Customer Reviews

Mel Bay's Sing and Strum: 7 Hawaiian Favorites for Ukulele

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This book provides an interesting way to learn Hawaiian songs on the ukulele. The emphasis is on playing to accompany singing. Melodies are presented in standard music notation with ukulele chord charts above them which also indicate which string to pluck in order to learn the melody. Strumming instructions are also noted. But unless you have someone around who knows how to speak and sing in Hawaiian (happily, we do at the moment), this book will probably teach you to sing incorrectly in Hawaiian.

You would learn something about music by following the ukulele learning techniques in this book even if you had to hum rather than sing along. It is presented as appropriate for the total neophyte on the ukulele, but I think at least a little background in playing the ukulele would be useful.

Each song is presented fully in one key, then chords are given for several other keys and you are invited to choose the key which matches your voice best. I believe that this book would be most useful for learning Hawaiian songs while in Hawaii. Presumably, you would be able to find someone to help with the rudiments of playing a ukulele and also someone to help with Hawaiian pronunciation.

It would be nice if there were a CD or DVD to go with this book, and maybe with a similar book by the same author, Mel Bay Presents Ten Favorite Hawaiian Songs. The latter book presents different songs in a slightly different format, with some historical notes. It seems to be a little more geared toward formal teaching situations.