Ukulele Warm-up and Song Run-through
A focused pre-practice routine to warm fingers and rehearse a single song; use this when your chord changes feel slow or your tempo drifts during play-throughs.
What's inside
A focused pre-practice routine to warm fingers and rehearse a single song; use this when your chord changes feel slow or your tempo drifts during play-throughs.
Fingers are cold, chord transitions are slow or sticky, and I cannot play through the song from start to finish without stopping.
Chord changes cause me to lose the downbeat and my strumming hand tends to rush on the chorus; specific transitions (for example F to C and G7 to Am) stall the run-through.
Fingers warmed and responsive, the hardest chord changes take less than one beat to execute, strumming stays steady, and I can play the song through at or near target tempo without stopping.
- • Ukulele — 1
- • Metronome or metronome app — 1
- 01Hand and finger warm-up5 minutes warming up: 1 minute wrist circles and finger stretches, then 4 minutes strumming open strings slowly at 60–70 BPM while keeping a steady downbeat.⏱ 5 min
- 02Single-note and scale drillingPlay chromatic runs and the C major scale across all strings at 70–90 BPM, repeating each pattern four times and keeping note lengths even.⏱ 5 min
- 03Target chord-change practiceIsolate the three most troublesome chord transitions (e.g., F→C, G7→Am); perform 30 slow-motion shifts each, then 10 repetitions each at 80% of song tempo.⏱ 10 min
- 04Full song slow-to-fast run-throughsPlay the song start-to-finish twice: first at 60% of target tempo focusing on zero stops, then at 90–100% tempo aiming for steady rhythm; mark any bars that still cause stops.⏱ 10 min