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When this tab book was announced, I have not been paying much attention to ukulele related happenings online, so I had no idea when it was actually announced. By the time I found out such a book was being released, it was less than a month before the release date. Being a big Jake Shimabukuro fan, I promptly ordered it on Amazon.com. I've already learned many of the songs from this album, but they are all from watching various youtube videos and trying to learn from watching and listening. So this tab book would not only help me learn some new songs to play, it would also correct what I have learned before.
The book was delivered to me on 2/17, about 10 days after its official release date. The songs I was most interested in checking out initially were Bohemian Rhapsody and Bring Your Adz. I learned these songs by watching Youtube videos and was eager to see how close I came. I knew I was quite a bit off on Bring Your Adz as I played the first section differently than how it sounded on the CD, so I can now practice how to play it correctly. As for Bohemian Rhapsody, I think I got most of it right, with some minor adjustments needed. I haven't really dug into the songs I don't know how to play yet, but I will tackle them as time allows.
The tabs featured in this book are pretty much exactly as how Jake plays them, and they are definitely not dumbed down at all. This means the difficulty of the tabs is pretty advanced. As I worked through a couple of the tabs of songs I've already learned, I found a couple of instances where the fingering presented is quite a bit harder to do than the way I learned them, despite the exact same notes being played. I think in these instances, it's OK to go with the easier fingering. I think while the book is advanced, it is not impossible. With enough practice and also if you listen to the CD enough so you know how the songs should sound like, I think most of the songs are possible to learn for most people with some work.
Overall, I think it is great to have this tab book out there. It may be too hard at first for many of the ukulele players out there, but it is something to aspire to, and I'm pretty sure people would buy it just to see what Jake's music actually look like. Hopefully Jake will issue more tab books in the future.
Here are some pictures showing a few pages from the book:
3 comments:
I must have this! His Bohemian Rhapsody version is tops. Most excited to check out the tab for While My Guitar Gently Weeps. The video of him playing it in central park is the first time I was introduced to him...still get chills watching it.
Class act book and review- I totally agree on the fingerings-some are counter-intuitive in the book.
Jake has superb technique with superman-like fingerpicking skills. Always jaw dropping to see him play.
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