Playing Guitar ‘Slash Chords’ On The Ukulele

Despite the increasing amount of tab and chords for ukulele on the internet, we still have to rely on guitar chords for most songs. If you’ve done this a lot, you’ll have come across - and possibly confused by - chords that look like this: D/F#. These are known as ’slash chords’.

On the guitar, it’s almost always the case that the lowest note played is the root note (the note the chord is named after). Slash chords are used to indicate where the lowest note is not the root of the chord. The first part of the slash chord is the chord played and the second part is the lowest note. In the example D/F#, the chord is D and the lowest note is F#. So it could be played like this on guitar:

It’s often not the case on the ukulele that the lowest note is the root. As there are only four strings, we have to take the notes wherever we can find them. So, what do you do on the uke when you come across slash chords?

That depends on what the bass note is. If the bass note is part of the chord, you can ignore it and play the usual chord shape. If it isn’t part of the chord, you’ll have to add it in somewhere.

Here’s a typical guitar chord progression with a few slash chords:

C - C/B - C/A - C/G - G - C

The first slash chord in this sequence is C/B. B is not part of the C chord so you have to add it in (A string second fret).

The same is true with C/A - there is no A in a C chord so add the open A string.

There is, however, a G in the C chord. So at that point you can play the usual C chord. Giving us this progression:

If you’re not sure how chords are made up and what notes they contain, check out How To Play Ukulele Chord Progressions - it’ll give you a real understanding of how chords work and what you can do with them.

Hawaiian Turnaround

I was watching another enlightening and inspiring tutorial by Mark Occhionero today, this time on Little Grass Shack (you can get the tab on the YouTube page). It set me off vamping around in a Hawaiian style (despite the freezing cold weather) and playing the most Hawaiian lick I know:the Hawaiian turnaround. In its simplest form (in the key of A), it goes like this:

Example 1 (MIDI)

Make sure you play it with plenty of lazy swing.

This phrase can be chopped and changed in many different ways. Here’s a popular one:

Example 2 (MIDI)

It can be extended and messed around with as much as you like:

Example 3 (MIDI)

Outros: 5 Ways To End It

“I’m not sure how to end the song.”
“Stop playing. If you keep playing, for some reason, people think the song is still going.”

You reach the end of a song and what do you do? You could just stop. The outro is a great opportunity for a bit of musical invention, as a way to build to a climax or have a little joke to leave them smiling and offset any chin-scratching muso posturing that may have gone on before.

Here are a few familiar codas that you build on or use as they are. All these are in the key of A so transpose as required.

1. The ‘Woke Up This Morning’

Blues midi

This is a very common blues ending. You play this inside-out, upside-down and bass-akward. You can play the strings in any order, you can play them all at the same time, you can let the A string ring open.

2. The ‘Goodnight Cleveland’

Rockabilly midi

Give it the bit rock and fire, explosions and fireworks ending. The notes you play aren’t as important as how fast you play them and how orgasmic you make your face look.

3. The ‘Where Nobody Sucks (Except for Flanders)

midi

As used by Homer Simpson in the I’m Talking Springfield episode (you can download the mp3 on Simpson Crazy). Previously know as The ‘And Many More’ (at the end of the Happy Birthday song). I used this one to end my tab of Baby Elephant Walk.

4. The ‘Whoops, Have a Banana’

Banana midi

A very old-school, fun and instantly recognisable ending. As featured in the tab for I Wanna Banana. The little lick contains the same notes each time but is played it a different position the second time to give it a slight ‘call and response’ feel.

5. The ‘Turned Out Nice Again’

Chord midi

A common chord progression to end a song or to use as a turnaround during a song.

You can even mix and match endings. Play the first bar of the ‘Woke Up This Morning’ then dive into the ‘And Many More’. All of them can be played around with and given your own twist.

Get Good Tone: Making Martins Out of Mahalos

Of all the ten commandments, the one I find most difficult to live by is, “Thy shalt not covet thy neighbour’s uke.” I’ve often found myself browsing eBay or YouTube, ogling the ukes of others and contemplating harvesting the organs of my uglier children to raise the cash to buy one. But my moral compass got the better of me. So how do you get a better sounding ukulele without shelling out for one?

1. Holding the ukulele

I’ve seen it suggested that you should hold the uke by smushing it into your chest; that is entirely the wrong way to go about it. Being so small, it’s easy to smother all the tone out of a ukulele. You want to be touching the ukulele as little as possible. You need to allow the front and back of the uke to vibrate as much as possible to wring all the tone and volume out of it as possible.

Watch how the masters like Jake Shimabukuro and Roy Smeck hold it. They have the uke angled away from the body and their forearm resting very gently on the corner of the uke. The area of the uke they are touching is very small and mostly limited to the corners.

2. Use good strings

The quality of strings you use can have a huge effect on the sound of the ukulele. Buying top of the range strings is far more affordable than buying a top of the range uke and can yield almost as much of an improvement in tone. Aquila and Worth strings are generally considered the best ukulele strings around. But I still love my pink KoAloha strings. Find more about ukulele strings here.

3. Find the sweet spot

The place where you strum the uke can have a big impact on how it sounds. If you strum close to the bridge (where the strings are tied on), then you’ll get a very thin, reedy sound. Each uke has it’s own sweet spot but it’s usually somewhere around the point where the neck meets the body.

4. Don’t use a guitar pick.

The number one mistake guitar players make when transferring to uke is hacking away at the uke strings with a thumping great rhino’s toenail. Guitar plectrums are far too hard for nylon uke strings (you can just about get away with it on steel strings) and as a consequence they make a harsh sound. If you have to use a pick, use the dedicated ukulele felt picks.

5. Look after your uke.

Ukes react very badly to humidity. If you’ve got a cheap instrument you may not want to fork out for a humidifier but don’t leave your uke on a sunny windowsill or near a heater. The latest edition of UkeCast (episode 222 - the number of a third of the beast) has a list of tips for looking after your uke (I did not know that suncream can damage ukuleles).

So you might not be able to make a Mahalo sound like a vintage Martin ukulele (that was just an excuse for a very tenuous pun) but you can certainly improve the sound it makes.

Do you have have any other tone tips?

How I Work Out Chords

You’re a fan of an Icelandic psychedelic-folk ukulele trio who released one album in 1964 and promptly split up. They had a stunning uke song that you have to play. The band and their oeuvre are entirely unknown to Google and the massed ranks of Intertubeland. What do you do?

I’ve been asked about this by maduke and there have been discussions about how to work out chords for the ukulele on Ukulele Cosmos and 4th Peg so I thought I’d weigh in with my 5 steps to working out chords.

Step 1. Don’t play your ukulele: At the risk of winning the Ric Olia Award for Pointing Out The Bleeding Obvious, it’s difficult to transcribe a song if you don’t listen to it. Firstly, listen to the structure of the song: where the chords change, where bits are repeated. Try picking out whether chords are major, minor, 7ths.

See if you can recognise a chord progression from a song you know. A huge proportion of songs will include the Louie, Louie chord progression. Not necessarily those chords, but the same relationship between the chords (the I-IV-V progression). If you recognise that progression, you’ll easily be able to work out about half of all songs. [Read more]