Hi Joe,

I can recommend this book, but I suggest shopping around for it because the Amazon price of the book with CD's and DVD'd is grossly overinflated:

Progressive Beginner Ukulele - Book/CD/DVD by Peter Gelling

There also appears to be another version with online access to the CD & DVD content

One of the easiest sets of chords to learn is C, F, G, Am, G7. The C & Am chords have only one finger on the fret, F has two, G & G7 have three but you can just play around with those chords and make some good chord progressions.

When you progress a bit and learn some of the basic chords, I can highly recommend learning House of the Rising Sun, song #48 in the book. The chord progression is great, even if you just strum once for each bar.

Also, did you put the softer, mellower strings on your uke? I have Aquila strings on mine, and I chose to put the low G so that I can pick out melodies on it.

Another trick I have is to watch something on TV and just play around on the uke. Luckily I watch TV in a different room to hubby, otherwise my uke & I would be out the back door. The good thing about doing that is your conscious mind can be distracted by the TV show while your fingers get on with learning the muscle memory of playing.

Stick with it! And maybe you could find a local group where you can learn the basics and have fun at the same time, or do what I did. I wheedled and cajoled our session group into dusting off their ukes every now and then and having a uke session.

Helen

Helen