The Bawu and Hulusi Tunebook - C Edition: One Hundred and One Tunes for these Popular Chinese Wind Instruments Paperback – March 11, 2012

This book assumes you can already play the bawu or hulusi at a beginner to intermediate skill level so it does not provide any instruction on how to play or how to read music. It gives a very basic introduction, and then it has fingering charts for a C instrument showing how to play the C, F, G, and D major scales. After that, it goes right into the music. It is all in the standard Western notation style. There is no Jianpu (Chinese numbering) and no tablature (fingering cheat) notation here. It actually has 103 distinct songs, not the 101 claimed on the cover, so you get 2 extra songs. Six of them are also repeated in a different key, so really the total pieces you can practice from this book is 109.The main issue to remember with this book, is it assumes your instrument is in the key of C. If you have a different key instrument, then your fingerings will not match the ones given in this book's fingering charts. The basic finger positions are the same but they correspond to different notes. A C instrument plays a C note when the thumb and top three fingers are down and the bottom three holes are open. A G instrument, played with the same fingering, will play a G note.All of the music (except those six tunes that have an alternate key version included) are written in the key of C. This means that any sharps or flats will be noted in each measure because the C key has no sharps or flats in its basic scale. This does not mean that there are no sharps or flats in the music! So even in a book written for a C instrument it is important that you know the fingerings for all the notes, even the sharps and flats. Regardless of what key your instrument is in, you do not really need to transpose the music... you just need to remember that your fingerings will not match the ones given in the fingering chart at the beginning of the book, and you play the notes AS WRITTEN according to your instrument's fingerings NOT the chart in the book.

The book is great with great information/music scores. The book I received had 4-5 cm of extra width, not sure why...Love it.

Easy to follow, clear instructions. Great for an absolute beginner.