If you really want to develop your ukulele skills as quickly as possible then it’s important to get yourself a practice schedule sorted out as soon as you possibly can. Check out my daily 20 minute practice schedule to get you improving quickly.
Schedule? That sounds really dull
Yeah it does, I know it as well as anyone. It doesn’t need to be. It’s only as boring as you make it and we’ll try and keep it interesting.
We all lead busy lives these days and not many people have boatloads of free time, I personally try and practice for 20 minutes a day. Some days I do more, but I try and hit a minimum of 20 minutes. It’s not a massive commitment but it’s not a huge amount of time, so it’s really important to get the most of out of those 20 minutes.
It’s great to pick up the uke and have a blast at a few songs that you’ve got the chords for but it’s not the fastest way to progress. On to the schedule…
The 20 minute ukulele exercise schedule
Here’s the schedule I use, and I find it works pretty well without being boring…
- Chord changes: 5 mins – Work on the chord changes that you haven’t quite nailed down yet. If you’re struggling to get from an F to a G then try and squeeze as many changes between those 2 chords as you can in 60 seconds. You’d be amazed how quickly this will fix those issues.
- Fingerpicking: 5 mins – This is a great skill to have and the only way to get better is to dedicate some time to it. It’s difficult at first but start with some simple patterns and be persistent.
- Strumming: 5 mins – Struggling with a particular strumming pattern? Having problems with chucking? Now’s the time to work on your weak strumming areas.
- Songs: 5 mins (or more) – This is your reward for getting through the past 15 minutes. Everyone wants to play songs which is good and the practice you’re doing will only help this. Songs will combine all of the other skills that you’re working on but will come with the added benefit of giving you something to impress your friends with.
So that’s it. Just 20 minutes of your day and you’ll see vast improvements – improvements that you won’t see by just battling your way through songs every day. Hopefully it will work as well for you as it does for me!
For those of you that are feeling like you’ve progressed beyond this, take a look at my printable ukulele practice routine!
Thank you! This is awesome! And super do-able!
We can all find 20 mins a few times a week if we really try (I’m telling myself, I haven’t been practising enough lately)
Ok, so I ACTUALLY did this. Just now.
It was kind of amazing how long (and short) 1 minute really is. Also, I actually got better at a chord transition in those 5 minutes. Way more effective than what I was doing. Thanks.
Also, really doing 5 minutes of a strum was enough practice to actually see some improvement by the end. Which is cool. This notion of increasing the efficiency of your practice is a thing.
To think, I found this page by accident when I was trying to practice something else.
Hi John, thanks for accidentally stopping by and also for leaving a comment. It’s amazing what difference it makes when we put some pure focus onto something.