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The art and science of chord fingering. Learning your basic open position chords in common keys.

What is a Chord?

A chord is a group of three or more different notes sounded together or almost together.

On stringed instruments like the ukulele, chords can be grouped into four categories for learning: Open Position Chords, Movable Form Chords, 4-Part Contemporary or “Jazz” Chords and Free Form Chords. This lesson focuses on basic open position chords and why some might be harder to play vs. other basic chords.

Basic Open Position Chords

An open position chords is one of the basic, first chords most ukulele players learn. These chords are played in the fret one, two, three and four area of the ukulele and include at least one open string.

Learning Chords

There are two approaches to learning chords, the song based approach and learning the fundamentals approach. I'm a big advocate of building a solid base of the fundamentals. A lot of players new to the ukulele like to jump right in a learn songs.

For the song approach you pick a song learn the chords you need to learn know for the song. A song is like a recipe, the chords are one of the ingredients. Look them up, ask a friend or take a lesson or two. Then learn at least one version of each of the chords in the song.

Another approach is to learn the most common chords that show up in common keys and songs. This is especially helpful for occasions where you might have never played a particular song before or are reading the chords as you go. This happens a lot at jam sessions and club play-a-longs. You never know what songs are going to be played and would like to participate in every song. No time to look up chords, you need to know chords.

For Folk, Rock, Pop, Country and and Bluegrass common major keys are C, G, D, A, and E. See the Common Chord for C Major chart below.

For most simple songs the chords all are from the main key and stay in that key. There are a lot of songs with just two or three chords.

Common Chords for Common Keys

The chords for a major key all come out of the major scale for that key. If we number each scale degree of the major scale from 1 to 7 we have the chord's position and harmonic function within the key. When talking about chords these position numbers are typically indicated using roman numerals: I II III IV V VI VII. This position will help with transposing to other keys and to recognize similarities between songs and chord progressions. There a quite a few common chord progressions that are used in popular music.

Using triads, three note chords, the chords for all major keys are:

1. major
2. minor
3. minor
4. major
5. major
6. minor
7. diminished

On the ukulele these triads are commonly played with one of the notes doubled. Giving us a four note chord that matches perfectly with the four strings of the ukulele. Allowing you to strum all the strings.

Common Chords for the Key of C Major and the C Major Scale

1. C major
2. D minor
3. E minor
4. F major
5. G major
6. A minor
7. B diminished

The diminished chord rarely shows up and when it does a diminished seventh chord can be substituted for it. Diminished Seventh chords are a 4-part chord covered in a later section.

With major chords being the most common chord, the "major" part of the chord is typically not said or notated. The minor chord type is shortend to "min" or "m". The diminished notation is shortened to "dim" or a degree sign. Leaving use with an easier to read list.

1. C
2. Dm
3. Em
4. F
5. G
6. Am
7. B°

Seventh Chords

Any one of the chords can be a seventh chord C7, D7, E7, F7, G7, A7, and B7. These are 4-part chords containing four notes with no duplicate notes. All but the G7 are chords outside of the key of C major but some are common.

Here are all the possible open position seventh chords. A few do not contain any open strings and their basic movable form is shown.