UE #70 Five Ways to Become a Ukulele Genius

I'm back! The Ukulele Entertainer has returned for a fresh bout of musical musings to pump up your strum, reform your performing and super-size your vocalizing. I want to welcome all the new subscribers who joined this summer. I have teaching ukulele DVDs available (see below or click here) and there is a new book in the works to tell you about in the coming weeks.

 

Genius is something we're born with, right? How else could Einstein, a simple clerk in a patent office, have changed our world-view with his visionary insights? What else could have enabled Mozart to write his first pieces of music at such a young age? (At two years old? - get away.) Tiger Woods' innate "genius" for the game was frequently used to explain the almost supernatural way that he roared onto the pro-golf scene and tore apart his more experienced opposition.

But what is genius? Those who have studied it have no doubt found many interesting things, but it's what they haven't found that is most notable. So far researchers have been unable to find a set of characteristics in brain makeup that conclusively gives away the fact that its owner is an Einstein, a Mozart or a Woods.

Our brains develop from birth and change according to environment and activity. Thus the brains of taxi drivers, history teachers and air traffic controllers all end up exhibiting their own special characteristics. But the defining qualities that signify genius are still mostly speculation at this point.

One thing that researchers do know is that every acclaimed genius has put in an extraordinary amount of work. At least 10,000 hours and some suggest up to 50,000 hours of dedicated practice. To put that in perspective: they are saying that every genius you've ever heard of did the equivalent of at least twenty hours of practice per week for a period of ten years in order to get good enough to be recognized as a genius.

But hold on a moment, I hear you cry. How was Mozart able to put in 10,000 hours before he was two? Well here's the thing about Mr. Mozart. He was the product of an extraordinarily gifted teacher: his father. Wolfgang Amadeus's dad created and developed innovative music teaching methods that were used with enormous success on both his son and his daughter. (That young Wolfgang became the big success and his sister didn't is due to the small matter of gender - girls didn't become music stars in those days. By the way, if you think our culture has grown beyond such attitudes: Quick, right now, name three female geniuses. Possibly because of our current social conditioning that's not quite so easy to do.)

Nowadays, thanks to clever teaching methods, we are used to the sight of six and seven year old violin and piano prodigies. Mozart was not much different from today's Suzuki school graduates except that he happened to be doing it a few hundred years earlier. But wait! I hear you bleat. He wrote music when he was two!  

Have you heard the music he wrote as a toddler? Has anyone listened to it lately? No they haven't. And do you know why they haven't? Because it was crap that's why. Mozart's first major success was at the age of twenty-one and it was his 271st composition. Before that his education followed a trajectory much like anyone else's: first he copied other composers and then slowly introduced original concepts into his work as he diligently refined and improved his art.

When The Beatles landed on American shores they seemed to come out of nowhere. In truth they'd spent years honing their skills, both individually and as a group, performing for eight hours a day, often seven days a week (sometimes even eight days a week - ha ha) for months on end in some of Hamburg's dingiest night-clubs. In the process they covered countless songs and cultivated their song-writing technique to an extremely high level. When the Fab Four burst onto the public scene it was no accident that their chops were tight and their confidence ran high.

Of course the total amount of time spent working is not the only key to success. I'm sure that if most of us had been opera school classmates of Pavarotti we might have soon felt discouraged. Pavarotti's talent would have taken him more quickly to a place that we, lesser divas and divos, found unattainable no matter how many hours of ear-bending, glass-breaking fa-sol-la-teeing we put in. Nevertheless, my drift is yours for the getting.     

If the greatest musical talents had to practice for the equivalent of a shrew's lifetime (about 10,000 hours) to reach their potential, what makes us ukulele players think it's enough to strum for half an hour every three days? Sadly, at least for those of us who took up ukulele believing it was an easy option, the only conclusion to be drawn is this: If you want to be a good ukulele player, you need to practice.  

So what can we do to make sure we put in as many ukulele playing hours as possible? Here are five suggestions:

1. Practice daily at the same time each day. Make your ukulele practice a part of your everyday routine, like brushing your teeth in the morning and answering telemarketing calls at dinnertime. This makes your practice period easier to remember and less easy to skip.  

2. Find a length of time that works for you. Set a timer. Knowing that you have a fixed amount of time available to practice can help you use that time to the fullest. Even if it is short, aim to maximize whatever time you've set aside for yourself.  

3. Practice often. Sometimes life doesn't permit us to take longer breaks. Play when you can. Say, between tasks or seeing clients. Ten three minute practice sessions is the same as one half hour session. If you take your ukulele to work this tip will be useful for all you taxi drivers and air traffic controllers. No planes coming in right now? Strum a few bars of Lady Ga Ga.  

4. Perform and jam as often as possible with as many people as you can. Playing live adds a layer of intensity that helps the mind to focus. Much learning will come about by playing for and with others.  

5. Reward yourself. The work will be so much more bearable if you know there will be a movie, a pleasant beverage or a banana coming to you at the end of it.

There. I've finished. Now for that banana. Mmm, mm, that's good. Its hungry work being a genius.

copyright Ralph Shaw 2011

Guaranteed DVDs to help you learn to play ukulele. 

Essential Strums for the Ukulele. Learn ukulele in the following styles: Samba, Bossa Nova, Bo-diddley, Reggae, Blues, Swing, Syncopation, Frailing - clawhammer and Waltz. Available from: www.RalphShaw.ca