Hawaiian Uke (Fingerstyle) Resource - Recommendation for You

Here's a recommendation for anyone who wants to expand their method and song book collection even more. I'm really excited about finding this older (1982) Hawaiian fingerstyle resource, so I thought I'd share a sort-of-lengthy description here.

Last week I picked up Hawaiian Uke Tunebook (by Ken Edison & Ross Cherednik, 108 pages, 1982, Mel Bay, ISBN 978-087166842-4). I really, really, really like this book. I know at least a few other forum members are interested in Hawaiian fingerstyle resources, so:

- Page 5: a one-page history with props given to some Hawaiian greats from the past
- Page 6-21: intro material on tuning, reading tabs, rhythm, keys and signatures, a few picking patterns, and so on.
- Page 8: explains some Hawaiian style strumming distinctives, including a Molokai Strum
- Page 9: a nicely formatted chart of 18 basic chords
- Page 10: THIS WAS COOL; an explanation of Hawaiian Vamps, with a nice chart of Hawaiian Vamp progressions, one progression for each key
- Page 13-15: nicely formatted scale exercises, one exercise for each key
- Page 22-94: 52 Arrangements of traditional Hawaiian tunes, arranged for fingerstyle, with standard notation and tablature
- Page 95-106: reference of 300 chords arranged by key
- Page 107: short afterword encouraging you to go out and become the next Hawaiian uke master

If you're interested, the songs are listed in the table of contents, viewable in the Amazon book preview.

The arrangements are presented more-or-less progressively. The first 15 or so tunes are mostly single note melodies and mostly on the first 5 frets.

Looking at the book as a whole, I guesstimate that 1/3 of the tunes are single-note melody (but not all easy!), and maybe 1/2 of the tunes are limited to frets 1 through 7.

Toward the middle the book moves you farther up the fretboard and playing in thirds and fifths, chord-melody, and solo style (chord and fingerpicking combination). There are a few arpeggio-y arrangements. As you keep going, the arrangements take you farther up the fretboard, but you don't go above the 10 and 12 very often.

I'm an advancing beginner, so I'll be camped out in the first third of the book for a while. It's a great complement to the method I'm using.

I forgot to add... there should be a law against music books with glued-together bindings. It doesn't lay flat, and the pages are coming out already. Fortunately, the pages seem to come out easily enough I'll be able to just pull them all out and put them in a 3-ring binder.

Looks interesting - just ordered - thanks for posting this info.

Sounds great!

Does it come with a CD?

Booksniffer said:

Sounds great!

Does it come with a CD?

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No CD with this one.

Bill1 said:

...They made another book called "Songs and Solos for Uke" which is very 1984 with tunes like Oh Susana and Home on the Range. Lyrics, TAB and standard notation, a good resource for those who like the genre.

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Cool. I like the first one so much I'm going to track down the other one.

Just a head's up: I was in contact with Mr. Eidson's son back in 2005 to get a CD copy of the "Hawaiian Uke Songbook" cassette tape which was originally available when the book was printed. I'm unable to find the CD at the moment (I looked in all the "usual" places, but you know, of course it must be in an "unusual" place these days) but I've written to the son at the previous email address I had for him asking about current availability. I'll update here on the forum when/if I hear back from him (or when I find that elusive CD).

Note: Ken Eidson passed away in 1999 following a short bout with cancer.

Thanks for posting this Estudiante!

Estudiante said:

I forgot to add... there should be a law against music books with glued-together bindings. It doesn't lay flat, and the pages are coming out already. Fortunately, the pages seem to come out easily enough I'll be able to just pull them all out and put them in a 3-ring binder.

Click to expand...

Or in my case, I would just scan the book with my Canon P-150 scanner so that I could use the book on my iPad.