Product Description

While the ‘ukulele is enjoying a well-deserved renaissance on the mainland, in the land of it's birth, it has never gone out of style. Hawaiian's took to the "jumping flea" right from the start, creating music of stunning beauty and versatility. Now intermediate players can learn to play lovely finger style solo arrangements of classic Hawaiian songs, folk songs, standards–even a few pieces from the classical guitar repertoire. The book offers 27 arrangements from around the world written in standard notation and tablature playable on any ‘ukulele. Songs are grouped according to level of difficulty, starting with simple arrangements well within the grasp of dedicated beginners and intermediate players and leading through more challenging songs featuring unusual chord voicings, inversions up the neck, tricky fingerings and "all the fun stuff" the author could muster. To aid the student, the companion CD includes all of the songs taught. Includes chord charts, inversion studies, introductory material on finger-picking and making the transition from strumming to melodic playing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #190622 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Multi-instrumentalist Mark Nelson has been active in the folk, Celtic and world music scene since the early 1970's. Considered one of the nation's premiere mountain dulcimer players-he won the National Championships in 1979-he is equally adept at guitar, 'ukulele, bass and various other instruments. His passion for Hawaiian slack key guitar led him to seek out and study with the masters of the vanishing art form. In 1997, Mark and revered Hawaiian musician Keola Beamer co-authored "learn to Play Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar," the first comprehensive tutorial for this gentle art form. After a lengthy touring career, Mark now hosts The Aloha Music Camp, a weeklong immersion into the music and culture of Hawaii with Hawaii's beloved Beamer family. (Aunty Nona Beamer recently honored him with the Hawaiian name "Kailana".) Acoustic Guitar Magazine dubbed his most recent CD, "The Water is Wide", a lovely blend of Celtic dulcimer and Hawaiian slack key guitar, "achingly beautiful." Mark's new Mel Bay book, "Learn to Play Fingerstyle Solos for 'Ukulele" will be released in early 2006. Mark lives in Southern Oregon's beautiful Applegate Valley, where he maintains a small recording studio and writes about music and music technology for a number of publications.

Customer Reviews

Uke Fingers
I'm a beginner and I love this book. Highly recommended; it starts off easy and progressively gets harder. The song selections are actually good and are fun to play. The best book I've seen for fingerstyle uke play.

Mark Nelson's Ukulele book.
To many the ukulele is just a string kazoo; the instrument our grandfather's and great-grandfathers played at thier wild frat partys. However, Mark Nelson's book breaks that myth. Any instrument can be as hard as you want to make it. This is a book for serious students. Nelson shows you the different strumming patterns and the individual notes on the Uke. Learn from this and you'll amaze your friends. There is no limit on what you can play.

Very helpful and easy to follow
My uke playing up 'til now has been strumming. This book has many tunes of all sorts of styles, progressing from easier to harder. I like the mix of Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian pieces. Right now I'm at the stage of learning each song as written, but because some songs appear a couple of times with different degrees of technicality and style, it will help me to better understand how to play other songs using these techniques and expand my repertoire. It is such a beautiful instrument and easy to play, and I really want to get past the level of being able to strum along on some songs, and this is a book to really help. I only wish there were a few more slack-key songs in it. The CD that is included not only is helpful in learning the songs, but I play it in my office as nice music to just listen to. I highly recommend Fingerstyle Solos.