beamer: More elegant way to uncover list items starting on the second slide?

Question

Using LaTeX and beamer, I'm using the shorthanded notation <+-> and its variants (e.g. <+-| alert@+>, etc.) to have list items uncovered so that I do not have to manually enter a specific number for each slide, and can insert a new list item without having to renumber everything.

However, sometimes I want to display some text that appears before the first list item is shown. The way I have done this is to create an invisible item (called \noitem below) and insert that as my first list item. It is admittedly a kludge ... and, furthermore, it forces the insertion of some vertical space between the text shown initially and the list. Is there a more elegant way to do this? Ideally, it should not require extra vertical space either.

Here's a MWE:

\documentclass{beamer} 

\newcommand{\noitem}{\item[{\color{white} blank}] {\color{white} blank}}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{Test}
Some text displayed initially.
    \begin{itemize}[<+->]
    \noitem  % invisible item shown on first slide
    \item First item, uncovered on second slide
    \item Second item, uncovered on third slide. 
    \end{itemize}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Answer 1

You can put \pause before the \begin{itemize} line.

Answer 2

Use the overlay specification <+(1)-> instead of <+->, to offset the + in the overlay specification by 1:

\documentclass{beamer}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{Test}
Some text displayed on all slides in the frame.
    \begin{itemize}[<+(1)->]
    \item First item, uncovered on second slide
    \item Second item, uncovered on third slide. 
    \end{itemize}
Some more text to be displayed on all slides in the frame.
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Animation:

Single frames: First slide, second slide, third slide