Play Your First Song: The Complete Beginner's Guide to the Ukulele

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to beginner ukulele. I'm Kate Hart. I'm a nerd folk musician from Cleveland and the ukulele is my main instrument. I absolutely love it. And once you get to know it, I'm sure you will too. Most musicians prefer to play guitar. It's much more common. But you don't need to because this little wonder does it all. It's the perfect instrument. It sounds delightful. It's really easy to learn. It's one of the most inexpensive and portable accompaniment instruments out there. This course is for people who are just getting started or who know a few chords but aren't yet comfortable enough to play songs. My goal here is to help you build the skills to play any songs you care to learn. And once you can learn any song, you can start teaching yourself additional techniques. Anything else you want to learn. So if you're ready at the enroll button and let's get started. 2. Parts of Your Ukulele: Let's establish some vocabulary as you get to know your instrument. This is the body, the big part. On an acoustic instrument. You have your hollow resonating cavity. On an electric instrument like this one, It's just a solid body, just a solid block. This is the neck, the thin bit where the strings go. The neck is actually the structural part. It's almost always made of wood. The important part here is the fret board. That's this layer on top where the frets are. The fretboard contains the frets. The frets are these metal strips that go across the neck. This is where you'll place the fingers of your left hand as you play. Up here. We have the tuners. These are aptly named because they are how you'll tune your instrument. You can see that each string has its own tuner. The string is wrapped around a rod. And then on the other side, there are gears. So when you turn this, the rod rotates and the string gets tighter or looser, which raises or lowers the pitch. 3. Four Strings: G C E A: The strings of your ukulele are G, C E, and A G, C, E, and A. And you'll notice that they're not in order. On a guitar. The strings go from the bottom of the scale to the top. We strum them. They go up in pitch. On our instrument that G is out of place. If we play the strings in order, that would be C, E, G, A. But as we play them down the strings, it's G, C, E, A. And that doesn't even cover a single octave. And that's a big part of what gives the ukulele It's unique sound. Chords don't usually cover multiple octaves. They end up sounding tighter in their harmonies. Let's talk about material. A traditional ukulele has nylon strings, although there are some types of Ukulele that would have steel strings. Electric instruments like this one will have them, and my tenor guitar has them as well. Likewise, most guitars will have steel strings, but a classical guitar, for example, uses nylon. So either instrument can use either material, but the ukulele usually has nylon and that's a big part of why it sounds the way it sounds. Listen to the difference. I'll play the same note on a steel string and a nylon string. So you can hear that they have completely different tones. Another consideration is that the steel string is dynamic. It stretches. That means that by pressing harder, you can stretch the string tighter, which bends the pitch upwards like this. On the nylon, it's much harder to stretch, but you can still get a small effect like this. Nylon is also much more forgiving on your fingers. You've probably heard that it's normal to expect calluses when you learn to play the guitar, and that's true. But if you're playing on nylon strings, don't expect the same effect. I've been playing for years and I've never had calluses. Just one more reason the ukulele is a friendlier instrument to learn. 4. Hand Placement: Let's hold this little beauty properly. The left hand is the trickiest. Put your hand under the neck with your palm facing upward. Your four fingers fold up towards the fretboard. Your thumb should be on the back of the neck. You have some freedom of movement here. You can rotate your hand away from yourself or towards yourself, pretty far away. And towards yourself. There's a real tendency for beginners to rotate out, fight that instinct. If you go the other direction, it becomes much easier to reach the G string without touching any of the other strings, which is crucial. Try it now. Reach for the G string with your left hand rotated out. And with it rotated in. The more you rotate in, the easier it gets. Remember that feeling when we start to play chords. In fact, for some chords, you'll want to go even further and think about placing your thumb all the way on the bottom of the neck, all the way towards the floor as far as you can. The right-hand placement should let you strum either by bending at the elbow or at the wrist. Now, neither of your hands is really supporting the weight of the instrument. If you're sitting, rest of the body on one of your legs, probably your right leg. It helps to elevate that leg a bit either by a crossing your legs or by propping your leg up on a stool or the crossbar of your chair. Anything that's handy. If you're standing, you can carry the instrument and the crook of your right arm and hold it tight to your chest like this. I don't love this method myself because it doesn't feel very secure to me. But I suspect that your particular anatomy can make or break this method if you have a bit of a belly to rest the ukulele on, that helps and a flatter chest obviously will help as well. So try it out and if it works for you, it can be really convenient. If it doesn't work for you, you're going to need a strap. There are a couple of options here. You can use a regular guitar strap like this. It attaches at the bottom of the body. And up here where the body meets the neck. Acoustic instruments don't usually have mounting studs for these straps. This one doesn't have any. But when you buy your strap, you can buy the studs as well, and then you just attach them to your instrument. You can also get an adapter that helps you attach to the top of the neck without adding a stud. Or if hammering studs into your instrument freaks you out. Consider a classical guitar strap. That's what I'm using here. This type of strap attaches at the bottom of the sound hole with a small hook, then wraps around the bottom of the body and up and around the neck. And the strap holds the weight of the instrument. Unlike with a normal guitar strap, you can't let it go or it'll tumble. You need to keep one hand on the ukulele at all times. As you play, your right hand will hold the instrument against your chest. So you can just play normally. But if you are flipping your page or talking to the crowd, make sure you keep a hand on the instrument so it doesn't fall off. Whatever strap you use, make sure you adjust the height to whatever's comfortable. Anything from the belly to the chest is an appropriate height for the ukulele. So just choose whatever feels best to you. 5. Tuning: It's possible that your ukulele came with a clip on digital tuner like this. Or maybe you picked one up elsewhere. If you don't have one, don't panic. You can tune your ukulele without it. But clip on digital tuners are really convenient and they're pretty inexpensive, so you won't regret getting one. We'll discuss how to to the ukulele by ear in a moment. But for now, take your clip on tuner and put it at the top of the neck. Like this. Rotate it so it faces you. Your tuner might have different modes for different instruments. If that's the case, go to ukulele mode. Mine has a little "U" at the bottom. And that means that the tuner will be looking only for the open strings of a ukulele: G, C, E, and A, and no other notes. So take a look at the digital tuner. Each one will look a little bit different about indicating visually whether your note is above or below where it needs to be. If it's too high, tune it down, if it's too low, tune it up. It's basically a game of warmer, colder, hot and cold until you're right on target, mine flashes green when it's exactly right like this. So that's too low. I'll bring it up so close and it flashed green. So that's perfect. Now move on to the next string. This one's just a tiny bit low. Come up just a little bit. Perfect. Now the E string. Perfect and the A string. Just a tiny bit low. Bring it up and perfect. Now, they should all sound really nice. Yeah. If you can't remember which direction to twist to move up and down. Honestly, I couldn't remember for the longest time, just try both ways until it goes the right direction. If you don't have a digital tuner, you need a reference pitch. I like to use G for the first string, the G string. So play a G on a tuned piano or a pitch pipe or on YouTube. And then ask yourself, is my string higher or lower than my reference pitch? I'm going to use a pitch pipe that sounds just a little bit low. I'm going to bring it up just a little bit. Cheating with my digital tuner. Turn that off. That sounds pretty good. So let's move on to the next one. You're actually done with your reference pitch, can put that away. Now that this string is tuned, we're going to use each string to tune the next one down. So put your finger on the fifth fret. Now this one's an octave, it's a little bit tricky. You should still be able to hear when it's perfectly tuned. Pluck them both at the same time. That's not quite right. This note is a little bit too high and bring it down just a little bit. It's tough to be as precise by ear as it is with a, to use a digital tuner. But you can still get pretty close. So by the time you're there, by the time is right, you should be able to pluck them both. And they'll sound perfect together. The next one will be actually a little bit easier to hear. Now that the C string is tuned, put your finger on the fourth fret of that string, C string. So there's no octave, they're, they're the same note. This is easy. This is just a hair low, bringing up just a little bit. That sounds perfect. Pluck in both together. Can't tell the difference. They're exactly the same. So let's move on. Now we're touching the E string. Put your finger on the fifth fret. So that's five, four, five. Oh, that's way low can really hear the difference on that one. So that needs to come way up. Better. Pluck them together. Can't tell the difference, so that should be perfectly tuned. Let's try it out. That method is definitely more difficult. So have some patience with yourself as you try to tune by ear. And honestly, as a beginner, get yourself one of these. It's a lot easier to use. 6. Your First Three Chords: C, Am, F: So who's ready to play your first chords? In this lesson, we're going to learn three chords. C, A minor, and F. C is one of the easiest cords out there. You're going to take your ring finger, although you can do this with your middle finger or your index finger, put it on the third fret, one two three, of the A string. And just press it down. So the string touches this fret. So you press just a little bit behind there, so it touches that fret and then strum all the strings. C major. I usually use my ring finger for this because it makes the transition to G easier. But you don't have to worry about that for now. Use whichever finger feels most comfortable. For this chord and any chord, you can play each string separately to check your left hand placement like this. Now this one should be fine. G string should be fine. I'm not even touching it. Same for the C string. Not even touching it. E string, not even a little bit. Here's where we could run into trouble. The A string. It should sound nice and clear and clean. If you're instead hearing something like this. I call that the plink and here's how you can fix it. You can either press a little harder. So that means you're not making good contact with the fret. So press a little harder, plink, press and it goes clean. The other thing you can do is slide your finger up towards the next fret. So you can place your finger anywhere in between here. But if you push it up, you're more likely to sound clean. That all good, don't go too far, don't cross over it. We'll just get into the next note and you'll plink on the way there. But push it up towards that next fret. So try that a few times on your own instrument, you should get a nice clean sound. We're just manipulating one string on this chord and that's the A string. So that's the only one we have to watch out for. In our next chord, will have two strings to worry about. A minor is another chord you can play with just one finger. In this case, it's your middle finger. It goes on the second fret of the G string, one two, again, make sure you get nice contact with the fret. In order to get a nice clear sound out of that string, play it. I didn't press hard enough. Plink, press it hard enough. And if you need to, slide it up towards the next fret like that. Now in this case, we have another string to worry about plinking, and that's the next one down. Because if our middle finger comes up on the fret board, kind of flat like this, this one might sound clean, but this one might be touching with the pad of my middle finger and then it can plink too and that's no good. So you want to reach with a curved middle finger so that it doesn't touch. And then the C string sounds clean. If you come in flat, you'll touch it. And it'll plink. Come in with a curve. Don't touch it. And it comes out clean. So remember how you can rotate your wrist both directions. You want to rotate out as much as possible. Now, when you first get started, this will feel kind of extreme, like you're reaching really far around. Eventually as you build more accuracy, you won't have to be so extreme with your rotation. But for now, make sure you're coming in almost, almost straight in at the fretboard. You don't want to come in flat like this. Come in straight at it, straight down on the string. So this one is clean and this one's clean. And then the last two you're not touching at all. So they should be clean too. Here's the E. And altogether, that sounds like this. The last chord we'll learn in this lesson is F-major. Start with A minor and we're going to add our index finger to it so this one stays where it is. Middle finger on the second fret of the G string, take your index finger and add it to the first fret of the third string, the string, this one right here, like that. So you're using two fingers now, this is F. Now in this cord, all four strings are in danger of plinking because they're all either being touched or they're the next one down from one being touched. This one could plink if you don't press hard enough. This one could plink if your fingers are too flat, keep them curved. This one can plink if you don't press hard enough with your index finger. Press hard enough. And then this one could plink if your index fingers to flat. So curve it. Now it comes out clean. So place your hand. Be patient. Check every string. Make sure they're all sounding nice and clean. I'm gonna strum the whole thing. That is F major. So those are our 3 first, easiest, most useful chords for beginners to play. You can already play a couple of songs with just that set of chords. For example, you can sing and play along to "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars. That goes like this. You can just do single strums. Don't worry about strumming patterns right now. When I see your face there's not a thing that I would change. A minor, F, just the way you back to C. So you can already play a song. You can practice singing along as you play. And in the next lesson we'll cover strum patterns. 7. Strumming: There are lots of good ways to strum your ukulele. You can use the pad of your forefinger like this. You can use the nail of your forefinger or your middle finger like this. I personally use the nails and pads of both my middle fingers, middle and ring finger. I don't know anybody else who plays this way. You can use your thumb or pads and nails of your forefinger. The important thing to know is that the way you strum will affect the way you sound. So using the pad of the finger creates a more muted, pretty sound. It's quieter. It sounds more traditional. Using a nail sound more percussive, it'll sound less pretty, it will sound louder. And then if you use a strum pattern that uses one of each, like this one, nails on the way down, pads on the way up, that emphasizes the downbeats. So that adds something to the rhythm of how you play. If you use the opposite, use your thumb, you get pad on the way down. Nail on the way up. That emphasizes the upbeats, the offbeats. And that changes how your rhythm is perceived as you play. So the upbeats end up more emphasized. There's a lot of discussion about how to properly strum a ukulele. I don't stress about proper too much, but you should know that how you choose to strum will affect the way you sound and you don't have to strum the same way all the time. I think most people do, but you can develop more than one technique if you like. For now, do what's comfortable for you and always know that you can change it later. Let's look at some strum patterns. So for your strum pattern, keep your hand moving down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. That keeps the rhythm. Now I'm going to contact the strings on some of the strokes, but not on others. Like that's down, up, down, up, down, up. Or a really common one is down. And no down, up, no up, down, up, down, down up, up down up. Like this. Down, down up, up down up, down, down up, up down up, down, down up, up down up, down, down up, up down up. So practice on a single chord. One of those easy ones we already learned, maybe a single finger, one like a minor or C major. You can also practice on your steering wheel. Practice it down, down, up, up, down, up when you're stuck in traffic. That's what I did when I was first learning. You can practice on your desk. Just meditate on it and it actually isn't in the left-hand, isn't so important to a strum pattern. So anytime you can practice, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up. Keep your hand moving. And only contact your strings or your steering wheel or the side of your desk on some of the strokes and not others. And that creates a rhythm that carries you through the whole song. And once you're pretty good at strumming, it's time to practice transitioning between chords while you strum. At first, that'll probably look something like this. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Nailed it. Yes. So you'll be pausing every time you have to change chords that is completely normal and to be expected, eventually you'll start to get a little bit faster. But in order to get all the way smooth, to get really fast enough, you'll have to use this trick. You want to lift your left hand off the strings on your last upstroke that you're on that chord, I'm going to slow it way down like this. Now wait a second. I'm strumming. this open chord does not say it's not A minor. How can it possibly sound good to be playing the chord that's not even in my song every time I switch chords. Well, the short answer is because that's how everybody does it, including guitarists. If you play something really fast like this, it sounds totally natural. In fact, sometimes when I'm on one chord for a long time, I'll lift off of it just to give it a little bit of a rhythmic element to tell you that a new, a new measure is starting. And if you listen to both ukulele players and guitarists too, you'll hear that they're doing this all the time, every time they switch chords. So trust it, it will sound natural. And the key is to let yourself lift off before you're done playing the first chord. Because the first stroke of the next chord is much more important than the last stroke of the old chord. You really have to be on time to the first stroke of the next chord. So practice that as slow as you need to. And eventually you'll be able to speed it up. And then you'll be able to play the songs you're trying to learn with totally smooth transitions. 8. Your Next Three Chords: G, Em, D: Let's learn three more chords, and these are a little bit more difficult. We're going to learn G, E minor, and D. Now don't panic. All these chords use three fingers, but it's okay. I promise you'll get used to it. G goes like this. But your middle finger on the second fret of the a string. First finger, your index finger on the second fret of your second string, the C string. You're splitting, splitting the E string here, take your ring finger. The third fret of the E string in the middle. Just like before, check every string. This one should be fine, we're not touching that one. This one should sound clean. Make sure you're pressing it hard enough. And hard enough. Same thing for your ring finger. And your middle finger. Make sure your ring finger isn't touching. If your ring fingers flat. This will plink, so make sure it's curved. And your middle finger's pressing hard enough. There's two risks for this last one. You can plink it like this, or you can plink it like this. So once you have all your strings nice and clean. Now I'm plinking. That's G major. Beginners really struggle with this one. I know it seems really, really hard at first, but G is a really, really important chord, and I promise it'll get easier. Once you're comfortable with the chord in isolation, just find a song with G in it and just practice that song. Practice getting into and out of G. Don't worry too much about getting it perfectly clean. Don't stop the song every time to check every string. If you hear plinking, just keep going and move on. Repeat the chord over and over again. Repetition will help you be more accurate with your left hand. And accuracy will mostly solved the problem of plinking on its own. You'll be flying in and out of G in no time. For E minor, you want to put your first finger, index finger on the second fret of the A string. Your middle finger goes on the third fret of the next string up the E string. And your ring finger goes on the fourth fret of the next string up. So this is 1, 2, 3, like you're walking up a ladder. E minor. Check all the strings. That one's good. Now plink. No plink, no plink. E minor. So for E minor, you might want to try an additional rotation. Try rotating your fingers, your whole hand really up towards the neck like this. Instead of coming at it like this. Like this. And the reason for that is that you're reaching a longer, a longer distance. And it's easier to get your fingers to spread like this. Then like this, it's hard to get them to spread this direction. Much easier to get them to spread this direction. So as you rotate, that makes it easier to reach between here and here. They can do it this way. Of course. It's not so far that you can't do it that way, but you might be more comfortable if you rotate this direction. That's actually true of G as well. If you go back to G, You can do it round like this. Or you can rotate and have your fingers coming down the neck, just like we did with E minor. Like that. And you might find that a little bit more comfortable. There are a lot of chords that, that'll apply to. You never want to go the opposite direction. Don't go this way. But you might want to go this way sometimes, these two chords are a good example of that. Now let's look at our last chord. Let's look at D. D is pretty simple to understand. Its three strings, all on the second fret, so it's all but the A string. It is E string, second fret, C string, second fret, G string, second fret. Just like that. Check them all. Now the good thing about this is because all your fingers are on the same fret, there isn't a lot of opportunity for them to interfere with each other and touch each other and plink each other out. So they should sound nice and clean. As long as you're pressing hard enough. And close enough to this forward fret. Now, there's some debate among ukulele players. I know about how to play D properly. When I first started, I actually played it with two fingers. I kind of did half a bar with it. I did my ring finger. Then I use my middle finger to press both of the other two like this. I found that more comfortable at the time, but as I moved on to bigger ukuleles, that didn't work as well. So now I play sort of the textbook way with three fingers on three strings. I know people, especially with larger hands, are attempted to reach up and around and grab this with their thumb. It's possible to make it sound good that way. But I do not recommend you do this because it makes it really hard to reach back around to the next chord. It's just too far to travel. So try to reach, try to reach up. It's just going to be easier for you once you start to play things that are faster. So at this point, you know, six chords. And you can play a lot of songs. You can play any three chord song that's in C major. The three most popular chords in that key are C which you know, G which you know, and F, which you know. Those three chords are used in a lot of Western music. Just those three chords for the whole length of the song in lots of different combinations and orders. If you're familiar with Rob Perovian's, Pachelbel Rant, anything in that rant you can play with the chords you know now. That's C, G, F, and sometimes also A minor, which is no problem whatsoever, we learned that in the beginning. You can play Let it Be with those same four chords. And that's a great one to practice. It's kind of slow and transitions in a predictable way. Those courts would be C, G, A minor, F, C, this time, G will go straight to F and back to C. So that'll be: when I find myself in times of trouble, mother mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be. But that's not the only song you can play. You can play a lot of songs. Now, if you have one in mind, look up the chords for it. We'll go over how to do that a couple lessons from now. Chances are pretty good that whatever song you have in mind, if it's a popular western song, you'll know the chords to play it already. And if you don't, we'll cover how to learn the courts you don't know also in the next series of lessons. But at this point, you know a lot of really, really, really popular chords. So you'll be able to play a lot of songs. 9. Chord Diagrams: Chord diagrams are your gateway to learning any chord in the world. You can print up a chart full of chord diagrams and hanging up on your wall. I'll provide one in the course materials for you to use. Each chord will have a diagram that looks like this. It has four vertical lines and some number of horizontal lines. The four vertical lines represent each string on your Ukulele. So they go left to right as if you're at ukulele was upright. So if you put it next to an upright ukulele, left to right, that would read GCEA. This is the G string, C string, E string, A string. So then if I was going to play this thing, I would tip it like this and I would put my hand on it like that. Every court has a name. We'll talk about the naming conventions in the next lesson. But let's take, for example, the first chord we learned, C, name of the chord goes up here. And then this diagram will show you how to play it. C, remember we put our finger on the third fret of the A string, 123, like this. So this chord diagram will just have a dot right there and nothing else because we didn't do anything else to play that chord. Now if you're familiar at all with this type of diagram for guitar chords, you might have seen this symbol like this, meaning that you don't play that string at all. Or a symbol like this, meaning that that string is open. Now we don't usually use that notation for ukulele chords because with only four strings, we don't usually have strings to spare, to not play them. We just assume that you're always going to play all four strings. So there's no need to specify whether something is left open or whether you don't play it at all, just assume you play everything. And then if there's no dot on a string, then it's open. There's no finger on that string. Sometimes you'll see that the core diagram will specify which finger you should play that chord with, which finger you should play on each fret. So in this case, you might see a three indicating that you play that with your ring finger. The count is 1, 2, 3, number 1, number 2, number 3. If you're used to that type of notation on piano, it's a little bit off because on the ukulele we don't use our thumb in piano notation. The thumb is number one, this is number 2, number 3, number 4, and you go all the way to five. But since we don't use the thumb, that's not number one. This is number one. And then if you have multiple, multiple fingers on frets like for F, for example, F, we put our middle finger here. Middle finger is number two, so we'd have a little two in here. And then we put our first finger, our index finger here. So you'd have a little number one like that, and that would be not C, but F. So sometimes you'll see numbers like that, but it's just as good to not specify and just fill in those circles all the way. And in that case, it's up to you to figure out how to arrange your fingers to achieve this configuration. Usually it's pretty obvious. Usually there's only one way to do it that's comfortable. Or if there's multiple ways to do it that are comfortable, just pick whichever one you like. It doesn't matter as long as you achieve some finger on this string on this fret and this string on this fret. So if you ever come across a chord that you don't know and you want to learn how to play it. You can consult your core chart if it's on there or if it's a really obscure one and it's not on your chord chart. Just search up the name of the chord and the word ukulele. And a chord diagram like this will come right up. And you can learn to play any chord right away. 10. Chord Notation : A better understanding of chord notation will help you use your chord chart better. Chord notation is fairly straightforward if you understand a few basic rules. First thing to know is that the name of the chord is always a capital letter. Sharps and flats, which raise or lower a note by a half a step. The smallest step in music, if there are any, they come right after the capital letter. You'll almost always see the pound sign used for sharp because it looks almost identical to the sharp sign in music. And you'll often see a lowercase b used to mean flat because it looks pretty similar to the flat sign in music. Or you might see a true flat sign. The second thing to know is that all chords are major chords unless otherwise specified. So capital C by itself means C major. If you see capital C lowercase m, that's C minor. And that confused me when I was first learning because both major and minor start with the letter M. So when I see letter M, How do I know what it stands for? The answer is that if it's major, you don't have to specify that. So when you see a lowercase m, it always means minor. Major and minor chords, as you might know, are the two major types of three note chords. Major chords generally sound happy. And minor chords sound a little bit sadder. You'll also come across some courts that sounds jazzy. Those chords will be notated with a number 7, like C7. These chords have an extra note. So C7 is C major, which contains the notes C, E and G. C, E, G. And then it has an extra note. This one is B flat. That extra note is the seventh note in the C major scale. But wait a second. C-major doesn't have a B-Flat in it. C-major doesn't have any flats in it. So what's going on here? Here we have a convention that is actually backwards from the convention we just talked about for your base chord. If you see a chord that just has a number seven in it, that means it's actually the minor seventh. That's the baseline for adding that extra seventh note. And that's just because it's more popular. The minor seventh is the seventh note in the scale, and then you lower it a half-step. We call that the minor seven, but it doesn't make it a minor chord. It just means that that seventh note has been lowered a half step. So that's be flattened seventh B. I can also add B. That would be the major seventh. That sounds jazzy too, just in a different way. Major seventh chords are probably the most ukulele courts there are. They just sound right on this instrument. So this chord, C major with a major seventh, is notated capital C and lowercase maj for major, and then the number seven. So that's a C chord with a major seven on top of it. So it's a little bit confusing because in the first convention, a chord is major unless otherwise specified. When you add the seventh note, it's the minor one unless otherwise specified. But that's actually good news. Because when you see a lowercase m, you know, it means minor. And you know, it's affecting, its modifying. The base chord, it turns C major or D major? D minor. So sad version of that chord. If you see maj, you know, it stands for major. That's not ambiguous. And, you know, it's modifying that extra note. It's not modifying the chord itself. It's just modifying which extra note we put on top of it. It's the major seventh instead of the minor seventh. You don't necessarily need to know all this theory. You should just recognize that when you see sea maj seven, that means major, with a major seventh. C7 has a minor seventh, but it doesn't mean the C is minor. C major seven. C minor seven. And just regular old C. So it doesn't have that jazzy element to it. It's a bit confusing at first, but in both cases, the baseline is the more common version where you don't specify any additional details. Major chords are generally used a bit more than minor chords. And adding the minor seventh is more popular than adding the major seventh. Although as a ukulele player, it you'll see major seventh chords more often than most instrumentalists will, Because they just sound really good on a ukulele. Just sounds right? And that convention also means that it's unambiguous when you see a lowercase m, you know, it modifies the base cord and makes it minor. When you see maj, it's always followed by the number 7. And it modifies that extra seventh note. It doesn't modify the base cord and it means major. Let's look at one more example. What does this notation mean? That'll be capital A lowercase m, number seven. The base chord is A minor and it has the normal seventh, the minor seventh added to it. The notes of A minor are A, C, and E. So we have A and C and E. And then we're going to add the seventh note in that scale, which would be G-sharp, except we're going to lower it half a step because it's the minor seven, that'll be G. And we have G. Now, wait a second. A, C E, G. Those are our open notes, A, C, E, G. That's a chord you can play with 0 fingers. Every instrument has one, and this is ours, A minor seven, the absolute easiest chord you could possibly play on the ukulele. 11. Reading Tabs: Now that you know six chords, you can play a lot of songs. All you need to do is look up the tabs for a song. And as long as you know all the chords, you can play that song. If you've never seen tabs before, they look like that: the lyrics to the song appear double-spaced and above the lyrics every now and then there is a chord. This is where you need to know your chord notation. Those chords are lined up with the lyrics and they tell you when to switch chords. So keep playing the same thing. Sing through the lyrics until you reach the next chord notation and then switch. There's no information in tabs about strumming patterns. And that's because it doesn't matter. Use whatever strum pattern you're comfortable with. Let's take a closer look at this example. This is the tabs for Royals. There's a D in the beginning and then nothing for a really long time. It's okay. Trust the tabs, just keep playing D, like this. I've never seen a diamond in the flesh. We're on D Cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies Still D, proud of my address Still D, up town, no postcode envy And every songs like still D, Grey Goose, dp a dp de bd d . Finally, there's a C, so we switch now, dn na na na dn dn they're driving Cadillacs in our dreams that G tells us when to switch there, and then we're back to D. But every song is like Crystal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece, jet planes, islands, tigers on adult age, there's a C we don't care. We're not caught lines up with the caught caught up in your love affair and we'll never be, you can call me queen bee. and baby I'll rule So that last change from C to G doesn't line up with any lyrics. And that's because in the song it doesn't line up with any lyrics. So there's no real standard for how much of a gap to leave between the end of the line and where you put the G in this case to switch chords. But the fact that there's a gap should clue you into the fact that it doesn't line up with any lyrics. You should change chords after you're done singing that line. And you just feel it out to try and figure out where it makes sense to change chords. So how do you find these tabs, these wonderful documents that show you how to play any song in the world. The short answer is find them on the Internet. You can just search for the tabs you want. But when I need tabs, I am almost always away from my computer and I want them on my phone. There's tools for that. Guitar tabs is a really popular app that has a huge library of tabs, usually multiple versions for each song, including versions that are tailored specifically to the ukulele or to beginners or both. So I recommended for all of you, there's a free version and a paid version. So try it out, see if you like it. If you're playing a lot of covers, you'll probably want some sort of tabs tool on your phone, but you can always just search the whole Internet on your computer as well. So what happens if you look up the tabs for a song and it has chords you don't know. Don't panic. This is an opportunity for you to learn new chords. If you're using a tool like guitar tabs, you might be able to look at the chord diagram for that cord right there in the tool. But if not, you can always look it up on your printed chord chart or just search for it. Search for the name of the chord plus the word ukulele, and the diagram will come right up. But what if all the chords look unfamiliar? That happens sometimes, it's usually a problem with the key of the song. And if you just hit the transpose button inside your tabs tool, it changes the key for you. So just keep cycling through it until the cords look easy and then play it that key and hope it's not too crazy to sing in whatever key you ended up in, you can always modify tabs. I do that pretty often. I'll decide that a chord doesn't sound quite right to me and substitute another. You can almost always add or remove those extra seventh notes at your discretion. So if you see a G, particularly if it's at the end of section, you can usually substitute that for G7, which we haven't learned, but it looks like this. And it'll sound pretty good. Or if the tabs call for F7, but you don't know how to play that. You can always just play F And that'll sound fine. There's one chord where this is bound to come up, and that is E major. E major is really straightforward to play on the guitar, but it's really hard to play on the ukulele. I almost never use it. I certainly don't write songs with E in them when I write on this instrument. But you're likely to be playing songs written by guitarists, so you'll probably see E major sooner rather than later. So my advice is to substitute E7 wherever possible. We haven't learned E7 together, but it looks like this. You can look up the diagram, check the strings just like we did with our other chords. This isn't a super easy chord to play, but it is a lot easier than E major, which looks like this. It's a bit of a mess. So as a beginner, definitely avoided wherever possible. That's true of a lot of chords. Sometimes you may have to make adjustments to simplify tabs or to modify them for the ukulele. And if you can do that, then there is a big wide world of songs out there that you can learn. If you can just learn to read tabs. 12. Final Thoughts: At this point, you can tune your instrument. You can play six chords, you can strum, you can sing along as you play. And you can read tabs. You can play the ukulele. At this point, you should be practicing by learning songs that you like. You have all the tools you need to learn any song you want. So pick a few and learn them, practice them, and your skills will continue to improve. You'll start to feel like, G, no problem, totally easy. You'll transition between chords without pausing. No problem. Your left hand will start to relax as your accuracy on the fretboard improves. So from here, just focus on spending time playing in any way that you enjoy. It won't be long before you're totally confident on this beautiful little instrument.