Ukulele Lesson 3 - Uke Open Chords: A Amin A7 D Dmin D7 E Emin E7 (UK-003)

Hey, how you're doing. Justin here
for another Ukulele Lesson.

Today we will be checkin out the
rest of your open chord grips

So another nine chords today
we'll be looking at.

These ones are slightly harder than the
open chords that we looked at last time

But not much. Well some of them are.
Some of them are a bit easier

But a couple of them
are a little bit trickier

Make sure you got these other
chords well under your fingers first

Before you start to look at these ones.

And let's go to a close-up,
show how to play them.

The first chord were going to look at
today is an A-chord and its variations.

So starting with "A" we start with the

2nd finger in the 2nd fret of string 4

then we put 1st finger, 1st fret of string 3,

the other two strings are open so

2nd fret,

1st fret

open, open

(Plays A-chord)

Very, very easy chord this one.

Next one is one that we looked at
in the intro to Uke-Playing lesson.

We just lift off the the first finger and
we got our A-minor chord.

O.K. that's 2nd fret, open, open, open

(Plays A-minor-chord)

Doesn't matter what finger again

Start with the second finger but it
really could be any finger

It doesn't really make much difference.

And the last one of the "A"s ist the A7th

Now we just got the 1st finger
in the 1st fret of the 3rd string

Open,1st fret, open, open

You may certainly all be using
your first finger for this but

you could try other fingers if you
thought it was gonna be easier

(Plays A7th-chord)

Okay, so that's an A-chord.
Very, very funky little chord

Okay, let's move on to E-chord.

Now, E is a little bit difficult.

Not difficult, not terribly difficult.

But a little bit tricky.

So we got 1st finger, 1st fret
of the 4th string

then little finger is going in the
4th fret of the 3rd string

and 2nd finger is going in the
2nd fret of the 1st string

and the 2nd string is open.

So, 1st fret, 4th fret, open, 2nd fret.

(Plays E-chord)

Feels a little bit awkward this
shaping for guitar players

This is not a kind of a
common guitar-shape.

If you're new to it, you might find it a little difficulty

getting the little finger to jump
over to that chord.

So that the little finger to the 4th fret there.

Not particularly difficult in
the grand scheme of things.

It's a bit more awkward than some of
those that we've looked at so far

But it's a very important chord - E-chord

O.K. Lets look at E-minor now.

Quite alot easier actually

So we've got nothing on the 4th string

3rd finger on the 4th fret
of the 3rd string

2nd finger, 3rd fret of the 2nd string

and 1st finger in the 2nd fret
of the 1st string

That is our E-minor chord.

You could use other fingers
but this is probably the one

that you will start off most of the time.

and that's E-minor.

O.K. Now we look at E7th

This is 1st finger 1st fret
of the 4th string

2nd finger 2nd fret of the 3rd string

open second string

and 3rd finger going down
in the 2nd fret of the 1st string

(Plays E7th-chord)

This is a really common Uke-grip

So this is a good one to learn.

Now, guitar-players might find it easier to

play it like it was kind of the
top part of a B7th-chord

using the 1st finger and then
the 3rd finger and the little finger

Most commonly I think it's playing using fingers 1, 2 and 3

Most of these grips, you know, you
can change the fingering round.

It's all relatively simple.

So that would be our "E"-chords.

Now last thing we're looking at "D"-chords

Now D-major chord means that we have to get

Three fingers all wedged into the 2nd fret

It's a little bit awkward

2nd finger 2nd fret of the 4th string,

3rd finger 2nd fret of the 3rd string,

little finger 2nd fret of the 2nd string.

2nd fret, 2nd fret, 2nd fret, open.

(Plays D-chord)

Again it's a really common chord.

It's just a little bit tricky.

It's getting your fingers to cram in there

You could use fingers 1, 2 and 3.

But I really struggle with that to
try and get my fingers in there.

You could use the kind of an "A"-grip
that I teach in the beginner's course.

That's using the 2nd finger on
the 2nd fret of string 4,

1st finger underneath on the
2nd fret of the 3rd string

and then 3rd finger on the
2nd fret of the 2nd string.

It feels quite difficult because
those fingers are a lot bigger.

I'd highly recommend in that
instant using fingers 2, 3, 4.

But again you might try some other stuff.

I see some guys doing this as a little bar

You can get away with that some times
using 2nd, 2nd, 2nd fret, open

but you have to find your
right length of bar there.

Which can be a little bit tricky.

I tend to play it like this myself, it's
up to you to find what works for you

Now the minor chord D-minor.

To guitar players it looks
a little bit like A-minor.

we've got 2nd fret, 2nd fret,
1st fret, open

2nd finger in the 2nd fret of the 4th string

3rd finger 2nd fret of the 3rd string

and 1st finger 1st fret of the 2nd string.

(Plays D-minor)

That's D-minor.

And lastly we got D7th, nice and
easy one to finish off with.

2nd finger, 2nd fret of the 4th string

open 3rd string

3rd finger, 2nd fret, 2nd string

and then open first string.

(Plays D7th-chord)

Again you could be changing the fingering
around it wouldn't really matter

Fingers 2 and 3 are those that I tend to
use most often with this particular grip

So now you should know all of the
common open chord grips.

For the major, minor and
dominant seventh chords

I'm shure some of you are probably
wondering what happened to B.

Cause we'd looked at C-major, D-major,
E-major, F-major, G-major, A-major but not B

Well B is kind of like a little bar-chord,

it's a little trickier and it's a
moveable chord shape.

So that's something that we're going to be
looking at in a future lesson

But we're not going to be
looking at it just yet.

Big important things to do here:

One, check out the chords relationships
and make shure that your

playing like, you know, D and Dmin and D7
and see how they are similar.

That will really help you remember them

And also really important is that you .
put them to use by learning some songs

Can't stress this enough, it's really

the best way to go about learning
your new chords is to

put them into a song rightaway.

So find some songs that are using
the chords that you already know

and just one or two of the new ones.

See if you can blend them together a
little bit and get them under your fingers

Cause that's the way to go about
learning your chords

Not to just try and learn hundreds of
chords that you are never going to use.

That's a real waste of time, you know,
that's to be avoided.

Learn the chords that you need to play
the songs that you want to play.

That's what you want to be after

Hope you have fun with all of
those new chords

and I'll see you for plenty more guitar-
and uke-lessons very soon.

Take care of yourselves!
Bye, Bye!