Help with picking notes (location)

quiltingshirley

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I am a beginner who has decided to try to pick out the notes. It's a very simple song from James Hill's "Play Today" book called the Crawdad Song. I have a Low G on a pineapple uke. I can use all open strings to play most of the song but would it sound better if I played the majority on the fret board? In reading the music, (I can play the piano) it seems like if I use the Low G the notes will be too far apart to sound right. I want to use it as my song to play at our local Jam since I've found it's easier to sing an easy song if you can't sing to start with. Plan is to sing and use chords, pick, and finish with verse and chords. (no mixing the picking and chords on one verse, I can only do one thing at a time) I can also just play this on a regular Kamaka pineapple and forget about the low G. All help appreciated. I sort of like this idea of picking out the notes. It's like playing the piano on the uke strings but with it takes more coordination.
 
Start with 3rd string (third up from the floor as you look down on your uke) open. This is middle C on the piano. Just like the black and white keys on a piano, the frets on your uke fretboard are each 1/2 tone apart. So, open C, then up two frets on 3rd string is D, then open second string is E, then up 1/2 tone or 1 fret is F, then up two frets is G, then open first string is A, then up two fret is B, then up 1/2 tone, or one fret puts you on the third fret of the first string, which is back to C. So that's the octave of notes beginning at middle C. It's good to start playing this scale with your four fingers aligned with the first four frets and use the finger that corresponds to the fret being played.
 
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