There are lots of ukulele resources out there. Here are some I like.
(Note: If you’re looking for the “New Uke City” events calendar, I stopped running it. Sorry! Blame the pandemic.)
Chords
Ukulele Helper is my favorite chord finder. It includes alternate fingerings for any chord; it covers C tuning, D tuning, baritone tuning, and any other tuning you care to make up; you can use it in reverse to figure out what chord a given fingering corresponds to; it has a left-hand mode. It’s amazing.
(One caveat: the list of scales at the bottom of the page includes three that use an ethnic slur for Romani people.)
If you’re looking to download and print a chart of the most common chords, UkuTabs has got you covered. I’ve got an earlier edition of their poster on my wall.
For slashed chords, head on over to Ukulele Chords.
Songs
Every ukulele player should know about Doctor Uke. He has arrangements for more than 2,500 songs, and each is presented both with and without diagrams at each chord change. (And almost all of them are also available in baritone uke versions.) His arrangements tend to be pretty and jazzy, and sometimes this makes them more challenging to play than other people’s. But sometimes they’re easy, and, anyway, stretching is how we improve.
Also good is Richard G’s Ukulele Songbook, with more than 1,300 songs. These are formatted so that each takes up only one page, so you don’t need to flip them when you’re partway through.
Ultimate Guitar is primarily geared toward the titular six-string instrument, but chords are chords, and you can find most songs there. It’s recently added the ability to display ukulele chord diagrams on all songs with chords, not just those specially designated as being for the uke. And it has a transposition feature, so you can play in any key.
Jim’s Ukulele Songbook is more than 2,500 pages long. It’s meant for viewing onscreen; it’s fine for tablets, but you don’t want to print the entire thing out. It comes in a number of variations, including chord diagrams for left-handed ukes, baritone ukes, and left-handed baritone ukes. There are also individual pages for each song, where you can transpose the chords.
The San Jose Ukulele Club has about 600 songs. Most of them include tempo markings.
The Berkeley Ukulele Club offers about 175 songs.
Finally…the Jersey City Ukulele Meetup songbook is an eclectic hodgepodge of about 90 songs. Most of them are cribbed from sources named above, though several of them have been tweaked, and there are a few original transcriptions. This is hardly worth linking to, but it was my group and I assembled it, so. There’s also a baritone version.
Information and Lessons
Ukulele Hunt is a clearinghouse of ukulele information, including songs, tips, reviews, and more. You might enjoy its post on “10 Ways to Play an E Chord on the Ukulele.” (Though, protip, most of the time you can just use an E7.)
There’s also Play Ukulele By Ear, which has lessons, tips, and articles. And Ukulele Magazine has a website.
If you prefer video lessons, you might like EzFolk. Or Cynthia Lin’s Ukulele 101 for beginners, or her other lessons and tutorials on YouTube. Or Ukulele Mike. Or UkePlayAlongs. Or Ukulele Underground. Or (especially for fingerstyle songs) Jiggy with Viggy.
Buying a Ukulele
Ukuleles come in all sizes, shapes, and materials. The best way to choose one is to try them out yourself, and I encourage you to check out your local music store and strum a few.
If you’d rather not leave your house, I enthusiastically recommend Mim’s Ukes and The Ukulele Site. I have personally bought instruments from both. If you live on the U.S. mainland, Mim’s shipping will be faster and cheaper, and you’ll be supporting a one-woman operation. But the sites stock different ukes, and both provide quality setups at no added cost.
If you’re not sure where to start, Molly Lewis has the basics.
Online Communities
The Ukulele Underground Forum has discussions, advice, and contests, not to mention a marketplace for secondhand ukuleles.
While Reddit gets a bad rap, r/ukulele doesn’t suck.
You also might like the UKE-Connection of the NorthEast, USA & Canada group on Facebook.
Offline Communities
You can find local ukulele groups on Meetup.com. I’ve attended the New York City group for years—first in person, then online in the Covid era—and I used to run one in Jersey City. Others exist around the world.