Customer Reviews

Mel Bay Fun with the Ukulele

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

 

 

This is the book that I first used to learn chords when I was a kid. It is lean, to the point, and a great first book whether your goal is to learn the ukulele or to eventually move up to the guitar. There are many other books that are thicker, newer, and more modern. But few will kickstart the learning process like this one. Mel Bay was a master musician and a wonderful teacher. He still has much to offer.

The reason I have given it two stars is that this book might be useful for absolute beginners with no background in music.
While I respect the heritage of the Mel Bay series, if only because it helped me with a couple of things when I was learning guitar, this book can be supplanted by about 20 minutes of internet searching. To top it off, the songs are 'church songs' that a high percentage of people wouldn't recognize or be able to practice with.
If you are an absolute novice to music (you've never touched an instrument), this book will be useful. If, however, you have any background this book will be overly simplistic. With the exception of the last 4 pages it has fewer than a dozen chord diagrams & nothing on tab. I may be sending it back & either going online to look for guitar chords (and a Uke chart) or to look for video lessons that would cost nothing but bandwidth.

I haven't played an instrument in years and haven't ever picked up a guitar or uke but still found this book to be too basic. On the positive side, it isn't costly.

I bought this to learn to play the ukelele. It is a perfect first book, as the Mel Bay's always are. I would recommend this series for any brand new instrument.

For the price and content It should have been 3 times the number of pages.Out of all the music books I've purchaced it is one of the least useful.

I bought this for my 23 year old son. The chords and info were helpful but the songs are ancient and therefore lame!