Machete method books?

I'm interested in getting a set of Southcoast's Machete strings and stringing up my Ohana sopranino as a Machete, but I don't think I'll have a clue as to where to start learning to play it. Can anyone recommend a beginner method book or online source? I'm having trouble finding something. Apparently, one of the first ukulele method books, "The Original Method and Self-Instructor on the Ukulele" by Angeline Nunes and A.A. Santos was written in Machete tuning and I'd love to see it, but it seems the only copies out there are in library special collections.

Thanks!

Chester

Hello Chester,

First off, I'm not sure you'd like that set on a Sopranino. It will give better tension on a Soprano. We do make Ukulele reentrant sets, the Extra Lights with the Sopranino in mind. They will give you d" - g' - b' - e", or in other words, the one-line octave - an octave above the reentrant tuning you would use on a Baritone or Tenor.

As to books for Machete playing, I did actually have a brief correspondence with Jim Tranquada about this tuning and the Method Book you referred to. He co-wrote the The Ukulele - A History with John King. I told him that if he could come up with a scan of this book, I'd put it up on the site for a free download. He said he'd see if he could get that done, but I haven't heard back. Maybe I'll check again - if I do come up with something, I'll post it.

In the meantime, you could try Cavaquinho Methods, the disadvantage there being that they are pretty much all in Portuguese. Your best bet would probably be 5-string Banjo Manuals. There are lots of those around. Just ignore the 5th "drone" string, and then the only difference is d - g - b - d' for the banjo versus d' - g' - b' - d" for the Machete.

Dirk,
Nice to hear from you directly...I've been very much enjoying your newly designed site and the wealth of information that you have on it.

Thanks for the heads up on the Machete set on the sopranino...I did see that your chart indicates that the tension would be on the low side. I'm interested in trying out the open g Machete tuning and might put them on a soprano, but there's something very attractive to me about trying it on the sopranino.

If you could get a copy of the Nunes' Method book, I'm sure that I would not be the only person interested in seeing it. I'm actually a little surprised that it isn't more widely available. It seems like a pretty important part of Ukulele history. Thanks for offering to put it up.

I'll take a look at the Cavaquinho and banjo methods in the meantime...

Hopefully, you'll be seeing an order from me soon.

Best,
Chester

Just for anyone interested in this tuning, I wanted to leave a link to a site that has a chord generator for it.
http://4stringcords.com
The last tuning option for ukuleles is DGBD...choose that and there you go.
Chester