Pick Pluck Play! Series Book 1

I am very excited to announce my new ukulele book series. “Pick Pluck Play!” contains my compositions for high G ukulele, with chords for duet playing. Each of the five books contains 12 pieces, arranged by skill level. Book 1 was released on Amazon on 15th October 2025! Read about it HERE.

Preface

Reading music is a skill that begins with recognizing patterns. Like anything else, it gets easier with practice. For high G ukulele, it’s especially helpful—and often necessary—to read both standard notation and tablature to fingerpick individual notes.

Pick Pluck Play! is a series of books, each containing twelve original pieces arranged in order of increasing difficulty. These pieces are designed to build your skills in reading and playing music, and they can also be used as performance pieces. Each book builds on the one before it.

Book 1 is for absolute, complete beginners. We start with open strings and simple one-handed fingerpicking in the first piece, gradually adding more complexity in each subsequent piece. Most of the pieces include chord names, which means they can also be played as duets or be accompanied on another instrument such as the ukulele or guitar. The final piece in this book, Waltz Up the Neck: 3 Chord Thursday, is a tribute to the themed song sessions of the ukulele club I founded during the early days of the pandemic. Now in its fifth year, 3 Chord Thursday continues to bring together ukulele enthusiasts from around the world on select Thursdays via Zoom.

Table of Contents

Each of the twelve pieces has a blog post, linked from here.

1. Dance on Open Strings by Robert Bekkers – all open strings; four notes

Dance on Open Strings with Lyrics – added to help you follow

 2. Variations on Dance on Open Strings – play the right hand as before; press one string with the left hand

 3. Thrive on Five – only five notes in this easy piece

 4. Take Five in Five (Thrive on Five in 5/4 time) – add one more note (beat) in each bar

 5. Inch with Index Finger – left index finger presses on 1st fret A or E strings

 6. Walk with Fingers – walk the left index and middle fingers on first fret

 7. Thrive on Five (Pentatonic) – similar to Thrive on Five but one note changes it to pentatonic!

 8. Thrive on Five in Five (Pentatonic) 5/4 time – add one more note (beat) to get this

 9. Step Inside Outside – right hand fingerpicks inside two strings (C and E) then outside two strings (G and A) in this order for most of the piece

10. Tweak the Twinkle – Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in major and minor keys

11. C Major Scale Waltz – an easy waltz on the C major scale; alternate right hand index and middle fingers to “walk” and fingerpick thumb on G-string

12. Waltz Up the Neck 3 Chord Thursday – adding lyrics makes it easier to follow the single note melody.

Pick Pluck Play! Series

A collection of original compositions for high G ukulele in a variety of musical styles, designed for both practice and performance. Each piece is written for solo (melody or chord melody) with chords for duet and accompaniment possibilities, and introduces fingerpicking techniques while building skills in reading standard notation and tablature for high G ukulele.

The series progresses from complete beginner in Book 1 to advanced levels in Book 5, with each book containing 12 carefully sequenced pieces. Each book concludes with a chord look-up table.

• Book 1: Dance on Open Strings to Waltz Up the Neck 3 Chord Thursday
• Book 2: Major Minor Menagerie, Fretful Fingers, Thirst for Third, etc.
• Book 3: Counting Sheep to Sleep to Travel with Travis: Hammer, Pull, Slide
• Book 4: Wasp’s Sting, Thrice Blinded by Mice, Glistening Glass, Suss the Suss,
  Roman Hands & Russian Fingers, Sense the Sicilienne, and four waltzes
• Book 5: Err on the G String, Mish Mash Monster Bash, Swim Swam Swum,
  B-A-C-H in a Waltz, and lyrical pieces up the neck
• Special Edition: 12 Harmonized C Major Scale Studies 
• Special Edition: 12 Chromatic Scale Studies
• Special Collection: Ciao, Italia! 12 progressive pieces with Italian
  inspired titles, mixed skill levels from beginner to advanced
• Chinese Zodiac: 12 Pentatonic Pieces, one for each of the 12
  animal signs, with cute illustrations for coloring in; mixed skill levels

Early Reviews

Pick Pluck Play! fills a much needed gap in the fingerstyle ukulele repertoire. Anne Ku takes you by the hand, one finger at a time, walking up the frets and skipping over difficult notes, piece by piece until you graduate to the next book. The series is a welcome addition to any ukulele player’s library.  Daniel Ward

These pieces are fun, engaging and musically interesting. Today, there is far more music available for ukulele than ever, but not all of it necessarily good. This music is good! Highly recommended.   Jeffrey Weinberger

Anne Ku’s background in composition and pedagogy, as well as her thorough understanding of the ‘ukulele, shine in these carefully crafted pieces. They are not only musically delightful, but also methodical in their approach to learning this joyful instrument.   Daniel Ho

With her usual clarity and thoroughness, Anne introduces ukulele players to a wide range of musical treats. By the end of Book 2, the student will be able to approach fingerstyle playing with a certainty of technique and understanding of the ukulele’s musical possibilities, and enter the wonderful world of fingerstyle ukulele playing that lifts the instrument from being a mere strummy accompanist.    Colin Tribe

Pick Pluck Play! provides a solid foundation for understanding the rudiments of fingerstyle ukulele. Anne Ku’s graduated pieces are eloquently structured to ensure repetitive applications of each new technique. Clear instructions for mindful practicing preface each piece. This is the perfect method book for the adult learner.   Andrea Gaudette

The pieces in Books 1, 2, and 3 are perfectly arranged in order of technical difficulty.  In Book 2, in “Major Minor Menagerie”,  I hear echoes of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy theme in major and minor tonalities. (I hear what you’re doing!!) Delightful!  The “Sortie on Satie” shows beautiful compositional nuance in connecting Gymnopedies 1, 2 and 3 in a seamless way.  In Book 3, I especially enjoyed playing the “C Major Scale Waltz”, “Cadencia Andaluza Por Favor”,  “I Hear Ya, Andaluza”, and my absolute favorite, “Arpeggio Carpaccio Prego”, with a beautifully descending melodic line in the first three measures (and elsewhere).  These are more than just exercises!  They are beautiful ukulele performance pieces!  
Keith A. Larsen, Assistant Director, Berkshire Ukulele Band

Order ukulele books by Anne Ku

I donated the first printed and signed copy of Book 1 of the “Pick Pluck Play!” Series for fingerstyle ukulele to the silent auction at the 4th Nutmeg Ukulele Festival.

Please use the new form to order books. Click on the image below for the Google Form.

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Visit the. YouTube Playlist to watch all videos of music from this book.

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Click on the links to get the three different editions

• Amazon.com Full Color (heavy paper, chord names in bold red)
• Amazon.com Economy
• Amazon.com KINDLE e-book

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