4 Essential Ukulele Chords For Beginners

The ukulele is a great instrument. It’s portable, it’s fun to play, and it’s a relatively easy instrument to get started on. 

By learning a few well chosen chords, you can start playing songs on your ukulele today!

Instead of memorizing a huge library of chords, and trying to use them in songs later, I’m going to take you straight to the 4 ukulele chords that will let you start playing real music right away. 

It’s important for you to start by learning these 4 chords because most people simply learn a bunch of chords without knowing how they fit together to make songs, or simply pick and choose the chords they need for a particular song as they go. 

Focusing on these 4 ukulele chords will make it easy to learn the songs you like quickly, and even understand how to put chords together to make songs of your own. 

In this lesson you will learn: 

• The best ways for you to learn new chords
• Primary chords in the key of C
• How to practice chords
• Using chord progressions to get the most out of your chord practice ​

By the end of this lesson, you will have the tools you need to get started playing chords on the ukulele, and start learning some of your favorite songs.

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Learning Chords In Keys

The most effective way for you to learn ukulele chords is by learning chords that fit together in something called a key. 


For our purposes here, a key is a group of chords that fit together in music.

Learning chords in a key is important because it gives you context for the chord shapes you are learning.

By learning chords that fit together, you are making it easier for yourself to apply the chords you learn to songs you want to learn.

You’ll also have a better idea of what chords will sound good together if you want to write songs of your own.

In this lesson, you are going to be learning the 4 main chords in the key of C:

C, F, G, and Am

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Chords In The Key Of C

Before we jump into learning the chord shapes, there’s one more thing you need to be aware of: the number system.

​In any given key, musicians use a system of numbers to communicate where a chord fits within a key.

This does 2 things for you - it lets you change the key of a song easily, and it helps you develop your ear so you can start to pick out chord progressions you hear in songs. 

Thinking in terms of numbers is sometimes considered to be an advanced skill, but I’ve found that it’s actually easier to learn if you start right away - as a beginner.

Here’s how it works - there are 7 letters used for note names in music (A through G), and those letters keep repeating themselves over and over again:

A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D….

When we decide to put these notes in a key, we choose a note to be the root, also called the 1.
In this case we’re going to choose C, so we can find the chords in the key of C.

A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D….
      1

Now we just follow along and put a number with each letter, until we reach number 7

A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D….
      1 2 3 4 5  6 7

If we get rid of the rest of the extra letters, we’ve got all of the note names in the key of C, along with the chord numbers:

C D E F G A B
1 2 3 4 5  6 7

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a little more to it than that, but this is enough to get you started. 

Now let’s get to the chords: the main chords in the key of C are the 1 (C), 4 (F), 5 (G), and 6 (Am).

You’ll notice that the 6 chord is shown as Am (A minor).

​For now, just remember that the 6 chord is always minor if we’re playing in a major key - the other main chords are all major.

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Practicing The Chords

The way you practice these or any new chords will make a big difference in how fast you can learn and use them in your playing.

​Here are a couple of ways that work really well:

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Phase 1: Repetition

With any physical skill, repetition is the key to getting used to playing these chords. Try forming and playing each chord 10 times following these 3 steps. 

• Put your fingers on the chord
• Play the chord so you can hear it
• Take your hand away from the neck

This process works with any new chord to get it under your fingers quickly. 

Everyone needs to play the chords a certain number of times before they can become automatic - this process just makes the work happen in less time.

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Phase 2: Changing Chords

As soon as you feel comfortable with the individual ukulele chords, it’s time to start changing chords. All this means is:

• Play a chord
• Move your fingers to a different chord
• Now play that chord

That’s it! All you need to do is switch from one chord to another. This helps your fingers get used to moving between different hand shapes.

A couple of things that will make this step easier:

Stay relaxed. If you’re hands tense up, it’s going to be harder to move between chords. So stay as relaxed as you can.

Give yourself plenty of time to switch chords. This isn’t a race - give yourself all the time you need to switch between chords so your hands can stay relaxed.

Keep going. Over time, your slow relaxed pace will naturally get faster and smoother. You just have to keep at it.

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Playing Chord Progressions

Playing chord progressions is a natural extension from changing between chords. A chord progression is just a specific order of chords in a key. 

You can put the chords in different orders to create different chord progressions.

To relate this to language - if chords are words, chord progressions are sentences. 

Pretty much all of the songs you will ever want to play on the ukulele are made up of chord progressions. 

By learning how common progressions fit together, you’re going to make it easier for you to learn your favorite songs.

By using the number system, we can use a simple table to put together chord progressions that you can apply to any key you ever use.

Chord Progression Table:

1 4 5 6	4 1 5 6	5 1 4 6	6 1 4 5
1 4 6 5	4 1 6 5	5 1 6 4	6 1 5 4
1 5 4 6	4 5 1 6	5 4 1 6	6 4 1 5
1 5 6 4	4 5 6 1	5 4 6 1	6 4 5 1
1 6 4 5	4 6 1 5	5 6 1 4	6 5 1 4
1 6 5 4	4 6 5 1	5 6 4 1	6 5 4 1

Use the table above as a menu. Choose one of the numbered chord progressions to play with each time you practice. 

All you have to do is match the number from the chord progression to the number of the chord (1 = C, 4 = F, 5 = G, 6 = Am) and you’re ready to go!

Once you get used to matching the letters and numbers, this will become easier and easier.

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Things To Think About:

With these 4 chords under your fingers, you’re going to be well on your way to playing your favorite songs on the ukulele. In this lesson you learned: 

• That the best way to learn new chords is to learn them in a key, and use the number system
• Chords in the key of C - C (1) F (4) G (5) Am(6)
• How to practice chords with good mechanics - repetitions of individual chords, stay relaxed, and make it easy
• How to use chord progressions to master you chords, and make learning songs easy

With some practice, you would be able to start playing the chords to some of your favorite songs.

​Focus on making smooth transitions between chords, and getting your fingers exactly where you want them to go on each chord.

​Let me know how it goes!

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