Good Uke Exercise book?

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joypog

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I've been messing around with the Uke for a couple months now (with no sustained experience in stringed instruments except with a short stint with the Banjo a decade ago).

On the one hand I've been quite enjoying just playing children's songs with my daughter, but I've been wanting to do something a little more "formal". So I'm currently working through the Art of Arpeggio's free ebook by Samantha Muir.

After I finish the 20 exercises in that book and if I still want to keep going, the three books on the market that's caught my attention are

Ukulele Aerobics by Chad Johnson
Ukulele Exercises for Dummies by Brett McQueen and Alistair Wood
Learn Finger-Style Ukulele: With music Theory by Tony Mizen

I might also veer off and go into Clawhammer Ukelele with Aaron Keim.

Any thoughts on any of these books?
 
I would not recommend Ukulele Aerobics. It starts out okay, but moves very quickly and loses its relevance before long.
 
Rllink said:
I would not recommend Ukulele Aerobics. It starts out okay, but moves very quickly and loses its relevance before long.
Click to expand...

I agree with Rollie. I also have the Dummies book, and I guess the exercises are okay, but most of the tunes are Christmas songs, and it seems strange to be playing them in July and August. I didn't care for it. I also have Aaron's Clawhammer book, and it's very good if you wanna play Clawhammer on a ukulele.

I think that, unless you're a complete beginner, you can find better learning material on the UU or on YouTube. DVDs or internet lessons are good because one can actually see (sometimes) what he/she is supposed to be learning.

I have found most of the lesson books that I have tried to be disappointing. :eek:ld:
 
If I were in the market for books again, I'd go the fingerstyle route, but I enjoy the melodies rather than strum & sing, so there isn't a lot of general books for picking, they tend to be for a certain style of picking. :)
 
If you like finger style you could try Rob MacKillop's 20 Easy Fingerstyle Studies. I am a beginner and I love it - the pieces are really attractive. He has done an number of other books, too. There are videos of some of the pieces here.

Uncle Rod's free Ukulele Boot Camp is good for learning chords.
 
I have gotten more out "Ukulele Aerobics" than from any of the other non-songbooks I have. It's not necessarily because of the content, but because of the format: The book gives you a set of varied exercises for a week (which I look at as a unit rather than a literal week), so specific things to practice that are loosely related. The pacing of the book isn't ideal, but I feel it's among the best exercise-type of books for the ukulele.

I also like "Ukulele Exercises for Dummies". It's very wordy, very personal. If you like the conversational style, this book just feels good. It's split in two major parts, exercises for strumming and exercises for fingerpicking. There is a lot of explaining and chatting in this book, and I think it's excellent value. If you want to get only one book, I'd go with this one, though it does not overlap with Ukulele Aerobics much. I feel that these books go well together.
 
Thanks all! Definitely some food for thought. I'll first make sure this uke thing isn't just a short fad and then I'll most likely ahead with something from there.

I'm not THAT old, but I find learning via dvd or youtube difficult, even though it does seem to be the natural way to learn. I think I just like the physical object of a book!
 
I tried some of the exercise books, but never made it through one. (Got bored.)

What are you trying to accomplish with an exercise book? Maybe that can help people point you to one that might fill that need.

What I find myself doing instead is working on music I'd like to play, and essentially creating my own exercises when I find something in the music hard to play. That way, I'm working toward the specific goal of playing the music I enjoy, vs. just playing exercises.

But, maybe I just don't understand the exercise books, and would benefit a lot from them if I could keep myself working on them.
 
Joyful Uke said:
I tried some of the exercise books, but never made it through one. (Got bored.)
What are you trying to accomplish with an exercise book? Maybe that can help people point you to one that might fill that need.
What I find myself doing instead is working on music I'd like to play, and essentially creating my own exercises when I find something in the music hard to play. That way, I'm working toward the specific goal of playing the music I enjoy, vs. just playing exercises.

But, maybe I just don't understand the exercise books, and would benefit a lot from them if I could keep myself working on them.
Click to expand...

From a classical training perspective, the exercise books make you practice the different skills/techniques with the instrument. The goal is to train you to operate the instrument for different expressions in a well controlled manner.
It is absolutely boring, repetitive, and more often than not takes the fun out of playing music. But it is EXERCISE. It's intended to be a little 10~15 min focused learning among playing.

That's why I got the aerobics book, because it is exactly that; and as someone coming from the wind instruments I wanted to learn the different ways of operating ukuleles.
The Aerobics comes with audio tracks -- not so much as to teach you how to play the notes but to show you the intended expressions. (back in the days that's why we paid a teacher to play along with the exercise book!) As others have mentioned, the best thing about the Aerobics is the weekly format. In terms of content, I think as a beginner (and even advanced players) will find this book getting challenging very quickly as it goes through a lot of skills.

But I agree - a fun songbook teaches you new songs does help you feel accomplished, and at the same time logging the hours.
Do both!
 
jarviw said:
From a classical training perspective, the exercise books make you practice the different skills/techniques with the instrument. The goal is to train you to operate the instrument for different expressions in a well controlled manner.
Click to expand...

I'm not clear on what you mean by "different expressions". Could you explain?
 
This is the beginners part of the forum... What are "Accents, punctuation, articulation, phasing, sound effects... etc."?
 
So what makes an exercise an "exercise?" What makes the notes and chords in an "exercise", and their relationship to each other, more beneficial to learning to play a ukulele than the notes and chords in a song and their relationships to each other? I ask this because Joyful Uke asked, "What are you trying to accomplish with an exercise book," and I wonder that myself. What does one accomplish?

I'll add here, that I do scales and exercises regularly, but often times I feel like I am doing them only to prove that by doing uninspiring and repetitious practice I am worthy, and that I'm not just some ukulele bum sitting around playing music all the time.
 
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That's quite a good question, I would class an exercise as something that is done to improve your knowledge or physical prowess.

If you know your scales, you may understand why something is written or played the way that it is.

But, if you just want to play a few songs/tunes, you don't need to know any scales, you just need to know how & where to play the notes/chords of the song/tune.
 
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