Fingerstyle Ukulele Play-Along: The Beatles, Arranged by Fred Sokolow

R: Easy to read

United States on Sep 11, 2023

Stephen Bowen: As above

United Kingdom on Jul 24, 2023

J. Landers: Need more than one book for the collectiom

United States on Jul 11, 2023

Anna R.: ... the page turning is a pain!

It's really annoying having a physical notation/tab book and having to turn the pages back & forth all the time while strumming. Some songs have even 4 or more pages! That's ridiculous! I also feel like there are quite big spaces between the notation lines so it would have been possible to at LEAST cut it down to max. one page turn per song.

Also I find the extra lead sheets quite useless as the lyrics & chords are also incorporated with the notation/tabs so it's just useless waste of paper in my opinion.

I'm only giving this one three stars as I find the song choice and the Chord Melody Arrangement quite nice but I really hope the publisher would realize that as an instrument player it's not sustainable having to turn so many pages while playing.

Germany on Mar 08, 2023

Dan M.: Tablature is usually more of a beginner thing, not for people who read music. This book is a bit advanced for most people I know who are wanting to read tablature and don’t sight read musical notation. I have a long history of playing all kinds of instruments and can read musical notation and still find this hard to play, but I’m new to the ukulele overall still as well. People I showed this book to who are just starting to play were all frustrated and quickly set it back down. If you have experience with finger style playing this might work for you but if not I can’t recommend it. If you just want the lyrics and chord progression/changes to play the songs I would urge you to search online and find that without the cost associated with buying a book. The most popular songs by the Beatles are not what you will find either, there are songs I would expect to be in a book like this that are not in this one. I would say this is more for advanced players who want to learn the closest to the recordings as you can. The songs are fairly accurate being they weren’t originally for this instrument.

Overall there are options that will work better for most players from my...

United States on Oct 01, 2022

dede: couverture un peu défraichie ( sinon bien )

France on Jul 21, 2022

Patrick_33: Ce livre de partitions est très bien fait la partition en tablature suivie de la même partition en accords 25 morceaux à apprendre quand on aime les Beatles achat conseillé

France on Jul 15, 2021

Program in Writing and Rhetoric: The arrangements are great and easy to follow, though it helps to know how to read music at least a little. They sound really good just as written—the melodies standing out of the beautiful chords. (NOTE: The arrangements depend on a high G tuning.) As a beginner at finger style, I would have liked more instructions—maybe which fingers to use for playing the notes, when to use a strum rather than a fingerpluck on a chord, etc.—maybe not so much for every song, maybe in an introduction or something. A CD or website with all tunes would have been good too. I did find some YouTube videos of the author demonstrating some of the tunes and that was really helpful, gave me the idea I needed to work out the rest of the tunes. But I’m not disappointed and will definitely be using the book to improve my finger style playing.

United States on Mar 16, 2021

John D. Linn: Yes, this is for fingerstyle playing on a ukulele but be aware it must be a ukulele with the standard high G tuning. If you have low G tuning, which is pretty common on tenor ukes these days, this will not work for you. If you follow the tabs the G string will be an octave lower than intended and not sound right.

Having said that if you have an instrument with high G tuning the book is pretty good as many other reviewers have said. It is challenging if you are just starting out or a player that normally strums chords, but with practice you will have some fun.

PS: Another point I forgot to mention... the book is presented as appropriate for beginners as well as experienced players but there is no information about how to finger pick. Hand position and technique is not presented. How to read tabs is not covered. It is possible for anyone to figure it out but if you are new to the ukulele it will take time. There is interesting background information about each song which I enjoyed.

PSS: I just found one page in the back of the book that provides good information about tabs and notation. It is concise but very useful. So there is information about tabs!

United States on Jul 24, 2020

Rob: A nice collection of fingerstyle Beatles songs for those looking to go beyond simply strumming chords and expand their playing.

As other reviewers have noted, the arrangements are somewhat underwhelming and do not really go that far beyond basic 'chord melody' arrangements. You will find these are definitely at the basic end.

Having said that, they are very satisfying to play and certainly more interesting than merely strumming chords and are certainly bringing my playing skills along very nicely by giving me something more interesting than just endless scales and exercises. This will complement something like the James Hill method or other similar Ukulele methods very well. It will also give you a very good launch pad for building on to make your own more interesting arrangements (which is the ultimate goal anyway!).

The book is (roughly) progressive, with the more complex tunes at the end. It is worth investing the time in learning at least some of these.

I certainly recommend the book, not the kindle edition!

United Kingdom on Apr 20, 2017