PLUCking Ukes – Striking A Chord

After discussions at recent club nights from Chris & Paul about movable chords & different chord fingerings, here’s another article to help those with little or no music theory background learn about major chords.

Do have a look at our very basic intro to musical notes for complete beginners; notes on the ukulele fretboard and the Circle of Fifths (which helps explain about the different keys) first if you’re totally new to these areas.

 

PLUCking Ukes – Striking A Chord

Mojo practices the uke (Photo credit: petehoffswell)

We’ve mentioned in some of our previous postings that it can be helpful to split up your playing into different components – eg chords (melody), strumming (rhythm) & singing – either to help you focus on improving each of those aspects or just when learning a new song.

Rod Higuchi (Uncle Rod), from Seattle Ukulele Players Association (SUPA), has produced a number of useful free resources to assist with developing your ability to make smooth, consistent chord changes:

 

PLUCking Ukes – Striking A Chord

learning chords (Photo credit: khrawlings)

Especially when you are new to playing or are learning a tune with some unfamiliar chords, you often find it’s useful having the chord diagrams to hand on your songsheet. To save you drawing them on freehand, here are a few of our members’ tips:

• Colin recommends the self-inking five-fret blank ukulele chord stamp bought recently from Shropshire firm Pencraft. He found it invaluable when going through his songbooks putting the songs into 2nd and 3rd positions. They do two sizes for ukes & each currently costs £10 plus £3 p&p. At present, they include a free Wheel of Fifths and a Ukulele World DVD with every order.

 

PLUCking Ukes – Striking A Chord

To help in playing chord progressions more smoothly, Doctor Uke has two simple PDFs with the most common progressions for three- & four- chord songs in all the main keys:  I – IV – V7 & I – I7 – IV – V7. If you take these nice & slowly at first, paying attention to getting a good clean sound, then increase your speed gradually, you will build up good muscle memory of how to play these chords.

Also useful is the Ukulele For Dummies Chord Families sheet, which shows the basic chords for the main keys.

These three items make a nice warm-up at the start of your practice & can be varied by you changing the order of the chords or visiting the Doctor Uke’s Music Theory page, where he gives a number of songs in different keys for you to try.

Alternatively, you can add in practicing different strumming patterns whilst working through the chord progressions, with or without a metronome, to help you keep in time.

 

PLUCking Ukes – Striking A Chord

For those of you brushing up on your music theory, especially if you’re learning ukulele chords for the first time, here is a nicely laid out chord chart from the DaSilva Ukulele Co’s songlist & tutorials.

English: Music theory circle of fifths diagram (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Instead of just listing the chords, it summarises a lot of information on one sheet. It’s tabulated by key signature, showing principal chords (I – IV – V7); relative minor (Vm – IIm – III7) & alternative chords (ie  I6/VIm7, diminished, augmented, IV6, VIm6 & IIm6).

This works well if you also print off the uke-specific Circle of Fifths diagram from Gary Jugert on Ukulele Underground. This page shows you the familiar wheel, with notes, chords & key signatures, along with ukulele chords.

These two pages are a good easy reference. If you are interested in knowing more of the basics, there are plenty of good lessons out there you can find – we will pick a few another time.

Even if you don’t understand the theory yet, many tunes will use these sequences of chords or chords from the same key, so it’s useful to recognise their patterns & be used to playing these progressions.

Other music theory postings: Learn Uke Notes Without Fretting; PLUC Weekend Workout – Music Reading Knowledge; PLUCking Ukes – Transposing; PLUC Weekend Workout – Theta Music Trainer; Very, Very, Very Basic Understanding of Music for Absolute Beginners; PLUC Weekend Workout – memrise on-line courses; PLUC Weekend Workout – On-line Ear Trainer; PLUC Weekend Workout – EarMaster Reference Songs For Intervals; PLUC Weekend Workout – Howard Goodall’s Story Of Music; PLUC Weekend Workout – Fretboard Master Game; PLUC Weekend Workout – Guitarator Chord Quiz; PLUC Weekend Workout – Vocal Match Game

Also see the PLUC Transposing Tool

 

PLUC Weekend Workout

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – Whole Wheel

Christopher Davis-Shannon, aka the Tinman, has a website with playalongs of old-time tunes as well as various tutorials and Uke Minutes with different tips and techniques, including singing whilst playing, practice exercises, strumming methods, picking patterns, chord melody, using a metronome and showboating tricks:.

His latest YouTube series 12 Keys In 12 Weeks (#12Keys12weeks) gets you playing a different scale each week. He provides a number of exercises, including a little melody up the scale for each one using broken – arpeggiated – chords that ‘fit’ within that key by containing just notes from that specific scale (known as a chord family).

In the first video, below, he is demonstrating C major – check the original YouTube page for links in the description for his free worksheets (and more detailed lessons on scales and chords within them). As he progresses, he’s starting to add in different chord voicings to get you to follow the melody notes and play further up the neck. By the end of the series you should be more confident at playing in any key.

Should you want to understand a little more how he arrives at the chords for each scale, have a quick look at a Circle of Fifths.

If you’re playing in the key of C major, take all the chords nearest C on the wheel in a little ‘L’ shape. These chords are made up from the same notes that you’ll find in that specific scale. Go through the letters alphabetically from C right round to C again to get the whole scale.

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – C Major Chord Family

 

When playing chords in this key, the letters on the outside are major chords, the ones on the inside are minor ones and the one out on the leg of the ‘L’ is a diminished chord (dim7 or sometimes written as °):

C major – D minor – E minor – F major – G major – A minor – B dim – C major

 

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – G Major Chord Family

 

 

 

For G major, you’ll get: G major – A minor – B minor – C major – D major – E minor – F# dim – G major

 

PLUC – Circle of Fifths – D Major Chord Family

 

 

 

 

For D major, you’ll get: D major – E minor – F# minor – G major – A major – B minor – C# dim – D major

 

And so on, round the wheel in the same way for each different key.

 

 

See more of our posts covering improving your chord playing; musical keys, the PLUC Transposing Tool and other PLUC Weekend Workouts. Original Circle of Fifths diagram from Wikipedia’s public domain images.

Here’s Christopher, with the first video in the series – C major:

 

Sing Along A Max

At this week’s session we were talking about people being shy of singing, ways to gain confidence & improve volume.

I’ve put some singing guides from different sites in the Instructional folder of the PLUC Box to help folk start doing some gentle practice at home, get more used to the sound of their own voice and be able to both sing & play the uke at the same time.

We’ve previously shown examples of uke groups with a great ethos of getting all their members to sing along together and of my experiences participating in the Southbank’s Chorus Festivals in 2013 & 2014, which was brilliant fun once I got over my initial trepidation at singing with groups of total strangers! It’s always good to challenge yourself & try something different or you never gain new skills.

There are a number of YouTubes out there which show you how to assess your vocal range. This one from Playback.fm is fun, as it matches your range with different singers. Once you’ve watched the video, put in your result & it will give you your ‘vocal twin’!

 

Happy 2015!

Top Referring Sites 2014

Our free downloadable PLUC 2015 Calendar shows the movable major chord shapes for year-round reference, in a handy diagram from UkeGeeks.com. Thanks to Buz for kindly tweaking the layout for us! (He also runs PizzaByTheSlice, which contains many uke-related designs & is well worth a look.)

 

PLUCking Ukes – Ten Minute Practice Tips

Transposing Chart  – Guitar (Photo credit: ljguitar)

Over the last few weeks, both Chris & Simon have mentioned how useful it can be to play the same song in a number of different keys, to expand your repertoire to learn the full range of chords. It is also a good way to start understanding more about music theory; to see how chords relate to musical keys & begin understanding how transposing works (ie putting tunes in another key).

Doctor Uke has a good selection of songs on his site in multiple keys: Five Foot Two; Amazing Grace; Why Do Fools Fall In Love; Tiptoe Through The Tulips & It’s A Blue World. You’ll soon spot that some keys are easier to play on the uke than others. Going through one of these sheets until you can play all variations easily will give you a good workout.

If you look on several song sites, such as Chordie or Tontonremy & find a song you want to play, there are options on the page to trranspose it, so with a quick press of a button, you can have the song in a new key. Or you can use the PLUC Transposing Tool to work it out manually.

 

PLUCking Ukes – Ten Minute Practice Tips

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a number of different discussions about how people go about practicing – where to find the time; what people do; how to keep it interesting etc.

Stopwatch: Creative Commons  sheko.ru

One of our new members contacted me to say that he would be too busy over the Summer to attend club nights but would return in the Autumn, adding that he’d then hope to have time to practice & keep up with things. Particularly as he’s a beginner, I suggested he try to fit in some regular daily practice,

I know it’s hard when things are busy but if you can, try your best to do just ten minutes to keep your hand in. Pick a time you can make every day for having a quick strum on the uke (eg first thing in the morning before you get busy, while you’re waiting for dinner to cook, when the TV adverts are on etc). Some folk set a timer!