Lesson 1

Hello and welcome to the first You Can Ukulele Lesson!

Today I will be teaching you to play major chords on the ukulele. The major chords I will teach you today are quite common to hear in ukulele songs, and being able to play them well means you will sound great, no matter what you do.

Theory:

Major chords are chords that sound happy when you strum them. They are the basis for most pop songs, but can usually be found in every genre. But what is a chord itself?

A chord is more than one note, played together at the same time, to produce a certain sound. They can range from sounding joyful, sad, nostalgic, creepy, jarring or emotionless, depending on what type of chord they are. In this case, major chords sound happy and uplifting.

Major chords are played as triads, which means they consist of three unique notes. As you may have already realised, a ukulele has four strings you can play notes on, but major chords only have three unique notes, so what is the fourth string doing?

The fourth string is used as a double-up of one of the other notes in the chord. Usually, the note that is doubled is the root note, which the note the chord is named after. However, doubling the root isn't always easy to play, so in some chords, one of the other two notes are doubled. Now that you understand the very basic theory behind a major chord, let's learn how to play one!

Playing Major Chords:

In this first lesson, we will learn the easiest and most common four major chords. They are:

C major, G major, F major and A major.

Me strumming a C major chord on a ukulele

To play any sort of chord you have to put your fingers in certain configurations on the top end of the ukulele. First, hold the ukulele so that the neck of the ukulele is parallel two you, and the top end of the ukulele is pointing directly at your chin. Then rotate the ukulele so that it is at about a 90 degree angle away from up. Make sure that the larger end of the ukulele is on your dominant side. (If you are left handed then read this website article and decide whether to play the ukulele left or right handed https://www.learntouke.co.uk/im-left-handed-can-i-play-the-ukulele/) Below is an image of me holding a ukulele.

Now, for the finger postions. Finger positions for the ukulele in this article will be shown using diagrams from riffspot.com. If you ever want to learn a chord that wasn't mention in a lesson, just search it there. To read these diagrams you need to understand three things. The four strings are represented from left to right on the diagram. So the left-most string on the diagram is the top string when you hold the ukulele. The second thing is that the further down the string the diagram is shown, the further up the neck of the ukulele you play it. If the diagram has a number and then the letters "fr." it means you play the chord starting on that row of the ukulele.

The most important thing to know is that the numbers represent where to put each finger. Since there is no way to use your thumb while playing the ukulele, the number one is your second finger, the number two is your third finger, and so on. So to play the chord C major, you need to put your fourth finger on the third row of the bottom string.

C major

Now practice playing each of these chords on the side of the page. If you would like to check if you are playing them correctly, I would suggest watching the middle portion of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOnudEb1urU.

G major

Now that you can play these four chords, you might find you would like to learn your first song, and a lot of videos online have hundreds of songs you can play with "just three chords," etc.
However, these are usually massively simplified and won't sound as good until you can play them with the proper, but harder to play chords. Even though barely any songs use only chords out of these four, I was able to find, "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash, which has this structure for each verse.

C
My daddy left home when I was three
F
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
G                                                   C

F major

Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze
C
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
F
But the meanest thing that he ever did
G                                                   C
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."

A major

Now that our first lesson is over, I would suggest practicing switching between each of these four major chords while slowly strumming each one. Don't worry about focusing on how you strum, you will pick this up as you learn. Below are a few videos to help extend your understanding of today's lesson.

How to play C major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdybOl8JbIg
How to play G major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCx_5fHoST0
How to play F major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiB8BlWhFJs
How to play A major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkNjNz0atUc

Sincerely,

You Can Ukulele