Today’s habit hack will work well for folks who enjoy using a calendar to manage their productivity— Schedule time to play! Make room for fun, and make sure you’re not letting your week get swallowed up by work, chores, errands, and other obligations. Ensure your progress as a musician by setting aside time to play your ukulele regularly, whether it’s by setting up recurring “dates” or by finding windows of time between the more mundane moments in your week. Then send me a video of what you played over on Instagram. You can find me @musicalmamasv. :)
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Free Printable: Ukulele Binder Cover Pages
Yesterday I suggested you put all of your song printouts and handouts into sheet protectors and stick them in a three-ring binder. Today I’m offering four free printables to help you keep your music organized and looking pretty. There’s a beach scene (for your island music), a geometric option (for your modern tastes) , a watercolor floral design (for pop music), and a beautiful meadow (for your folk tunes).
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How to Organize Your Chord Sheets and Songbooks
Close friends and family members know that I love to tidy. I read organizing books for fun, I enjoy cleaning out closets, and I get energized by finding new homes for the things my family no longer needs or uses. An organized life makes for an easier life, and an organized music system makes for easier playing. There’s nothing more annoying that trying to find a lost song sheet or not being able to find your beginner’s handbook!
Make playing your ukulele easier by taking a little time to organize your materials with these tips for organizing your printed chord sheets, songbooks, and digital files…
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Habit Hack: Be An Active Listener
Here’s a quick hack for you today: Listen to your favorite songs and try to figure out what makes them appealing to you. What can you apply to your own playing? If you keep yourself open to inspiration and are willing to experiment, you may surprise yourself by creating something brilliant!
Habit Hack: Use Music to Improve Your Mood
This week’s habit hack is one I use a lot. If I’m feeling grumpy, annoyed, or sad, I can usually lift my spirits by playing my ukulele or listening to some of my favorite songs. Music’s ability to impact our emotions is one of its most magical properties— why not take advantage of its power? The next time you’re feeling low, pick up your uke and play (and sing) for a few minutes. Or listen to some of your all-time favorite songs (maybe even a guilty pleasure or two!). Dance or sing along, and see how you’re feeling after a few songs. I’m willing to bet you’ll perk up a little bit!
PS: This also works as a parenting hack! I will have my kids choose songs for us to listen to when they need a mood boost, and it never fails to cheer them up. (Will it still work when they’re teenagers? 🤷🏻♀️ Parents of older kids, let me know!)
Guilty Pleasures Part 2: A Mashup Video of "YMCA" and Justin Bieber's "Baby"
As I was compiling a list of some of my favorite guilty pleasure songs, I realized that “Baby” by Justin Bieber and “YMCA” by the Village People have the exact same chord progressions. So I made a mashup video because why not? Here’s how you can play along with me. . .
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What Are Your Musical Guilty Pleasures?
A guilty pleasure is something you enjoy against your better judgment. I started thinking about songs that fit into this category after hearing a Fergie song while I was in the grocery store. It took all of my self control to continue shopping like a normal person and not start crooning in the cereal aisle! I’m trying to embrace my musical tastes a bit more these days, and that—for better or worse—includes the awful songs I’m ashamed to admit I love.
Here’s a round up of five of my guilty pleasures, including the original music videos—all of which are special in their own right— plus links to uke tutorials and/or chords and lyrics in case you want to play along. Are you ready to cringe? :)
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Habit Hack: Pause the Video!
If you’re a new ukulele player trying to play along to a Youtube video, you may have been frustrated by how fast-paced some uke tutorials can be. That frustration usually stems from the fact that you’re comparing your abilities to someone (the Youtuber) who’s been playing for a lot longer than you! The ukulele has a reputation for being an easy instrument, but after you experience the high of learning your first few chords and playing your first few songs, you start to realize that there’s a lot more work to be done if you want to develop as a musician. So pause the video. Allow yourself the time and space to work on the techniques in the video at your own pace. Then try playing along with the video at a slower speed. The fabulous Katie from One Music School has a video that walks you through how to adjust the speed on any Youtube video:
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Ladies, when can you come back and sing with me? :)
Teaching Ukulele in the Classroom
Earlier this month I got to do something new—I taught a group of parent educators who lead music classes at their kids’ parent-participation school. The music classroom is already stocked with ukuleles, and the parents who lead the K-3 music program wanted to learn how to play the ukulele so they could share the fun with their students.
I led a beginner’s ukulele workshop designed to address their specific needs, covering the basics of how to play chords, how to strum, and shared tips for teaching ukulele in a classroom setting. We had a great time playing through six songs that will be fun for them to share with their students, and they knocked my socks off with their singing! I wish I had a recording to include in this post—they were harmonizing by the second song!
Here’s a review from Rosa, one of the women who attended the workshop:
A few other Moms and I took Melissa's Ukulele Workshop. Our children attend a Parent Participation school and we all teach music and were looking to pick up basics to better understand how to teach the uke. What a lovely experience! Melissa was thorough, concise, kind, and best of all, made learning a new instrument feel easy. We played several songs made up of just a couple of chords and troubleshooted basic hand shapes and positions that made playing chords so much easier. I highly recommend taking any lessons from Melissa, she's incredibly capable and was made to do this!
If you’re looking for an easier way to teach ukulele in a classroom setting, or if you’d just like to take a lesson to see if the uke is for you, contact me and we can plan a workshop just for you!
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Valentine's Day Habit Hack: Sing to a Loved One Today!
Happy Valentine’s Day! Take the opportunity to sing to (or with) a loved one! Here are five love-themed songs you may want to strum today:
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Habit Hack: Play with a Metronome
Keeping a steady beat is your primary goal when making music, but it can be a challenge! Beginning musicians often start out playing at a moderate pace, then gradually increase their speed over the course of a song. It’s only normal—one of the skills we must develop is the endurance to play for longer periods of time. Playing with an even tempo is just one more aspect of your playing that needs some attention, and playing with a metronome is an effective way to improve your consistency. Download a free metronome app on your smartphone or open this free one in your web browser. Enter in a reasonable BPM, put in your earbuds, and get strumming!
The Magic of Folk Music
I teach a beginner’s ukulele course in San Jose, CA, and while I do share modern popular music with my students, I primarily teach using well-known folk songs. I occasionally get asked why folk music???? — just like that, with a really big question mark at the end— and it seems that folk music has developed a reputation for being outdated and/or not very fun or interesting. That’s not the case! There’s a lot to love about folk music, and here I’m sharing four reasons why folk music is perfect for beginning musicians:
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Habit Hack #4: Sing!
Ukuleles are quite portable as far as musical instruments go, but there’s another instrument you’re always in possession of— your voice! So why not sing while you play? Every time you sing, you’re training your ear to hear the melody (even if you’re stumbling to find the right notes) and paying closer attention to your tempo. My own experience has taught me that a voice is like any other instrument—just as your uke playing can improve, so can your singing. So give it a try. You’ll probably have more fun if you do!
Habit Hack #3: Play with Others
Having trouble carving out time to play your ukulele? Maybe you’d feel more motivated if playing it wasn’t a solitary activity. Here are a few ideas to help you make your practice a more social experience:
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Habit Hack #2: Set a Goal, Then Set Another One
Have you heard the saying, a dream without a plan is just a wish? Don’t waste your time wishing you knew how to play the ukulele—make a plan!
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Habit Hack #1: Keep Your Uke Where You Can See It
Remember the scene from The Lord of the Rings when Gandalf tells Frodo, Keep it secret; keep it safe? Well, do the opposite of that!
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Habit Hack #0: You're Not Practicing the Ukulele, You're Developing an Ukulele Practice
In the new Habit Hacks series, I may refer to your ukulele practice, and I think I need to take a moment to explain what I mean by that:
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Introducing Habit Hacks, a New Weekly Series
One of the biggest challenges beginning ukulele players face is figuring out how to get in the habit of playing consistently. Tomorrow I launch a new weekly series to help with this issue. I’m calling it Habit Hacks, and every Thursday I will post tips to help you build and maintain a consistent ukulele practice (and I’ll explain why I refer to it as an ukulele practice). Check back here tomorrow for Habit Hack #1!
A New Blog Design for 2019
Happy New Year!
One of my goals for 2019 is to post more consistently on the blog, and in preparation for all the new content coming this way, I’ve implemented some big changes on my main blog page. On the old blog, there was no search function and the posts were listed in an endless scroll, which wasn’t terribly user-friendly. With this new design, I’ve added a search bar in the sidebar, changed the layout so it’s easier to see more posts with less scrolling, and (toward the bottom of the page) highlighted posts by category for more browsing:
You’ll also find these buttons down toward the bottom of the page, making it easier to browse posts by topic:
Coming Soon: More Content!
I’m enjoying the last few days of my kids’ winter break, so starting next week I’ll be posting with more regularity with video tutorials geared for beginning ukulele players and more habit hacks and tips to help you stick with your ukulele practice. And I may make a few more design tweaks to further improve the usability as I get used to the new layout.
Happy New Year, and happy strumming!
PS: I run my website using Squarespace, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to start a blog or website. It was relatively easy to make these changes with my absolutely non-technical background.
2018 Year in Review: Hits and Misses
My primary goal for Musical Mama is to share the joy of making music, and I’m so grateful for the opportunities I had to do just that. If you engaged with me in some way, whether you took lessons from me, attended a workshop, read a blog post, watched a video, or purchased one of my books, THANK YOU!
2018 has been a big, exciting, and challenging year for me. I’m usually too eager to start working on the next new thing to look back on the past, but I’ve been encouraged by my husband and a couple of friends to do a little reflecting. So, per their request, here’s a look back on some of my milestones from the past year. Here are four “hits” and two “misses”:
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