Chord Patterns on the Ukelele

The Ukelele is not only used to accompany songs with chords and arpeggios, but also to provide melody lines, and decorative riffs moving along the notes of a scale.

To do this, it is necessary to know your scales and chord patterns.

The DG Ukelele Chord Patterns Android application facilitates the learning of chord patterns on the Ukelele, by displaying all the notes and intervals in a chord, on any position along the fretboard.

Chord patterns go beyond chords, in the sense that it shows adjacent notes from the chord, and their intervals.

To produce notes of a chord, you must play only notes from the chord.

For example, say you want to produce the notes for an Am6 chord.

The Am6 chord is based on the following notes: A, C, E, F#.

Suppose you want to play this chord starting from the first fret of the Ukelele, and onwards.

• 1st string is A (part of the chord), and also a C on the 3rd fret;
• 2nd string is E (part of the chord), and on the 2nd fret it produces an F#;
• 3rd string is C (part of the chord), and on the 4th fret, it produces an E.
• 4th string is G (not on the chord), but when pressed on the 2nd fret, it produces an A.

The following image shows this chord pattern on the first fret:

Knowing the pattern will help you move with arpeggios, up and down the fretboard.

But it is also handy to know the interval relationships, so you know where the root is.

To do this, just tap on the fretboard of the DG Ukelele Chord Patterns Android application, and it will reveal the note intervals, as shown below.

So, by observing this pattern, you may deduce that: the root (R) appears in 2 places, the third (m3) appears in 2 places, the fifth (p5) appears in two places, and the sixth (M6) in one.

To form the Am6 chord, we need to include, at least the R, m3, and M6 intervals, and, if possible, also the p5.

Keeping this in mind, we can play this chord in either of these possibilities.

Which one you choose, depends on the sound, on how comfortable you feel the fingers, and on how easy you can move between the previous and the next chords.

NOTE: Bear in mind that the Ukelele has only four strings, which means that you can only do triad and quad chords. For extended pentad chords such as 9ths, 9/6, you need to drop one of the notes in the chord (usually the 5th).

As you can see, this application will help you understand the intervals behind the chord formulas, on any fret, and will help you produce fine music with your Ukelele.

A key point to remember is that this application does not show chords only, it teaches you how to deduce them, on any fret.