No, I’m not kidding. Remember the fable about the turtle and the rabbit? (Okay, it was a tortoise and a hare, but stick with me here!) The rabbit thought that speed would win the race. But it was the turtle who kept going, slowly and methodically, that was the winner in the end.

The same will happen with your `ukulele playing! I often tell my students ‘if you can’t play it slow, you can’t play it fast’ – and it’s true. It’s tempting to try to speed through your exercises and songs, but that’s also the way mistakes become a habit. You don’t always hear or see a missed note or incidental when you’re playing quickly. So, take it slowly – and I mean really slowly. Use a metronome set on a very slow tempo, and practice at that pace until you feel secure. Then, speed it up a couple of notches, and then another. Don’t feel you have to play the entire piece start to finish. Work a line at a time, or one or two phrases, until you have them down. Then add a few more. Pretty soon you’ll notice your ’slow’ is a lot faster than it used to be! And on top of that, you’ll have really learned the piece thoroughly.