- Ukulele Aerobics for All Levels Beginner to Advanced | 40-Week Practice Program with Online Audio | Hal Leonard Ukulele Book for Technique, Fingerstyle, Strumming and More

I teach the ukulele to folks, on an amateur basis, purely for fun. I would highly recommend this book after first going through one of the very basic ukulele books; not as a student's first book. I would also suggest a good basic song book, such as the the Daily Ukulele. As I went through the book, I found myself learning and re-learning quite a lot. And, I have been playing string instruments a long time- about 50 years. Due to arthritis in my very small hands, the guitars, and other instruments, have long been retired. Pros- This book is really terrific for skills building. It has a unique incremental skills-based approach and one progresses through daily tasks and practice. It's set up into 40 weeks, with a short lesson for each day of each week. It is well organized, thoughtful, and quite frankly an amazing amount of fun. Some daily tasks will take less than the suggested 20 minutes of daily practice, while others will take longer to master. If you do the exercises, and are disciplined and diligent, it will improve your playing skills and musical knowledge tremendously. This is true for players who are quite experienced, as well as those that are relatively new to the ukulele. The audio tracks are easy to access, and are just right for giving the student the correct sounds. Cons- This book would, in my opinion, be very difficult for the truly rank beginner. The book does not show how to properly hold the uke, place or use the fretting hand, work the tuners, and much other basic information a student should know about ukuleles. Things like the different sizes of ukes, the parts of the instrument, and the like. As an aside, I never recommend a uke with friction tuners to beginners. For children and adults with very small hands I recommend a soprano size, for most others I recommend starting with a concert size. For someone with very large hands a tenor might be best. Overall- This book is a keeper and I will surely be recommending it to all my students, as part of their learning. Before going through this book, I was teaching folks by giving them a few easy songs and chords to begin with; then progressing into more difficult chords and songs, and adding some finger picking songs. As they could handle it, I would add a few more complicated skills into the mix. I have found most folks who want to learn the ukulele, do not much like scales, or much in the way of music theory, and are happiest when they can just play a song and sing along. The ukulele is a fun, easy to learn instrument, but like any instrument, not easy to master. Ukulele Aerobics provides a different and much needed approach and I applaud Mr. Johnson's efforts in producing such a fine book.

I’m really happy I bought this book. I’m a beginner ukulele player and started taking classes at the beginning of the summer. I played the clarinet in middle school so I have a basic knowledge of music, but not a real big grasp of music theory. This book has a nice mix of weekly chords, strumming skills, scales, fingerstyle skills and licks & riffs to work on for a suggested 20 minutes a day over a course of 40 weeks. Even though I’ve been taking lessons all summer, the single most helpful “trick” I learned from this book was how to play the scale in Week 1’s lessons. I’ve learned where various notes can be played on the finger board, but have been struggling. My teacher wanted to know what happened that I suddenly “got it.” Putting the notes in ORDER on a scale was my “ah-ha” moment. I’m afraid my uke teacher is getting dumped—at least for a while—this book seems to think more like I do, and I like the mix of skills each week rather than focusing solely on a set of new chords. There was no CD included with the book I bought (purchased in July 2016), but there is audio access through the Hal Leonoard website. You can download the tracks or you can play them on the website. I’m able to play the weekly lessons on my iPad with no problems, but I like the various capabilities the online audio player has from my PC better (I can loop a scale or riff for continuous practice or speed up/slow down the tempo). Each week’s audio accompaniment is than 5 minutes total. The audio isn’t necessary, but it’s nice to have it and try to keep up (which is how I know I’ve perfected the lesson). TAB notation is also included in most of the exercises. My instructor thinks TAB is cheating. I don’t mind it at all, and I know there are some ukulele songbooks out there that are printed with strictly TAB notation, and I’d like to know how to “read” it so I’m glad it’s included (even though I notice I don’t really use it unless I can’t figure out where in the world to put my fingers). So far so good. I haven’t come across anything I simply can’t do. I’m not so great at memorizing chords and I’m slow on chord changes sometimes, but the more exposure I have to chords, the better I’ll get at remembering them and where to put my fingers. Learning to play is something I want to do so I’m happy to spend 20 minutes a day (or longer) working on the exercises the author, Chad Johnson, has put together.

Give it 15 minutes a day. You'll likely want to play longer and you'll learn a lot.

This would be a five-star review if not for one thing, which I will discuss momentarily. As far as method books go, this is fantastic. It does require basic knowledge of the terminology used in music and of music reading, but yeah, that’s pretty much all method books. The exercises are extensive, and they build upon each other as the student progresses through the “weeks” in the book. Get it. It’s awesome. So here’s the catch, the one little thorn in the side of a product that would otherwise merit a five-star review... Although the book is supplemented with very helpful audio examples, all of which can be played back at various tempos and key modulations through Hal Leonard’s website, the format of the audio examples does not match the corresponding notes contained within the book. For example, the examples for the seven exercises in Week 1 are delivered through seven separate .mp3 audio files, which is all well and good, but in the book, each exercise refers to a specific time marker instead of an individual track (exercise 1 is referred to by 0:00, exercise 2 by 0:27, instead of Track 1, Track 2, etc., as they are found in the actual audio examples). I suspect that the book was written with the intent of supplying the audio examples as one continuous audio file, but the recorded audio was split into individual tracks instead. Oops? Anyway, I think this book is 99% awesome, and you should invest in a copy.

My review of Ukulele Aerobics by Chad Johnson. I easily downloaded the audio tracks from the Hal Leonard web site using the code on the first page of the book. The tracks were easy to play from both files on my computer and to play directly from audio links Hal Leonard web site. The download (download all or individual tracks) created a separate file for each lesson on my computer with the lesson # in the filename. I wanted a technique book to improve my Uke skills and I think this book is great. I feel it is similar to what the Pumping Nylon book by Scott Tennant does for guitar. I like the way Chad’s book adds variety to the lessons by presenting a different technique on each day of the week. The book provides fingering for the right hand and gives TAB with string & fret #s for the left hand and fingering for the right hand but avoids giving fingering for the left-hand chords, probably because there is often more than one way to finger a chord with the LH and the best LH fingering usually depends on the previous and the next chord that will be played in a song/chord progression. This book is focused on Uke skills and not specific songs. It does have some chord progression exercises but it does not have any full Uke songs. Playing songs while strumming a Uke can be very rewarding in and of itself, but if you are looking for ways to improve your Uke technique, then I think this book will serve you well.

After a year of playing the Ukulele using various on line and in person instructors, youtube videos and books, literally spending hundreds of dollars, I stumbled across this book. Honestly, this is all I need! Very well organized, progressing from beginner to advanced. One short lesson per day. I was able to move quickly through the first few chapters. Then I settled in to the suggested pace. It is not a magic bean, you still need to practice! But, if you do as recommended, it works! I love it!

Here is my experience with the book: I got it 2 years ago and have been using it to learn the ukulele. I have played the piano for 25 years, but I'm brand new to the ukulele. I am still only on week 7 in this book, but I feel like I have learned a lot from it. I started with the first week's lessons and once I felt like I had those down or if I got bored and wanted more material, I would move on to the next week. I also found songs on the internet that I already knew that I could change chords to fit the chords I already learned. It has been a really fun way of learning and I feel like this book has helped me to learn techniques and methods that have helped my playing to advance more quickly than I would have without it. As I said, I'm not far in the book, but I love what I've learned and I like taking my time learning to do things correctly. Also, as a side note, I got the book and ukulele a few months before having my third kid, so someone in a different situation could likely devote more time to the ukulele, but I spend a lot of my ukulele time wrestling a small child away from it 😅

i've ben playing the ukulele for about 2 years. At first the book was fun, but as I got farther along it became more of a chore. I got to week 16 and gave up on the diminished chords. I guess the book is ok if you just want to learn a bunch of chords, but for me it works better to learn them in the context of a song. Also, there are no chord fingering diagrams, so you end up looking them up elsewhere. The instructions for legato and licks and riffs also could use more explanation.

Spiele noch nicht sehr lange Ukulele und bringe es mir selbst an Hand von Youtube Videos oder Büchern bei. Ich suchte nach einen besonderen Ratgeber, welcher nicht nur stur Akkorde abbildet und ich auch nicht nur Lieder begleiten, sondern auch irgendwann mal unterschiedliche Spieltechniken auf meinen Instrument können möchte. Dafür ist dieses Buch ein Must Have. Auch wenn die Sprache Englisch ist, ist es kein größeres Problem. Die kleinen Übungen sind zwar sehr kurz, werden aber so knifflig was die Fingerfertigkeit und Koordination betrifft, dass man manchmal Tage mit Üben damit verbringt, bis man es einigermaßen beherrscht. Man verbessert sein Spiel damit fast unbemerkt enorm. Man ist erstaunt, wenn man dann nur mal wieder Lieder mit Akkorden begleitet, wie simpel es auf einmal erscheint und leicht von der Hand geht. Die Kapitel sind nach Wochentagen und Wochen aufgeteilt. Mit insgesamt 40 Wochen. Zusätzlich ist im Buch ein Code angegeben, mit diesen man sich die Übungsstücke runterladen kann, damit man auch eine Vorstellung hat, wie es eigenltich klingen sollte. Wenn noch eine kleine Videsequenz dabei wäre, da manch Fingertechnik nur anhand der Beschreibung umzusezten schon manchmal sehr Trickey ist, wäre noch perfekt. Aber nichts desto trotz ist dies ein Buch mit dem man sehr lange Arbeiten und Üben kann. Habe bisher nichts Vergleichbares gefunden. Von meiner Seite klare Kaufempfehlung.

Hi, I download the book in Android OS and I cannot listen to the audios. Do someone know a solution?

Cons: Did not come with CD as claimed. Pros: Exercises are very systematic and progressive. 3 weeks in, I have definitely seen improvement in finger strength. The book introduced a lot of useful techniques, although some techniques and terminology I had to look up on youtube to understand the proper way of doing them. I also like that this books comes with musical notation instead of just tabs, so you know what you are doing.

再生ボタンを押しても再生されません！ すぐに対応をお願いします。

Estructurado como un método de aprendizaje de 40 semanas con ejercicios diarios. Aunque empieza por temas básicos, progresa muy rápidamente y en pocas "semanas" algunos ejercicios ya supondrán un desafío para muchos ukelelistas. Enfocado en ejercicios muy cortos pero que fácilmente se pueden incorporar en nuestra práctica. Es un libro diametralmente opuesto a, por ejemplo, "Ukulele exercises for dummies", ya que éste último es un libro con mucha prosa y en realidad no muchos ejercicios realmente interesantes. Por el contrario, "Ukulele aerobics" es un libro fino, algo pequeño, con pocas palabras (pero que transmite los conceptos con bastante claridad, a pesar de ello) y repleto de buen material. Se ve de lejos que el autor sabe muchísimo de música. Los principiantes aunque pueden usarlo, probablemente necesitarán ahondar en algunos temas por su cuenta, pero al libro no se le puede pedir más en tan poco espacio. El hecho de que esté escrito en inglés, a poco que uno esté familiarizado con el idioma, no creo que suponga mayor obstáculo. Un libro con buena relación calidad-precio. Recomendable.