Speed up and slow down videos to make uke learning easier

I KNOW you’ve looked up some “how to do X on a ukulele” video at some point (replace X with any skill you’ve wanted to learn).

I do it, too — all the time.

The great thing about YouTube is that almost anything you can think of is there. The bad thing is that it’s rarely organized into helpful courses.

The other bad thing, is that many of these generous souls are great ukulele players, but not such great presenters or teachers.

So there's lots of chitter-chatter as you wait to get the nugget of wisdome you tuned in for.

Technology to the rescue!

Since I watch so many videos, I love this little tool that lets you literally SPEED UP TIME.

It's just a lightweight browser extension that lets you use keyboard shortcuts to speed up (and slow down) videos.

You can speed up the video to get through the non-essential chatter (without turning the sound into goofy chipmunk voices).

And, just as good, for us uke players, you can also SLOW DOWN the video during the hands-on, how-to sections, so you can really catch the movements you’re trying to learn.

• For Chrome browser, click here
• For Firefox browser, click here
• For Safari browser: click here

And what about slowing down or speeding up videos on iOS on an iPhone?

For YouTube specifically, it's built-in!

But YouTube doesn't make it easy to find.

This video shows you where to look to make the speed change:

A great bonus:

My strong preference is to watch videos on the main computer (not a device) so that I have the easy keyboard controls and precision speed adjustments that the plugin provides.

A great bonus is that it works on almost ANY video — not just YouTube.

And — get this — not just instruction videos!

I'll often turn up the speed a notch or two while watching a show on Netflix. Once you get used to it, the change is hardly noticeable, but you get through those shows just a leetle beet faster — so you can move on to the next one a leetle beet sooner 🙂

Let me know if this helps!