Beginner Ukulele Chord Chart

It is an interactive ukulele chord chart and a simple way to see easy chords for beginners immediatly.

This is how it works: You don’t have to decide between a keyboard or a mouse, they both work on this widget. And once you click on your desired chord, you get to hear it as well. The interface are also quite intuitive. And since it uses traditional high re-entrant GCEA tuning (think of it like a standard soprano uke), the sounds will be familiar too. No plugins or extra audio files required either. Just open up site and go!

How to Use This Ukulele Chord Chart

Twelve popular chords (e.g., C, F, G, Am, etc.) is displayed on the top row of buttons. Clicking on one of these chord name highlights it, with the new chord automaticly appearing on screen. When you click a new chord, you will hears it played in a strumming fashion. This chord are highlighted in pink so you can keep track of which one was chosen. To use this with your keyboard, simply tap each button in turn and hit Space or Enter to play that chord. This means that you don’t need to remove your fingers from the keyboard for change chords.

Below the chord selector, there’s also a visual diagram of the ukulele neck. Here, you can see that the thick bar at the top is the nut and the four vertical lines are the G, C, E and A strings. You’re also told precisely where to put your fingers on the fretboard with pink dots. Each of these dots have a number in it telling you what note is being played at that position. Above the strings, symbols explain whether the string should be muted completly or played open. This links the idea of chord names with the physical finger placement on the fretboard, making the whole thing much clearerer.

To the right of the diagram are your listening options. Pressing the Arpeggio button plays through the chord’s individual notes from high to low plucking them one at a time. This lets you hear what’s going on inside the chord. Pressing the Strum button will quickly roll all the played strings together as if it were being strummed. This allows you to hear the harmonic texture that the chord create too. By holding down a chord selection, you can switch between the two modes to hear exactly how they differs. At the bottom right of the widget there’s a volume slider. Drag this to increase (right) or decrease (left) the main volume of everything that comes out of the widget. Great if your system volume is set very loud or you’re listening through headphones. More on the re-entrant tuning below in the help panel.

At the top there’s the How to play button that you can click to open/close the help panel. There’s also a Fullscreen button that expands the widget to fill your screen, which makes it harder to see details on the fretboard.

To begin with, choose the C chord and place your finger on the third fret of the A string. Strumming is different than playing arpeggios but this will give you an idea of how that bright sound from the guitar feel. Then try running through the sequence of C, Am, F and G7 as these four chords alone makes up the basis of many popular songs. Refer to the diagram above to check your fingers are in the right places and match what you’re seeing on-screen. This exercise help create an ear for these common shapes while building muscle memory too. Don’t expect to be able to play them at full speed initially. What’s important here is the match between what you see and what you hear. Get that connection solid and then work slowly toward playing the chord perfectly.

This is a handy widget that I would of referred back to from time to time when I forget how certain voicings sound. It is a useful reference tool that easily slots into your practicing. Go ahead take some time to learn each chord and hear what slight differences the finger positioning makes. Since it is both audio and visual, this helps beginners learn quickly too. If you spend even 5 minutes per day interacting with the pattern, I’m sure within a short period of time you’ll have certain common ones down to memory. When you’re confident with these chords, you can begin applying them to real music. So get going today and use this tool as an aid for getting started on the ukulele.