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]