Looking for baritone blues

[Remmurts]

My search for baritone blues comes up for “ukulele”. I can’t seem to find much for baritone. I would prefer the source be on paper with tab, as my internet service is very weak.

I’m interested in beginner/early intermediate sources with turnarounds, riffs, etc.

By the way, my music theory is weak at best!

Any and all opinions are greatly appreciated!

 

[merlin666]

Baritone is a male singing voice between bass and tenor. A baritone ukulele is bigger than tenor ukulele and tuned lower. Anything that is played on tenor can also be played on baritone ukulele, it will just be in a lower key.

 

[Neil_O]

It is possible to print things from the internet. Maybe there's a library near you that can help you print your info.

Here are some songs collected by Spencer Gay:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58de964f197aea4cfd35337a/t/616419e50a00fb6401b87b27/1633950184409/Baritone+Blues+Songbook+11+10+21.pdf

 

[Plonky-tonk]

I play all my sop/con/tenor GCEA tabs on my baritone. (Which is DGBE.). It works just fine as I am playing solo rather than in a group. So it doesn’t matter what key I am in, I’m not trying to match anyone else at this point.

Grab those standard uke tabs and play them on your baritone, just ignore the notes on the staff above the tabs. (The actual names of the notes and their placement on the staff are 5 semitones different.)

 

[UkerDrew]

If you are looking for charts for baritone I almost always start my search at Jim's ukulele songbook https://ozbcoz.com/ and of course Doctor Uke https://www.doctoruke.com/

On Jims site if you find a suitable song you like you can simply change the tuning and set the format to chords above the lyric before generating a song sheet and printing that. You can also transpose to another key. You can even customize the chords if you have a preferred inversion using the edit feature. It's a powerful tool!

On Doc Ukes site he always provides both standard and baritone charts. So any song from either of these sites can be downloaded with Baritone chord charts.

 

[ripock]

I always play baritone as if it were a soprano. But I do know there's a youtube channel called tenthumbs which has baritone blues videos. I didn't watch them so I don't know what level they're at, but you could browse those and see if it is appropriate for you.

 

[about2]

As others have said, for baritone you can either modify guitar tabs or just play soprano uke blues on your bari. It will sound great, but will be in a different key than the soprano music. And here's a good resource for you:

Blues Innovations for Ukulele - Robert Jones - Guitar Lessons - TrueFire

Learn How To Play Traditional Blues on the Ukulele

truefire.com

Doesn't get better than the Rev

 

[BBegall]

I'm so happy to see so many playing their baritone like their gCEA ukes. I was thrilled to find i could use almost all of my old tabs and chord melody/fingerstyle sheets and play them using chord shapes I already know. Doing this may slow the rate of learning baritone chords but for me it has been worth it.

 

[dr_mitch]

Not quite what you asked for (video rather than paper) but Phil Doleman has a video series teaching baritone blues including a bunch of different songs.

 

[Remmurts]

I understand that playing chords on a baritone using soprano, or other uke chords, is perfectly fine, just in another key.
Thats fine for strumming but, that doesn’t work for playing melody notes.
If one wants to play melody notes between chords, the tab for soprano or other ukes will not work.
Am I right or wrong on this?
Please excuse my simplistic questions!

 

[Plonky-tonk]

I understand that playing chords on a baritone using soprano, or other uke chords, is perfectly fine, just in another key.
Thats fine for strumming but, that doesn’t work for playing melody notes.
If one wants to play melody notes between chords, the tab for soprano or other ukes will not work.
Am I right or wrong on this?
Please excuse my simplistic questions!

It works for melody notes, too. The tabs work just the same for GCEA or for DGBE.

If you will forgive me for vile inaccuracy here: think of tabs as being about the relative distance between places on strings. The names of notes, the vibrations per second, don’t matter at all. If you are playing chords from the tab, the melody on that same tab is putting the melody in the correct relationship relative to the chords. They both work.

 

[about2]

One of the cool things, imho, about a baritone is you get two instruments in one. Learn your song on the bari, then put a capo on the 5th fret and play it again - using the same finger shapes and movements - and you have played it now as if you were on a uke tuned to GCEA.

This fact is dangerous though. It may reduce ones "need" for multiple ukes. Look out . . . I just went from talking to meddlin'