uke books

I just got three new uke books from Guitar Center.

Two I just want to brag about..."Christmas Carols" 75 Christmas songs for the uke! and "Jumpin' Jim's 60s Uke-in." I love 60s music!

Now the third one, I have a question about.

A year ago I got Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1 by Lil Rev as my starter book. I went through the book and I guess I know how to play the uke now? haha, I can look at a song and if I can get the chords, play along with it.


If I can do that much, was there a point in me getting the Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 2? It hasn't arrived yet, Guitar Center had to order it, but it was only like $6 so I got it. What will this book teach me? Does it go further into the actual melodies of the songs?

From my experience the first method book has been a lot of accompaniment type stuff, not a lot of melody stuff. Does anyone know if this second book goes further into melodies?

Thanks!

The Hal Leonard 2 goes over keys like D and A, more chords, and strum patterns such as ragtime and calypso. If you want to learn something other than scales and chords, I would suggest Fingerpicking Styles, which has songs with picking and chords, which is a very useful method to play and one you hear more than any other on Youtube. It's my favorite method of playing. The book has a CD so you can listen to the songs, and it takes a progressive approach, from easy to more difficult.

great, I'll definitely be picking that one up next after I get through method book 2 since I've already purchased it. In that amazon link you provided, you said "which has songs with picking and chords." Are you saying there are those two types of songs, or the songs actually have a combination of picking and chords in one song? I'd love to actually learn to play both along with a song because sometimes it's not as fun when you can't hear the real song with it.