Review: Ukulele Duets

Posted by on July 5th 2014 @ 6:32 am

Ukulele DuetsUkulele Duets, released by Mel Bay.

As a blogger and an ukulele book author, I generally try to be as kind and positive as I can about any ukulele book I come across. I try to imagine who would enjoy the book, rather than whether I would find it personally useful.

I had great hopes for this book. I teach ukulele groups and a book of duets would be a wonderful resource. The formatting is nice and clean; it includes melody and tab lines for each of the ukuleles.

Problems started to arise though, when I played through the book. One ukulele plays through the melody, which is no surprise. Where I was dissapointed, and frankly think makes this book useless, is that the harmony part on the second uke is almost entirely, in every arrangement, a parallel third or fourth above the melody. Anyone could figure out how to play in parallels. Who needs a whole book for it?

In short, there is no real arranging here, just a formula used over and over again. The ears get tired of this kind of thing really quick. For this book to be useful, I would expect to some good/interesting counterpoint.

Thankfully, Amazon refunded my purchase.

Ryan's favorite starter ukulele: The Enya Nova U Concert Ukulele 23” on Amazon sounds great, is easy to play, in tune and nearly indestructable. "I left it in the car through the heat of summer to see what would happen, and it still plays beautifully."

Post filed under All UkulelePlay! Blog Posts, Ukulele Learning Material Reviews, Ukulele Song Books.

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