Ukulele Chord of the Week Club - “C” Tuning

This is the book that all the movable form chords for these lessons are drawn from.

These Ukulele Chord of the Week lessons have additional information added that is not in the Ukulele Chords, "C" Tuning book. There are examples of deriving other chords from these chords simply by moving a note up or down a fret or so. Practice progressions using the basic chord.

I constantly read online or hear. "Is, where, what site, what software is there for this or that chord or all the chord voicings? What an Em7/A, add2, sus4, etc...?" Well camper! It's not here. Chord dictionaries, software, web sites are not the answer. Even traditional chord theory does not offer any insight into unraveling the complexity of chord voicings.

There is no magic to learning chords on the ukulele or any instrument. It is the organization of the material to be covered, knowledge of where and what the notes are that are available on your instrument, how chords are constructed and just work, work, work on it.

This Ukulele Chord Club of The Week is set up to address one common problem I have seen with students learning any new topic, scale, chord or just about anything on the instrument. That problem is that simply understanding something gives a student a false sense that it's is easy and therefore give me more.

Understanding something is just the first-step and really one of the easiest steps. BUT - and a big but, is the time needed for the motor skills to develop for anything new and for the new material to get into more long term memory. This development of the new motor skills like switching chords or learning a new fingerings for a chord takes time. There are no shortcuts to developing the physical skills needed to the point that the ear is in control and getting to chords operates at a deeper sub-conscience level. This takes TIME.

As far as learning new basic open position chords and basic movable form chords don't try and absorb more than you can handle. This can happen if coming to the ukulele from guitar. You must treat the ukulele as a new instrument that just happens to be the same relative tuning as the guitar. The theory and motor skills will transfer but the names have changed when using the standard "C" tuning for ukulele.

Learning basic open position chords and the basic movable form chords presented in the Ukulele Chord of the Week Club will set you up for the more advanced chords, typically called “jazz” chords.

I had been struggling with more advanced chords such as #11, 9#11, 13b5, 9#5, 6/9, etc... So I asked my mentor and music guru. "How do you remember so many chord shapes?" The answer was quite profound and a light-bulb moment in my learning. His answer - YOU DON'T MEMORIZE SHAPES. For more advance chords you create them on the fly as needed from a solid base foundation of core chords.

Core Chords

Beyond memorizing the basic open position and basic movable form chords and a basic set of core 4-part chords such as 7th, m7, maj7, dim7, 6th, you create all other chords on the fly as needed. With a knowledge of how chords are constructed and the notes of the fingerboard this is possible. Heck, with this knowledge you can write you own dictionary, software or chord of the week lessons.

Movable Form Chords

Movable chord forms are the basis of the Ukulele Chord of the Week series of lessons.

Movable chord forms are chords with no open strings. These chords are transposable by moving each note of the chord the same number of frets up and down the neck.

Each movable form is based on a common open position chord. Movable forms allow you to play chords not found in the open position.

Movable form chords allow you to play in any key and transpose chords to any key. From these basic movable form chords more advanced chords can be created.