated rhythms, and you can also use it to gradually help you speed up a piece of music. Your music teacher in San Marino will give you suggestions on how to use the metronome most effectively during your San Marino music lessons.
7. Study some theory
If you have not studied music theory, you may not truly understand why the pieces you are learning are put together the way they are. As a result, learning and memorizing each new piece can feel like starting on a brand new task. It can be like learning to spell words in a language that you don’t otherwise know – possible, but hard to truly comprehend. On the other hand, by studying some music theory you will learn the ways that various chords, scales, and melodies fit together. You will start to see the similarities among pieces that you may not have noticed before, and by learning how music is commonly constructed, learning new pieces becomes much easier as you have a better sense of what to expect next. Your ukulele teacher in San Marino will help explain some of the theory involved in the music you will be working on. Also, if you intend on writing your own music, knowing some music theory will certainly go a long way towards helping give you some direction in this task.
8. Challenge yourself
Keep trying to challenge yourself to learn new skills and new pieces of music. Playing songs you already know is definitely satisfying and may help you become more comfortable with your ukulele, but this will not directly aid you in learning any new music. In each practice session, you should attempt to build new skills. For example, you can work on improving particular techniques, such as playing rhythms or scales with more speed and accuracy, or you can work on learning new music that is a little more difficult than what you have played before. By taking weekly lessons at the best music school in San Marino, you will already have a constant source of new challenges. Your San Marino ukulele teacher will continually assign new materials each week as you are ready, but you must practice the more difficult material on your own time as well in order to improve your playing skills.
