The first is speeding up during a song.
The metronome makes this even more frustrating because it never lies. I knew I was speeding up but the truth is that I generally sped up long before I noticed I was speeding up.
The second is related to the first. It is that I concentrate on the hard thing and forget about the basic thing. As long as I am playing only 1-2-3-4 I'm okay. But the minute it becomes 1-2-and-3-4, I get so focused on getting that "and" right that I miss the 4 afterward. And then I speed up because I lose track of where the basic beat is.
Oh, well. Keep plugging.
And now Mary and her little lamb. I know, I know but bear with me, these simple songs have a point.
Click on the image to see it large enough to play.
The thing about these basic songs is that they have nice basic intervals in them that we need to master. Don't take just my word for it*
Every interval in that song is either a second or a third. And there is a new note So, which is D in the key of G. It's played by fretting the first string at the third fret. Oh yeah, where is it on the staff? Here's some help:
One cool thing about this song is that we can add the chords to it. By ear. Start strumming in G and sing the Do-Re-Mi notes along until it sounds wrong. Then stop and make a note of that bar. Then go back and sing along again but this time change chords to D when you reach the bar where G sounded wrong. Then keep playing until your singing sounds wrong against the D chord. Then make a note of where that is and stop again. Go back to the beginning and sing and play again only change back to G when you hit the bar of music where it began to start wrong last time. Keep doing that until you reach the end.
And once we have that, we can use the song to learn how to sing and strum at the same time. I stole this idea from Ukulele Underground. When you go to their site you'll notice they do it with the words and in a different key. Try it there way. Maybe C is a better key for you. If you're a baritone or bass, however, come back here and try it in G. Here is the link to Ukulele Underground. Note this takes you to a video.
* These songs are also in the public domain so they can be used as teaching tools without paying anyone for the privilege. As Captain Renaud would say, 'That is another reason.'
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