The Soprano Ukulele Set

From Voggenreiter Verlag

Complete Ukulele Set - 20367SET - $49.95

The perfect starter set for ukulele! Everything you need to play the uke, including a high-quality all-wood ukulele with metal frets, the Total Ukulele method book with companion CD, and a pick. The Total Ukulele instructional book by Gernot Rödder makes learning the uke easy and fun! It addresses all of the concerns a beginning uke player might have, including tuning, rhythm accompaniment, strumming patterns and techniques, chord diagrams, fingerpicking techniques, and melody playing. The music is presented in notation and tablature and is explained in easy-to-understand terms. Total Ukulele also covers the basics of music theory and offers many chord exercises and progressions in notation and diagram form. The companion CD features numerous exercises and eleven popular tunes so the student can listen and play along. The method book is written for the standard soprano ukulele tuning in D (older tuning) with the pitches of strings (from 4 to 1) at A, D, F#, and B.

Considering a ukulele as a "guitar accessory" may be a bit of a stretch for some readers, but I hope to make my case on its tuning alone. In the Hawaiian language, the word "ukulele" means jumping flea. I propose that even the instrument's name might be derived from its tuning. From fourth string to first, the soprano uke is tuned either GCEA (C tuning) or a whole tone higher ADF#B (standard D or "older" tuning). In either case there's an unexpected downward leap or jump from the pitch of the fourth string to the third.

Believe it or not, with either uke tuning, even with the fourth string tuned an octave higher than a guitarist would expect (as with the 5th string of the 5-string banjo), that typical "My Dog Has Fleas" tuning is proportionately the same as the first four strings of the guitar: DGBE low to high. If you don't mind losing some of the characteristic charm of the uke, drop that fourth string an octave, inverting the interval from a perfect fifth to a perfect fourth; In so doing you'll gain an additional perfect fourth of low-end range and emulate the exact string-to-string interval proportions of the first four strings of the guitar.

Sure, the uke's string pitches are different than the guitar, but the string-to-string pitch relationships are exactly the same. That means that any chord shape you learn on the uke can be applied to the first four strings of the guitar, and vice-versa- guitarists can make instant sense of the uke. You may be a multi-instrumentalist without knowing it.

I recommend the uke as a starting instrument for the young student who ultimately wants to play the guitar. While high-quality small guitars are becoming more prevalent, their prices are often prohibitive. With the current soaring popularity of the ukulele, the instrument is readily available in all price categories- and it has always been the right size for small hands. The Voggenreiter Complete Ukulele Set makes an ideal birthday or Christmas gift for the aspiring uke player or guitarist.