Play Ukulele Today! - A Complete Guide to the Basics Level 1

by Barrett Tagliarino

(Play Today Instructional Series). This is the ultimate self-teaching method designed to offer quality instruction, terrific songs, and professional-quality audio 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 audio tracks. This book includes over 60 great songs and songs, chords and melodies; picking and strumming; playing tips and techniques; music notation; and more. The audio is accessed online and features playback tools including the ability to change the tempo and loop challenging parts.

Genres: Music, Reference, Nonfiction

48 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2000

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall this was a clear introduction to the ukulele. It focuses mostly on reading music and playing notes, which really doesn't matter all that much since most songs are best played on the uke by strumming chords. So, while as a music newbie, I liked learning how to read music, it might have been better if there was more focus on how to strum, strumming patterns, and learning to move between chords. I used the accompanying CD and found the tuning section fairly useless (as I said, I'm a noob and also mostly tone-deaf - I couldn't tune by listening to a sustained note. I ended up buying an electronic tuner). The strumming sections were okay, but generally the "play-along" parts were too fast for my beginning skills, although I did like having a metronome sound to stay on rhythm. There's a lot of information online about playing uke, video tutorials, etc., and I would recommend doing this rather than using this book, unless you really want to learn to read music and play notes.

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re new to playing the Ukulele you’ll find the pictures essential.

[Candice · Rating 3 out of 5]

It helped!

[Minda Carpenter · Rating 3 out of 5]

It focusing more on playing melodies than cords which is a little strange because that is not usually the part ukulele plays. If you already know music theory it can be a slow start to learning ukulele. The explanations a good and clean though.

[Steve Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got my first couple of chords out of the thing thanks to this

[Moran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very basic, very short, not too challenging.
But it was fun!