chord | Learn To Play the Ukulele

The Barre Chords

Barre chords, or Bar chords, are usually a nightmare for guitar players, nigh impossible on the mandolin, but lucky for us, much more manageable on the ukulele. A barre chord is made by pressing down on one or more strings across the ukulele fret, often completely across, but occasionally only partially (known as a partial barre). To put it simply place your finger on the bottom string 3rd fret to make the well known C chord. Now place your index finger completely across all the strings on the second fret and your pinky finger on the bottom string 5th fret. You have basically taken the C chord shape up two frets to make it a D chord. That’s really the simplicity of barre chords, once you have the shape of a chord you can move it to make another chord (also known as moveable chords). Your index finger acts as[…]

The dreaded E major chord… As you first start to learn uke chords the first one is usually C. Super easy! =) And then the Am, F, G, C7. No problem at all! D is a little more difficult and then wham we hit the E major wall. Very few beginning students can bend their fingers properly to play this chord. First off a little music theory, the E major chord is made up of the notes E, G#, and B. All major chords are made up of the root, 3rd, and 5th of the scale and the E major scale is E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, and D#. The root note is E, the 3rd note is G# and the 5th note is B. So anywhere on the ukulele that we can find the notes E, G#, and B we will have an E major chord. The chord[…]

Chord Progression within a Key

The chord progression within a key is a succession of chords that concur with each scale degree. In a word, each scale interval or degree has its corresponding chord. We are going to study the chord progressions in a major key and in a minor key. Let’s start from a major scale, for example the C scale: C D E F G A B We assign a chord to each interval, just as follows: I -> major chord -> C II -> minor chord -> Dm III -> minor chord -> Em IV -> major chord -> F V -> major chord -> G VI -> minor chord -> Am VII -> half-diminished chord-> Bm7b5 (forget about it) All right, well, if we are in the key of C, any of these chords could work just fine (some better than others), but we would always be playing within the harmony.[…]

It’s common, when we begin playing ukulele, to start by learning a few chords. Normally, we will find them drawn as boxes with lines and dots. Let’s see what this is about. Four strings, four lines For the ukulele, we use a box with four vertical lines, that represent the four strings, and a varying number of horizontal spaces (which are the spaces between the frets). The line on the right corresponds to the first string of the ukulele, i.e., the on that’s closest to the ground when we carry it in ready-to-play mode. Therefore, on the left side of the diagram we have the fourth string. Where do I put my fingers? On each string that we need to press, there will be a dot on the string, so we’ll put a finger there. If a string needs to be played without being pressed, a circle is placed on[…]

People believe that the Ukulele is one of the easiest instruments to play, and they are quite right: it will just take you a few minutes to learn some chords and play your first song. (Being an accomplished player is another story…) First, you need to tune your uke. As for any instrument, it’s very important to play on a ukulele that’s tuned. Next thing is holding the ukulele. Holding the Ukulele If you ever played acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and so on, you will not have any problem. If not… you won’t have any problem either! I guess you’ve already seen a guitar player, right? Well, it’s the same thing. If you are right-handed, your left hand will be in charge of the neck, and your right hand will strum or pluck the strings. If you are left-handed, it’s just the other way around. Simply pull the strings,[…]

Tag - chord

The Barre Chords

Ways to play the dreaded E major chord

Chord Progression within a Key

How to read chord diagrams

First steps – Learn the basics