Tell me about playing the ukulele

[Gwendolyn]

So, I've taken up playing the baritone ukulele recently. I don't have much experience at all with instruments, but my husband and I took a room mate this summer (another student and friend), and he gave us a baritone uke, and I thought it would be neat to learn to play it. Does anyone have any advice, in the way of teaching myself? I've started learning some scales, and some easy chords to start off. I've been practicing practically all day, for the past few days. Does anyone play?

[-Blakren-]

My grandmother does, no kidding. She's in this group called the south shore ukulele players.

[Lord Bennington]

Tell you about the uke? Burn your barry. Get a soprano. You get a really nice tone out of barring straight across (add6 chords), and if you can time the strumming right, if you bar at the first fret, and slide up the neck as you strum eighth notes, you get a very nice, typical uke sort of noise. I don't use the open G chord (in a C tuning). I slide the F chord up to the second fret. -2---2---0 -3---3---0 -2---2---0 -0---4---0 The first chord there (I hope you can read TAB) is the G I don't use. Not enough control. The second chord is the G I do use. The closed form gives me more left hand control, to syncopate. And that third chord there is what I meant when I said barring straight across, holding every string down at the same fret. When in doubt, lay your left hand across the strings to dull the noise and strum. Yeah. Feel free to ask. I play uke a lot. EDIT: I don't know much about barry uke, but you just don't play single notes on a soprano. It sounds dreadful. Learning scales seems pointless, because even double stops on a uke wouldn't sound good. EDIT AGAIN: Also, everyone in the world will expect you to play "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" so be ready.