Sep 03
How do you play guitar chords on the ukulele?
It’s sad to say, but it is far more easy to find guitar chords online than it is to find ukulele chords. Luckily, there’s no problem whatsoever translating them to ukulele.
Chords written for the guitar will be exactly the same on the ukulele. If the guitar chord sheet tells you to play G, you just play the standard G chord shape on the ukulele. It’s as simple as that.
Make sure you have a ukulele chord dictionary on hand to check the chord shapes. You’ll want to ignore the guitar chord diagrams as the G chord shape for guitar looks different to the G chord shape on the ukulele.
April 30th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Yes, but I have a follow-up question that I really hope someone can help me with: What about when the guitar chords say to put on a capo, for example on the 5th fret. Then how do you translate these to the ukulele? It comes out sounding all wrong when I play them like they are written, obviously because of the capo thing.
A million thank you’s to whoever has an answer to this problem!
October 11th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
If you have a Baritone Uke just use the same fingering used in chords for guitar.Just don’t worry about the missing 5th and 6th string in the 4-string Baritone.Again with a Baritone Uke if you place a capo on the 5th fret you are converting the instrument into the Soprano open string tuning of G-C-E-A.
If you have the smaller soprano or Concert, or Tenor with the standard tuning of G-C-E-A you don’t need the use of a capo as directed for use in guitars.
January 16th, 2011 at 1:41 am
you just need to transpose the capo’d chords to learn what “note” is coming out of the guitar. You could count it yourself (one full step for every 2 capo frets), or just check this chart: http://www.don-guitar.com/transpose.html. now you know what “note” the capo’d chord actually is, and you can play that chord on your uke! it’s like math, and kind of also like magic!
March 15th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
you can just play it the same but it would sound different or take it down the same amount of half-steps (semitones)as the capo is stated to be on. Or if your feeling adventurous, theirs no reason why you can’t put a capo on your uke (but that would be easier with a tenor/concert