Learn To Read Music and Doors Open......

While I've mentioned this for bari uke,recently I've come to appreciate it for soprano as well. When I took a hiatus from uke about a year ago,I was frustrated with just "not getting it" when it came to memorizing chords and being able to read music for it. When I recently returned to it -somehow a light went on in my head,or as Louise Hay calls it, a "Ding! moment" ocurred. Last week I was memorizing chords with no problem at all by just working with songbooks. Then I started on my music reading skills with the help of a book I have. What helped me most was playing the strings and calling out mentally the name of the notes in my head of the diatonic scale. Soon,I found myself working out of a Gypsy Swing songbook written for mandolin (which I also play) and am learning "Avalon". Not that I'm a music reading whiz for soprano ukulele yet-it's still sinking in and sometimes takes me a sec or two to say...."oh I know where that is!" and hit it. But-my main point here is if you can read music for your uke playing,you're no longer confined to "ukulele music" books. You can pick up nearly any songbook for any instrument and providing it's within the sopranos range,start playing the melody line. As my vintage ukes have intonation problems,my main uke has become my trusty rusty Zither Heaven model. Be patient while teaching yourself to read the notes and don't rush it. The rewards are great-including that of being able to play tunes from vintage sheet music should you have any. Carols are great for music reading practice as you'll know if you're reading the music incorrectly because you'll hit the wrong note...so if you're working on Christmas tunes,take the golden opportunity to learn music reading if you've never studied it before.