A Study in Chords (2)

So I have set off on my journey to learn as many chords as possible, and chords suck. They're cool, they sound great, but they're hard. Actually learning them was easy, but being able to hold down the strings correctly isn't easy. As for learning them, I found these nifty little chord charts which have made life much easier.

 

So I set about learning these, and as you can see, some are easier than others. Each dot is a finger, and each vertical line represents a string. The horizontal lines are called frets, which are these little dudes on the actual uke.

The horizontal lines are the frets. Just like the charts. It's almost like someone did that on purpose.

To play a note, you put your finger between the frets. So to play a C chord, your finger goes between the second and third lines, or on the third fret, of the A string, like so.

A C chord. Snazzy.

So there are different finger positions for each chord. Some are easy, like C, and then there are some that exist solely to make your life just a little more miserable. I can't even play this one, so I'm just going to show the diagram. 

Looks innocent enough, right? Wrong. My body does not contort in that way. I'm sure it's fine for other people, but just know that any time F minor 7 comes up in a song, I'm not playing that song.

I've spent a fair deal of time just trying to strum out chords, going through the chart one by one until I got bored and looked up songs. I decided to look up a musical theater song, because there are tons of chord changes in those, and boy, I was not disappointed.

I put my musical playlist on shuffle, looked up the first song that came up, and promptly wanted to die.

I forced myself to play through half of the song, then gave up on coherency and just strummed out each chord. (Note the makeshift chord diagrams under each note- those are meant for guitar but the same principle applies. Strings go in order of the column, numbers are the fret number, a 0 is an open string, and an X is an unplayed string.)

I use the app Ultimate Guitar (http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/) to get chords for my songs. People submit chords and tabs for guitar songs, but the chords can be applied to ukulele as well. This app is super helpful, I use it for guitar, ukulele, and piano. So worth the $2.99. Anyway.

Though most of those chords look absolutely terrifying, it was actually really helpful in memorizing the more obscure ones. Chords like C and G and D are common, in almost every song, so I memorized those right off the bat. However, something like Bsus2 or Faug (which I've literally never heard of) that don't appear really ever at all are harder to memorize due to lack of exposure. Seeing them in this song helped. 

So to put it basically, ukulele is really fun and I've learned a lot of chords so far. I'm working on strumming now, which is mildly terrifying and somewhat painful, but I'll work on it. Hopefully I'll begin strumming correctly as opposed to blindly abusing the strings like I have been. Wish me luck, and get ready for me bringing in my ukulele on Monday. I'd apologize in advance, but really, you're welcome.