Highly recommended uke book: John King's Classical Ukulele

upskydowncloud

upskydowncloud

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Hey guys,

I read a thread last week in which a member recommended John King's "The Classical Ukulele" book. I ordered it and it arrived this morning. I felt compelled to write a new thread on it because it's so good! It comes with a CD of all the tracks being played by the man himself.

I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in finger picking songs or has a classical background, it has a range of great songs like Fur Elise and Bach's preludes and Greensleeves. It also has a version of Sakura which Jake covered on his Gently Weeps CD. It's well worth looking for.

Rather helpfully the book has both standard music notation and uke tab so you can get the correct timings for all notes etc.

Definitely worth checking out!

John
 
on a scale of one to ten how hard is the book?
one being the lowest. :D

but nonetheless i think i'll purchase this book. i do like classical music and john king does make the uke seem like it's on steroids cause it's too powerfully simpleish?
 
Cool! Mine's on the way... Now I'm all the more excited for it. :D
 
Choboy said:
on a scale of one to ten how hard is the book?
one being the lowest. :D

but nonetheless i think i'll purchase this book. i do like classical music and john king does make the uke seem like it's on steroids cause it's too powerfully simpleish?
Click to expand...

Hmm, I wouldn't put the book in the easy category, and the song I'm looking at at the moment is in the 8/10 range simply because there are some crazy stretches in there. I've learned the first two bars already, it just takes practice like most things!

ukeatan said:
Cool! Mine's on the way... Now I'm all the more excited for it. :D
Click to expand...

You won't regret it, it's really good!
 
Choboy said:
on a scale of one to ten how hard is the book?
one being the lowest. :D

but nonetheless i think i'll purchase this book. i do like classical music and john king does make the uke seem like it's on steroids cause it's too powerfully simpleish?
Click to expand...

The book seems to start out with a couple of easier songs, like Danny Boy and Greensleeves. There are a lot of more challenging songs, but not impossible if you are really motivated. It really helps if you can listen to the audio CD version first. It not only helps you with the timing, but helps you select a song you really want to learn.

–Lori
 
I've had this book for a while, and I think there's a good mixture of relatively easy, progressing up to pretty difficult (well, too difficult for me at the moment anyway). It's a great book! A really good collection, with beautiful arrangements. Now I just need the discipline to learn to play one of them properly...
 
Yeah It's a sad fact, but I hadn't heard about John King until the bad news, but it made me go back and not only was he good he made classical music sound more interesting to me. All his you tube videos are great, all the songs in the book must be. I only can't remember what the name of the string skipping thing he does was though.
 
I loved John King, and I love his book. The songs come in a range from relatively easy to quite difficult. It is a good book to help you develop.

I have to say though, that the campanella style drives me crazy. If you are like John King and knowing the entire fretboard is like 2nd nature - that's one thing - but for those of us who are struggling to learn it is maddening to be jumping all over the place for the next note.

The book was very helpful to me in learning to read tabs, and if I could apply myself, it should teach you to play with regular musical notation. Unfortunately I have not been able to devote enough time to it.

John King was a giant. Truly one of my greatest inspirations in playing ukulele. I know I will never have a fraction of his talent, but the fact that he looked at the ukulele and saw a stringed instrument that could play any musical literature within its range - that really opened my mind.
 
liquid_wind said:
Yeah It's a sad fact, but I hadn't heard about John King until the bad news, but it made me go back and not only was he good he made classical music sound more interesting to me. All his you tube videos are great, all the songs in the book must be. I only can't remember what the name of the string skipping thing he does was though.
Click to expand...

Same here; I hadn't heard him play until after he died. I was blown away. Considering the book even though I have no classical background on any instrument. Awesome that it comes with a CD. If I could play like that guy, I'd be set for life!
 
haole said:
Awesome that it comes with a CD.
Click to expand...

Yup.

Seeing as how it's going for $16.47 on Amazon, you can almost think of it as buying an excellent CD of classical ukulele music (that just happens to come with a free book of transcriptions!) :D

JJ
 
I've looked around and not found an answer, does anyone know what song he's playing in the "In Memory of John King" video from the Mightyuke project? Or even better, is it in this book/cd combo?
 
I'd definitely recommend this one.

Just finished learning his arrangement of 'Tarantella Italiana'

I do find some of his arrangements a little sparse when played unaccompanied, but I guess that's the campanella style.

Definitely worth the money, even just for the accompanying CD, which is excellent and all played on a Fluke!

R.I.P. John, a great loss to the world of music.
 
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