Customer Reviews

Fretboard Roadmaps - Ukulele: The Essential Patterns That All the Pros Know and Use

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My experience with beginning ukulele books has been pretty uniformly
disappointing. They all promise to include everything you could
possibly need to know, when in in my experience they have all been
thin, padded with useless filler, and lacking a coherent path to get
from "here" to "there".

This book is a __VERY__ welcome change, and at a sweet price to boot.
To be sure, it is not a beginner's book. The very first song (Sloop
John B.) has a tricky rhythm (e.g., three quarter notes in two beats)
and a shuffle strum with some down strokes missing; as a result,
only about half of the words actually coincide with a strum. This is
not a criticism of the book, just pointing out the level of difficulty
you'll hit in the first few pages. Fortunately for me (an arhythmic
klutz) the focus of the book is on learning the fretboard !

I must say that the CD is a huge help. My beginner's books either had
no CD at all, or the recordings were so dorky that I felt impatient to
move ahead and get to some "real" music. The teacher on this CD,
however, has a very inviting style, and you get the feeling that he
would be a fun person to jam with or watch in performance. A big plus
if your skills require you to listen to the same track over and over
and over...

This book is not about music theory per se, but but rather a practical
framework for learning how to physically hit the right notes; i.e.,
it doesn't attempt to describe *why* you would use a D7b5 chord, but
it helps you develop the skill so that when you have to play one you
know what your various options are and you can get your fingers in the
right place without thinking too much.

I have only completed about half of the book so far. I've learned the
basic movable chord patterns (3 each of major, minor, 7th), and am
starting to practice with them. The songs in this part of the book
take one chord (G major, say) and move it up and down the fretboard
for several measures before changing to a new chord. This kind of
practice is necessary to internalize what you've learned, but the
authors do a nice job of making the practice interesting and fun,
pointing out how to spice up your music rather than just saying
"memorize this" and jumping to a new, disconnected topic.

I look forward to working my way through this book, and I definitely
intend to revisit it again and again. As my title says, it's a
keeper !

Each lesson provides a why, what, how, and do it! (practice portion). This breakdown is very helpful, and knowing the why and what adds that extra motivation for taking the time to learn the more difficult concepts. There are plenty of diagrams and ideas are presented in short paragraphs that make the book easy to navigate. As a patient beginner, I've been impressed by the "tricks" provided here. I would recommend this book more for intermediate players, however, unless you're a beginner accustomed to book learning.

I've not had a lot of time to delve into this book, but it teaches moveable bar chords that can be utilized in a variety of ways. There is a lot of material in each chapter, and it assumes a lot, as in , that you'll practice A LOT, that you have A LOT of musical background, that you have A LOT of musical ability, etc. etc. etc. Not for the novice. I've been playing uke for several years and it's going to take a serious study of the book to get A LOT out of it, BUT, it could really "turn on the light bulb" for some people! If you're looking for beginning material, look elsewhere.

I bought this book at the same time I bought my first Ukulele (the Oscar Schmidt OU2 Ukulele), thinking it would be a good tutorial to get me started. It's not a good beginner book; I think it would be better for an intermediate player. It has a very short section about what you should already know before getting started with this book, and that made it clear that I was not ready. However, I do really like the CD it comes with. Learning different strumming rhythms and tuning would be impossible without it.

Instead, I recommend this book for beginners: Jumpin' Jim's Ukulele Tips 'N' Tunes: Ukulele Technique

I would consider myself an advanced beginner at this point, having messed 'round a bit with the guitar and mandolin over the years. My dad bought me an ukulele when we were in Hawaii, and I have found it much easier to play than the guitar. I already have a pretty good understanding of music theory, having played the piano for about 40 years, and this book is very helpful translating the building blocks of "how music is made" into techniques of "making music." As with any skill, there are patterns of playing and the proverbial tricks of the trade to the ukulele, and the book describes them very nicely and understandably. The included CD is a big help, letting you hear what it's supposed to sound like so you know if you're doing it right. It's also been kind of fun learning some songs that I've heard before but never saw the music. The book has been a big help so far, and I look forward to getting more and more adept at the instrument.

I thought that I had seen all that there was to see in respect of Ukulele "How to play books" and have a veritable library of them in my study. Today I can just about struggle through the accompaniment chords to "Way down upon the Swannee River"
However, recently in my Amazon "Suggested items that might interest you" space, appeared the Hal Leonard publication 'UKULELE FRETBOARD ROAD MAPS'. (give that man a raise!) because it is the very best I have seen and if I
am not able to learn from this book, I shall donate my ukes to Oxfam and take up the trombone. At least it isn't possible to play chords on the old slush pump.

Many thanks , Peter Durham.

This is a book I keep coming back to. It was the first book I got when I decided to learn to play the uke. It won't teach you how to play, but the first few pages are useful to a beginner--they demonstrate basic strumming and picking patterns. After that, the book gets into scales and what makes a chord a chord, and how to move the chords up the neck. When I first looked through this book, I could only vaguely understand it. A year of uke playing later, I picked it up again and discovered I could easily follow three quarters of it. If you are serious about learning to play the uke, and don't already know all of this from playing the guitar, I'd highly recommend this book. It's got excellent diagrams, is clearly written, and comes with a CD of the music you are learning. Best of all, you won't quickly outgrow it. I've still got another quarter to go.

Hey everyone, kudos to not only Jim Beloff for this book, but also to Amazon for their speedy delivery, which made it all the way from USA to China 3 weeks earlier than Amazon even predicted! As for the book, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" that is ukulele! WoW! I am literally amazed at what a difference it has made in my playing so far! I really was one of those players who never got past the 5th fret and knew nothing about moveable chords.... But no longer! I highly reccomend this book to anyone who wants to bring their playing to the next level and beyond!

Dang if I know what people are lookin for in these here kinds of things. It's all here. I ain't no expert, but I've been playin for a while. This is better than the beggining stuff I bought, and sure if it ain't gonna make me a better player. Everything you need to know is here. And I've bought a lot of these books. You can't do better for what you get for the money.

There's a heck of a lot of musicology crammed into these 80 oversize pages. Suffice to say, this is not actually a beginner's book, but an intermediate player's reference. You will learn your way around the ukulele fretboard, pure and simple, if you're lucky, and when you're done, you'll be able to play scales from any fret on the uke, cramp your fingers into recognizable patterns and slide them around at will, naming every chord you twang loose with perfect ease. In fact, this book's method somewhat resembles my old granddad's "shotgun wedding" technique for marrying stupidity and dumb luck into acceptable social graces.

I recommend you buy TWO copies of this book (at the price you can well afford it!), and take your fowling piece and ukulele down to the landfill at midnight, strumming away in the headlamps of your Ford or Chevy until you come to a line like this: "Play any major scale (C, for example). Strum a C chord to establish the key and, just by using your ear, try to play the melody to 'Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.' How hard could it be?" After you give cramming your adult-sized digits onto the teeny weeny frets of an unblushing Jenny Soprano uke, THEN you prop your SECOND COPY of this book twenty paces away and damn well EXPLAIN to these city slickers how hard it can be with your B-flat Benelli.

Aside from that, four stars. It's a nice book, and it comes with a CD (slightly) more approachable than Jake Shimabukuro shredding George Harrison tunes on YouTube. Four stars for that. One star less, because I can't give this to my kid and turn her loose.