Confidence - Fake it till You Make it! (Updated)

1. Work on cleaning up the same two exercises we starred.
2. Remember to do any necessary thinking before you start playing. Try to think less and less while playing.
3. Keep your nails trimmed down to the flesh of your fingertips so they don't interfere with your playing.
4. Don't look at your right hand.
5. Make sure you are reinforcing proper right hand strumming form. Keep your pinky tucked, your pointer towards the tip of your pick, twisting your wrist as the primary motion, have the correct amount of pick showing past fingertips, and find the right strings by feel, not sight.
6. Make sure you're singing and playing nice and loud at all times.
7. Don't tap your foot, set your feet flat with good posture.
8. Leave at least one comment about your practice or progress to help solidify your work in your mind.
9. Believe in yourself! Try to be more and more confident. Say self-affirming things about how well you're doing or are going to do, whether you believe it or not (fake it till you make it).

Building Confidence

1. Keep working on being more confident and believing in yourself. 
2. Make sure to play and sing loud always! 
3. Don’t post with your pinky or any other finger with your strumming hand. Keep it free floating. 
4. Work from the song after Go Tell Aunt Rhody forward. Don’t skip any exercises, make sure to work on them in order.  
5. Sing the letter notes of the melodies as you work on them before switching to singing the lyrics if the song has them.  

Matching Notes

1. Work on the next couple exercises that we identified in your lesson.
2. Remember not to spend too much time on any one exercise if you get stuck. Split your practice time to add in the next exercise if necessary to keep pushing for progress.
3. Remember not to look at your right hand! Look at your left (fretting) hand, or your music, or off into space, but not at your right hand. Your picking hand will gradually learn to find the right string(s) as you build confidence by letting it work by feel.
4. Always use the metronome during practice.
5. Remember to play on the fingertips with your fretting hand  with round finger angles. Try not to have too much finger over the fretboard.
6. Keep singing the melody when your practice (everytime), starting off by singing the letter names of the notes, then switching to the lyrics if the song has them once you've worked through your chunks and are comfortable with the repping the whole song.
7. Find your first note before starting to help you sing more accurately, but don't worry about the next few notes until you actually start singing. Remember to move your voice up and down in pitch to find your note or make sure you're singing it correctly.
8. Last but not least, believe in yourself, you can do it!

Metronome and Form

1. Keep working back through your pages from C and E review, making sure to always practice with the metronome. Also use one of the later exercises with chords to practice your chords. Practice using alternating strumming of eighth notes with your chord exercises as well.
2. Make sure not to look at your right hand.
3. Remember not to post any fingers on the Uke with your right picking hand, keep it floating, and to tuck the other fingers loosely into your palm.
4. Your right hand strumming motion should be primarily a rotation or twist of your wrist, with a little forearm, thumb, and pointer movement only for support of that motion.
5. Make sure to have the right amount of pick showing from out of your thumb and pointer, not too much, and not too little, so you have good control.
6. Keep singing along with your practice of the single note exercises, making sure to match the notes correctly. Lock in with the first note before you start if necessary.
7. Leave a comment at least one day after practice on this post about how your practice went.

Moving Right Along

1. Go back to the beginning of your practice pages to review. Spend more time working out things you hadn't hit before moving on, like the C and E review page.
2. Always practice with the metronome!
3. Make sure to sing along with the single note exercises while you practice. Make sure you match the note you're singing to the note you're playing on your Uke!
4. Keep working on your chords, making sure to build from the top of the fretboard down, playing on your fingertips with round fingers (no broken/backwards finger joints).
5. Have fun and keep up the good work!

Getting Better with Chords

1. Work on your chords with an emphasis on the G7.
2. Make sure to build chords with fingers from high to low, not in the order of the fingers or anything else.
3. Work on all three chords, in chunks, together, and using different rhythms to the metronome.
4. Work on new pages, don't rush through them.
5. Make sure to keep a focus on the metronome and to sing all the time!

First day!

1. Make sure to tune every time before you play or practice.
2. Work on your note exercises to the metronome at 60 BPM in chunks as necessary and using the Rule of Five like we talked about, where you don't move on until you can play five reps in a row without making any mistakes.
3. Remember not to anchor your picking hand with your fingers below the strings. Rest your palm on the body when appropriate instead (when it won't mute a string you want to ring).
4. Loudly sing the names of the notes as you play them during each exercise.
5. Also practice the four fingers four frets exercise going up the neck on each string until you reach the octave of the open note at the 12th fret. Sing/name each note as you go up and remember to hold each previous finger down as you go, for example once you're playing a note with your pinky all four fingers should be held down, then shift to the next note past your pinky with your pointer.
6. Below are charts for the chords we went over on Tuesday. The numbers above tell you what finger to use to fret the notes marked with black circles, the open circles above the strings show to play that string open.