Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself to Play Ukulele

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This book teaches the ADFsharpB tuning for a soprano ukulele. You should be aware of that.
The tuning of a ukulele is according to the type/size of ukulele (soprano, concert, tenor or baritone). The best known types are the soprano and the concert ukulele. Some books adopt as standard for the soprano ukulele the GCEA tuning, with as an alternative the ADFsharpB tuning.
Some books call the GCEA tuning the concert tuning, other books call it a soprano tuning.
So always check first for which tuning the book was written and check what they mean with 'soprano' tuning."
This book has no tablature, as it is focused on chords and the classical notation in the book is meant for singing.

This book assume your ukulele is tuned to A-D-F#-B tuning which is pretty non-standard. Every other ukulele instruction book and songbook I've seen assumes standard G-C-E-A tuning.

If you are just getting started in learning to play, I think you should look elsewhere for a beginner's instruction book as you will seldom encounter the tuning presented here.

The lessons are simple and progress at a good pace. However, the instructor tunes his ukulele A D F# B instead of the more common G C E A. If you plan to use any other books (or play with other ukulele players), this could be confusing. I liked Heeday's How to Pick & Strum the Ukulele, Volume 1 better.

so I had to return it, and then ordered the other version (same book, but with "C" tuning). This is a very easy method book for people who want to simply strum along and learning a few easy chords at a time and singing old folk-type songs. BUT! as the others have said, this is written for a ukulele set-up in non-standard tuning. My ukulele (also bought from amazon; you can read my review) is a tenor-sized Lanikai, and it came with the usual "C" tuning found also on soprano- and concert-sized ukes. SO be sure to buy the "right" book--it says "C TUNING EDITION" in small print on the upper right corner.

I bought this based on the other reviews here that said it was for ADF#B tuning, but the copy I received was standard GCEA. I was initially disappointed at this, but not for long, this is actually a very good beginner's book, with songs associated with each new chord, and a couple nice charts in the back for both chords and transposing.

Highly recommended.