Beginning Baritone Ukulele #1 (Freebies)

I regularly get questions from beginning players about where to get the good knowledge on how to play the baritone ukulele. And you will find that the information is very sparse and/or elementary. This Humble Baritonics is the Study of the Baritone Ukulele and the hunt for information wherever I can find it. Here's a typical inquiry. . .

Hi Jeff:

Thanks for the quick reply. I take your point about the wide range of my question. I don't play the standard GCEA ukulele but I have been learning the guitar for about eighteen months. My long term target would be to play jazz but in the short term popular songs in the Simon and Garfunkel genre suit me. I do admire fingerpicking and would like to be able to do that...

Any advice would be most welcome.

Regards, C.C.

I think that there are several good answers to this inquiry but I am going to start with the easy response of items that are free and readily available on the internet, and follow up with additional posts sometime soon. So I will start with (5) things that I think are essential and are free.

1) First, you need to know the chords (Alistair Wood / Ukulele Hunt has a nifty Bari-Chord page, HERE. Al's site, UKULELE HUNT, is a great reference for all ukulele players and you might like to subscribe to his daily feeds. Some of his postings are like Sudoku for the ukulele player -- he is constantly working out fingerpicking portions of songs that are sure to challenge and build skills. Some of the GCEA information directly translates to the DGBE Big-Uke.)

2) You want a good song book (Richard G has a great selection of songs, the chords are all diagrammed for a standard GCEA ukulele, but there is a great selection of songs, RICHARD G's UKULELE SONGBOOK. You'll have to refer to the chord page mentioned above.)

3) Use the 'Song Links for Bari' and 'Misc. Music' sections in the right hand side column of this blog to find more songs and explore. I recently was alerted to a new site from the Netherlands that is quite clever. It posts songs, videos, is good for GCEA, ADF#B, and DGBE tuned ukuleles, and shows finger placements: UKULELE PLAYALONG.

4) I like to fingerpick as well, and have found that Roger Ruthen's pdf-MINSTREL has a great selection of music. His background is classical but there is some folk. I have had many hours of fun working thru his songs. He sometimes grades them in their level of difficulty.

5) Doctor Uke also has Dr. Uke Songs and has baritone arrangements noted as BAR. These songs will surely build your chord vocabulary. He includes many vintage songs.

I hope this 'starter' was helpful. If you have any questions just post them in a comment below or send an e-mail.

Jeff / Humble Uker