Play Ukulele Today This is the ultimate self-teaching method designed to offer quality instruction, terrific songs, and a professional quality CD with 61 full-demo tracks. It can be used by students who want to teach themselves or by teachers for private or group instruction. Simply follow the tips and lessons in the book as you listen to the teacher on the CD. This book includes over 60 great songs and covers: songs, chords and melodies; picking and strumming; playing tips and techniques; music notation; and more.
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Get this one if you want to read music, especially notes,
Play Ukulele Today!: A Complete Guide to the Basics Level 1
which is exactly what I was looking for. This book starts with the very beginning and covers the basics of music theory and
soparno ukulele playing. I think the book is pretty comprehensive and well-written, if very basic. I like the fact that it teaches you how to "tune the instrument to itself" (relative tuning)in the beginning. After preliminaries about the ukulele itself, the reader learns all the basic stuff that everyone has to learn who took band in school or had music lessons--musical notation, rhythm, and so on. This music theory basis is added upon as the student progresses. For example, you will learn what makes up a scale--both major and minor--and what music "keys" are.
The strong point of this lesson book lies in it's teaching of the individual notes on the strings. To me, this is very important. You will learn not only how to play chords and strum and sing along, but you will be able to pick out melodies on the strings and read from regular sheet music. New chords are also introduced as the student progresses through learning the notes on the strings. For example, you will not only learn the "F chord", but how to find and play the individual note "F" on second string. I think this type of thorough-going note reading instruction will form a good foundation for finger-picking. After learning the two-to-four notes in the "first position" (ie, first four frets), there is a series of practice melodies. These exercises are can get monotonous, since they aren't actually tunes, just a bunch of notes. Listening to the enclosed CD (which consists of someone reading the book, and then playing the exercises) should help you know if what you play "sounds right".
With "
Play Ukulele Today", you will only be playing a few notes at a time the first few days, but in a few weeks you will be able to play actual tunes, including "Red River Valley", "Home on the Range", and so on, in addition to the chords for the songs. You'll have a few dozen major, minor dominant and movable chords under your belt. The last lesson shows you how to change strings on your uke. In case you wore out your first set getting that far ! :)
