Best ukulele books for beginners

The ukulele is the easiest instrument on this site to start and one of the easiest to plateau on. Four chords, a strum, and you are playing songs within a day, which is genuinely wonderful. Two years later a lot of players are still playing those four chords with the same strum.

That is what a method book is for. Not the first afternoon — the year after it.

We have not worked through these books. What we compared is what each publisher says the book contains: page count, what media is included and how you get it, which notation it teaches, and the publisher’s own description of the contents. The method is on how we pick.

What a ukulele book is actually for

Three things a chord chart cannot do.

Strumming patterns with names and rhythms. The difference between a beginner and someone who sounds good is almost never chords. It is the right hand, and it is the part self-taught players skip because nobody told them there was anything to learn.

Melody playing. The ukulele has a beautiful single-note voice that most strummers never touch. Playing a tune rather than chords behind one requires reading tab or notation, which is where a method book starts.

An order. Free resources are abundant and unordered. A book decides what comes next, which is precisely what a beginner cannot do for themselves.

What to check before buying

1. Which notation it teaches. Chord boxes are universal. Tab gives you melodies. Standard notation opens up sheet music generally, and on ukulele it is genuinely optional. Look at which combination the publisher lists before anything else.

2. How the audio works. Every book here includes recordings, but they arrive differently: Hal Leonard prints a single access code inside the book, while Wiley hosts audio and video on its own site with download links. The first is a problem for secondhand copies; the second needs an internet connection.

3. Whether the tuning matches yours. Most beginner material assumes standard GCEA with a high G. If your ukulele is strung with a low G, some melody exercises will sit an octave away from where the book expects. The tuning options are in ukulele tunings explained.

4. Who it is written for. The gap between a children’s course and an adult method is larger on ukulele than on any other instrument here, because the ukulele is marketed so heavily to both.

How we ranked these

Gets you playing songs first, then whether it works without a teacher, then scope for the money, then audio support, then room to grow. All from published contents rather than from working through the books.

The picks

The Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1#ad is the standard, and it is the one we would buy. 48 pages by Lil’ Rev covering tuning, strumming, reading music, melodies, chords, scales and tremolo, with 46 demonstration and play-along tracks that can be slowed down and looped without changing pitch. It teaches tab and standard notation side by side, so nothing is closed off later.

Two honest costs. Hal Leonard publishes no song list and no chord list for Book 1, so you are buying the curriculum unseen. And the audio unlocks with a single code printed inside the book, which makes a secondhand copy a gamble. Hal Leonard also listed it on back order at its own store when we checked, though retail stock was available.

Ukulele For Dummies, 3rd Edition#ad is the widest book here at 336 pages, and it is the only one that starts before the instrument: which ukulele to buy, which accessories, and how to hold it, before moving through chords, styles and apps. It works from chord diagrams and tab, and Wiley states plainly that reading music is not required. Audio and video live on the publisher’s resource center with offline download links, so there is no code to lose.

It is a guide rather than a course. Wiley publishes no song list and no full contents, and the material is organized by topic rather than as a graded sequence, so the reader decides the order. For a self-teacher who likes to browse, that is a feature; for someone who wants to be told what to do next, it is not.

Alfred's Kid's Ukulele Course 1#ad is the children’s pick. 48 pages aimed at ages five and up, with three cartoon guides drawing attention to the important thing on each page, and online audio that plays on any computer or handheld device. Alfred names Aloha Oe, Over the Rainbow and When the Saints Go Marching In among the songs.

The most useful thing Alfred publishes about it is that parents can lead the course even with no musical training of their own, which is exactly the situation most families are in. The limits: it is unmistakably for young children, Alfred names only three songs and publishes no full contents list, and the publisher does not state which notation system it uses.

The book will not fix the ukulele

Worth saying, because it is the most common reason a beginner blames themselves. If the instrument will not hold tune, has a high action at the nut, or plays sharp as you move up the neck, no amount of practice fixes it.

Those faults are common at the cheap end, and they are the reason we are firm about the floor in are cheap ukuleles worth it. A fresh set of strings and a nut adjustment fixes a surprising amount of it — see best ukulele strings.

How to get through one

Work in order and play the audio first. Hearing the exercise before you read it turns a page of symbols into a target.

Do not skip the right hand. The strumming pages look trivial and are the most valuable pages in the book.

Keep the ukulele out. It is small, it is light, and an instrument on a hook gets picked up several times a day. That is what practice actually looks like on this instrument.

The guitar version of this comparison, where the chords-first versus reading-first split matters far more, is in best guitar books for beginners.