Ukulele chord melody sounds great, but what’s next?

You love the sound of hearing both melody and chords at the same time. And the sound of fingerpicking the strings. It sounds like a classical guitar but with the ease and comfort of the smaller ukulele. So, are the Ukulele Sisters going to write some playable chord melodies for you to learn?

You want music that isn’t too hard to play. You don’t want to shift your left hand up and down the neck of the ukulele a lot. You’d prefer music lower than the 8th fret. You don’t want a lot of barre chords. And you want instruction on what to do with your right hand. Can the Ukulele Sisters provide this kind of music?

We’re planning to offer an online course with both sheet music and video lessons. We have two different ideas for this course.

Ukulele Folk Songs as Chord Melodies

This course would include 10-12 ukulele chord melodies of folk songs. It would include video lessons to go with these folk songs. The videos will show close-ups of both the right-hand and left-hand techniques you need. The course will also go over right-hand variations, such as fingerpicking and claw-hammer. These variations create different effects on these songs. The songs are simple, so they are a good place to learn these new skills.

Classical Ukulele Chord Melody Arrangements

This course would have easy classical arrangements for ukulele. We will include music by Bach, Pachelbel, Schumann, and Beethoven. This music is a little more difficult than the ukulele folk songs as chord melodies.

Which one interests you more?

Why don’t you leave a comment below? We’re trying to decide what products to create next, based on your interests.

You want music that isn’t too hard to play. You don’t want to shift your left hand up and down the neck of the ukulele a lot. You’d prefer music lower than the 8th fret. You don’t want a lot of barre chords. And you want instruction on what to do with your right hand. Can the Ukulele Sisters provide this kind of music?

In the next part of this article, I’ll describe how we’ve developed our chord melodies over time to make them both easy to play and beautiful to listen to.

 The Development of Readable Ukulele Tab and Sakura

Over the past few years, we have been working on writing readable ukulele chord melody. Beautiful and clear sheet music helps people learn this skill from the beginning. We spent a lot of time trying to find a format that would make sense to people. You can read this article about Sakura to find out more. We asked people to let us know what format they liked best. Here is what we came up with.

We left the lyrics, strumming pattern, chords and melody on the top staff. People can sing and strum the song if they want. We notated the chord melody music in the bottom staff with rhythmic stems. People can figure out how to play the chord melody. This way the song fits onto one page and you can do it many different ways. We also gave people a chance to comment on the different types of notation here.

Sakura is in our book, 21 Easy Ukulele Folk Songs. I was so inspired when I heard Jake Shimabukuro play Sakura in the park in my community. He played so beautifully and we were so moved. I was happy to offer this song at an easier level. My version is something that less experienced players can access.

Do you want to play easy and full-sounding music?

A couple of years ago we developed an online course that teaches you to play ukulele chord melody. This course consists mainly of Christmas music. We offer it once a year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here are a couple of examples of the music in this course, Jingle Bells and Silent Night.

Can non-singers enjoy the ukulele?

Chord melody is perfect for when you want to play and you don’t want to sing. Whether you’re a good singer or not, it’s sometimes more fun to practice when you can hear the melody without singing it. You can combine chords and melody together at the same time. You make your own satisfying arrangement of the song.

Where can you get easy chord melodies?

Several of our books offer chord melody arrangements. The books that have chord melody are 21 MORE Ukulele Songs: Learn Intermediate Ukulele the Easy Way and 21 Easy Ukulele Folk Songs. Our Hymn Kits also offer up to 21 more chord melody arrangements.

One of my great joys in life is being able to pick up my ukulele and play many kinds of music, such as a chord melody arrangement. It’s great to have a portable instrument sitting right by my bed that I can grab. I play it before I sleep or when I wake up in the morning. Playing music that is easy and full sounding puts me in a better mood. The rich and exciting sounds take me to another place and uplift me.

In this article, you’ll learn how to play “up the neck” on your ukulele.

You’ll learn to shift to the higher positions in the song “Yankee Doodle.” It’s pretty easy to play melodies in the first three frets, but when the music goes higher it can get complicated. We’ll show you some principles of left-hand fingering to help you out as you play “up the neck” on your ukulele.

Here is what our customers have to say about our books and the joy they bring to them.

As you get better at ukulele, it’s fun to try new techniques. Going on YouTube is great but having a guided course with video lessons and a printable .pdf  is even better. If you can play melody tab and three-chord songs, you are ready for the chord melody, which combines the two.

Click here to find out more about our chord melody course. It goes live each year in late  November.

Here are some common issues people have as the music gets harder.

It’s easy to play melodies in the first 5 frets, but when the music goes higher, the fingering is more complicated. In this video, we teach you how to shift so you don’t miss the higher notes. I show how to play “Yankee Doodle” as you move your hand up the A string to play notes in frets 5, 7, and 8.

There are some common principles that work on all stringed instruments. When you play with your fingering hand right by the tuning pegs, that is called the first position. As you move your hand to get the higher notes, it helps to “anchor” your first finger on a particular fret.

Principles of Left-Hand Fingering

• First position-Finger 1 is on the 1st fret
• Third position-Finger 1 is on the 3^rd fret
• Fifth position-Finger 1 is on the 5^th fret
• Shifting-Moving your hand to put finger 1 on a particular fret

If these ideas are confusing, watch the video lesson. I explain it all clearly there with pictures of what the music looks like while I’m demonstrating the skill. And, you’ll get to learn “Yankee Doodle!”

Adding Chords to Your Melodies

If you can play melodies up and down the neck of the ukulele pretty easily, you can start to add chords to your melodies. In this next video lesson, I teach you how to play a C Major scale plus five extra notes to take you up to the 10^th fret. You learn about the first, third and  fifth positions for your left hand. You also learn easy chords “up the neck” of your ukulele. Finally, I introduce the concept of “movable chords” with two easy barre chords. Everything  is in the key of C, so you can use your open ukulele strings as much as possible to play chords.

Then you get to put it all together with a simple chord melody of Jingle Bells

In this arrangement, you play both melody and chords. You’ve learned the techniques you need in the other two video lessons.

If you like the full sound of Jingle Bells, you’re ready for our course, Learn Easy Ukulele Chord Melody Today. In this course,  you learn 7 songs with easy full-sounding music. The songs have accompanying video lessons and a pdf. All the songs can be played with either a
high G tuned ukulele or a low G tuned ukulele. I have lesson and performance videos for each song showing both the high G and low G versions.

The course is available from Nov. 24-Dec. 15 of 2020. Click here to get your name on a list to receive three free goodies. You’ll get the sheet music to accompany video lessons. In the video lessons, I teach you how to:

1. Play the C Scale Plus Five Notes with Chords
2. Learn How to Fingerpick an Arpeggio Study
3. Jingle Bells Chord Melody

Then, be sure to buy the course when it goes live. You’ll be glad you did!

More About Chord Melody

Want to read more about ukulele chord melodies and the arrangements we have created? Check out the following articles:

• Ukulele Chord Melody – What’s Next?
• Ukulele Hymns and Carols Are Similar Yet different
• How to Play Silent Night Ukulele Chord Melody
• How to Play Jingle Bells Ukulele Chord Melody
• Can Non-singers Enjoy the Ukulele?
• How to Play Easy and Full-Sounding Ukulele Chord Melody

Non-singers can learn chord melody

Yes, you can learn to play the ukulele even if you are a terrible singer. One of the greatest ukulele artists around, Jake Shimabukuro, does not sing.

Check out the following video for an example of what chord melody can sound like. Here Jenny plays “Wayfaring Stranger” as a chord melody solo.

As a beginner, you’re not going to sound great right away.

But there are steps you can take to learn to play simple chord melodies.

When learning a new song, first learn to sing and strum the song. All music has three elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm. For the ukulele that transfers to:

1. voice=melody  
2. chords=harmony 
3. strumming pattern=rhythm 

When you’re first beginning you will need to concentrate on one thing at a time.

Then you can put them all together.

It’s important to sing or speak the lyrics when the chords change. Otherwise, you will not know where you are in the song. If you hate singing, you can play along with our online lesson videos or check out other YouTube channels. 

Here is a YouTube channel where you can play along with the artist.

You are practicing learning the chords and learning to keep the beat. You don’t have to worry about the lyrics and the melody. Check out  Ukeplayalongs

Not a singer?

I know many people don’t like to sing. And I understand. I get at least one YouTube comment a week that tells me to stop singing!

Here are some words of encouragement about singing.

“If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.”

African Folk Saying

In teaching music, singing is a necessary part of it. You have to sing to understand the melody component of music.

Unfortunately, in our culture, we are all encouraged not to sing. Singing has become professionalized. And right now singing in groups is not considered safe, so learning how to play melody on your ukulele is a great idea!

Intermediate

Play a duet with a friend or relative. Here’s what one customer said.

Advanced Intermediate

Learn chord melody. Here is an example of a chord melody version of Frere Jacques. As you can see, we’ve kept the chord melody simple. You add the notes of the chord underneath the melody on the first beat of each measure. If you start with simple material like this, you will be able to sound complete without singing soon.

Later you can go on to more complicated songs where you change chords a lot and you play notes higher up on the neck of the ukulele. But you will be happiest if you start with easier music first.

Here’s what an Amazon customer said about learning chord melody.

All our books offer melody, melody tab, chord stamps and a suggested strumming pattern. Many of our books offer chord melodies too. We also offer online live lessons where we talk about learning melody tab and chord melody.

So, read more to find out more about our products and to sign up for our mailing list. You will be happy that you joined our community!