Ukulele chords

All 121 ukulele chords on Alviena, grouped by family. Every chord has its own page: the diagram, the notes it is built from, the shape in detail, and the charts on the site that use it.

Major

Minor

Dominant sevenths

Major sevenths

Minor sevenths

Diminished

Augmented

Sus4

Other

The same chords on another instrument

Where to start

These are the chords that come up most often in the charts published on the site. Learning them on ukulele before the rest opens up the largest part of the repertoire: the figure says how many charts each one appears in.

These 10 chords are enough to play a good share of the catalogue. The rest of this page groups them by family, from the most common to the rarest.

The instrument

Four strings tuned G C E A, with the quirk that the top string is not the lowest: that re-entrant tuning is what gives the ukulele its sound. Most chords take one to three fingers, which makes it the quickest string instrument to get under the hands.

Reading a diagram

Read the diagram as if the instrument were standing upright in front of you: the strings run vertically, the lowest on the left, and the horizontal bars are the frets. A dot marks a finger; a circle above a string means it rings open; a cross means it is not played. A thick bar across the top means the shape starts at the nut; otherwise the number on the left gives the fret of the first row shown. A solid bar across several strings is a barre: one finger lays them all down.