Spatial approach to playing chords all over the Neck.

I've had this idea that its much easier to learn and play chords than I've been led to believe. So I wrote an inkscape extension and lost my mind for a few weeks working it out.

Turns out - I'm pretty sure I'm right. Maybe heaps of people know this already but here's my idea. (which is in detail on https://ukulelethoughts.blogspot.com/)

1. The Problem:
Usually people learn simple chords near the neck and then are shown hundreds of chord tabs to memorise. Sigh...

2. Chord hand shapes:
Turns out every chord needs at most 4 hand shapes(fingering) to play the chord. Each shape has a root note that is the key string to remember.
Then the chords all replicate down the neck using a simple rule based on the fretboard strings (tuning).

3. Notes on the Neck:
And luckily for the Ukulele, the common tunings are GCEA, ADF#B, and DGBE - which is just the same srings shifted down the neck (2, 7 frets). (On the guitar there are many more variations of string organisation.)

So there are chord charts at the link which show all the fingerings and positions all over the neck, and also the only chart you really need. Which is the chord shapes and the Neck layout.

Here's the Major:



Here's a pile of chords:


Does anyone else think this is useful ?
Sure seems like a good way to learn them all, play them all, and its spatial reasoning based, so works well when playing IMHO...

Yeah. However you can visualize chord families and moveable shapes will help immensely in making sense of the fretboard. By the way, you aren't the first to think of this:
https://www.amazon.com/Fretboard-Ro...423400410/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

yes - I absolutely can't be. After all the GCEA tuning has been chosen for a specific reason. Those people must have known all about this kind of idea.

I have found a reference on a homestay site and a scan of an old "Gibson system of Hawaiian guitar" book which shows a spatial diagram of how to harmonise (shows shapes of note relationships on adjacent strings).

I expect that's the next step for me, which is to indicate how all the 3rds, 5ths, etc are close on nearby strings to the root note.
I'm sure that's why the GCEA tuning is the standard - its the one with the closest spread of nearby notes to play as many chord styles as possible.
You can see that's why so many Guitar tunings are popular for Blues, Irish, etc styles. (The adjacency of notes to form useful chords on strings near the Root note.)

This is great...almost what I want. I want a book that simply teaches: these are all the chords in second position. These are the chords in third position. And so on.

I was trying to figure out how to save that map as a PDF that I could put on my iPad. Haven't figured that out yet.

Thanks for sharing!

That's the way I've always thought of them...As open chords barred. Thanks for sharing!

Great concept that's lacking in most materials. Fretboard Roadmaps is the closest I've found, but doesn't go deep enough for my taste so...

I put together my own ebook years ago - 'Ukulele Chord Shapes - that does dive quite deep. Just released it as a physical book. Really happy with how it came out. 34 chord families each with all their practical shapes. It also shows 3rd, 5th, etc.. relations which might save you some effort.

http://liveukulele.com/books/ukulele-chord-shapes/

Hate to toot my own horn, but I put in gobs and gobs of time creating basically this same material. Might be useful.

Thanks Brad - I have the ebook and have used it for a while in addition with fretboard roadmaps and for me that is the end game for understanding all of the chord shapes. I'm planning on buying your book as well because it looks so darn good

Hippie Guy said:

..
I put together my own ebook years ago - 'Ukulele Chord Shapes - that does dive quite deep. Just released it as a physical book. Really happy with how it came out. 34 chord families each with all their practical shapes. It also shows 3rd, 5th, etc.. relations which might save you some effort.
http://liveukulele.com/books/ukulele-chord-shapes/
Hate to toot my own horn, but I put in gobs and gobs of time creating basically this same material. Might be useful.

Click to expand...

Oh man - now I feel bad. I hope people buy your book Brad...

Neon22 said:

Oh man - now I feel bad. I hope people buy your book Brad...

Click to expand...

Don't even feel bad! This is public knowledge hidden in plain sight that any clever person can figure out on their own if they put in the time. I can only take credit for my own presentation and explanations.

timmit65 said:

That's the way I've always thought of them...As open chords barred. Thanks for sharing!

Click to expand...

Me too; these are barre chords. Guitarists gravitate to movable chords early, but ukulele players seem to stay with open chords. Nothing wrong with that, just look at all the songbooks with open chords. The topic of movable chords is discussed occasionally on this site.
http://ukuleleunderground.com/2008/06/uke-minutes-17-movable-chord-shapes/

Movable ukulele chords (aka barre/bar chords):
https://www.google.com/search?q=ukulele++movable+chords&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

Ukulele barre (aka bar; movable) chords:
https://www.google.com/search?clien...0...1c..64.mobile-gws-serp..0.0.0.LdzuCj0vBz4

Thats good to know because I assumed it was because there were only 4 strings.
So for a Major [Intervals of 0 3 5 which means R 3 5] We only need three strings to be sounded but 4 is good too. When we get to the ninth chord - we're in trouble because we need 5 tones [R 3 5 b7 9] but we do the best we can with the 4 on the Ukulele by not sounding one of them - but we get to choose which one.

Here's the Major [R 3 5]

So we can see there are two Roots in the first shape (used by A, A#, B) So you could optionally not play one of the Roots (the first and last string) and just play three strings.
This would, of course, still be a chord. And because the Roots for this shape are on the ends - its easy to skip hitting that string.

Looking at the C we can see that there are also two Roots and that three of the strings are played Open. Most of the time you don't see the C like this (the normal tabs hide the work the Nut is doing for you) but you can see the shape repeated down(up) the fretboard for C# (of course it keeps going for a D but the D that is closer to the neck, is shown in the D chord diagram).
To see the shape move down the neck look in the first post in this thread.


The D# and the E are shown with the common non-repeating variants which is how they are generally shown in tab diagrams. But the intervals for the repeating pattern can be seen in the D and its pattern is [5 R 3 5]. The most common D# variation replaces the 5th on the 4th string(G) with an open 3rd. This has the effect of de-emphasising the 5th tone and emphasising the 3rd tone - which (as the G string is the thickest) is sounds 'better' to some people.
However this open string can't be played further down the neck and still be a third. So you can only play this variation in exactly this place on the neck. That's why its key to learn the 4 spatial shapes.

Knowing which fingers are creating which tones(the intervals) allows the player to choose how to preserve the chord but get the intonation they want.
The 4 finger shapes for the Major all have the same intervals because the strings have a fixed relation to the Root node.

So for the Major (and for comparison the 7th as well) these are the fingering shapes.

You can see there are repeated Roots in the major chord shape but not in the 7th.
In the 7th [R 3 5 b7] there are four notes in the Chord.
We need four notes and the Ukulele has four strings - just as well....
There is effectively one shape for each string - because in this case we need 4 notes and we have 4 strings. Not all chords need 4 notes - as we have just seen with the Major chord.

If you learn these 4 shapes, and the fact that the note you are playing is the identified by the Root position on the fretboard. Then you can play any note anywhere on the neck with these 4 fingering shapes.
To fully detail that, this is the 7th Chord with all of its shapes drawn down the neck for all (say) occurrences of an A in the A column.

Each chord has a different shape because it is defined as a different set of intervals over the scale(octave).

Hires version suitable for printing for all the chords are under Downloads on ukulelethoughts

Knowledge of these shapes (from Bosko, pre-Brad's book http://ukulelesafari.com/index.php?pid=11366 ) and memorizing the notes at 5th (C-FAD) and 7th (DoG BonE) is what got me moving up the neck.

Uncle Zac teaches a great workshop on this, with a nice chart. "Your finger is the nut". Really broke thru my barrier.

Neon22 said:

Oh man - now I feel bad. I hope people buy your book Brad...

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I bought the online version yesterday Neon 22. I had been thinking along these lines on my own. I discovered the triad shapes first, and they work great for fingerpicking, but for strumming, at least for me, I felt the desire to learn all the moveable chords. A friend recommended Treasury of Chords by Roy Sakuma, and they are all in there . But I am also hungry to understand some of the theory behind them as well.

I've been thinking some along similar lines, in part from a workshop with Fred Sokolow. Another way to think about chord shapes is the first position chords are special cases where some of notes are open strings and if you can make that shape beneath a finger held above the nut it becomes a movable chord. I am also playing with what I call closed chord families, where I play closed (movable) chords for the one, four, five7, and sixm(relative minor) in a key. For me there are three of these: the barred D family- Barred D, 2nd position G, an A7 (2,4,5,4 - shifted 1st position G7), and a Bm this is easiest family for me; the other two families form off of the 2nd position C chord and 2nd position G chord respectively but are more difficult as the require more hand movement when going through the progression.

Hippie Guy said:

I put together my own ebook years ago - 'Ukulele Chord Shapes - that does dive quite deep. Just released it as a physical book. Really happy with how it came out. 34 chord families each with all their practical shapes. It also shows 3rd, 5th, etc.. relations which might save you some effort.

http://liveukulele.com/books/ukulele-chord-shapes/

Hate to toot my own horn, but I put in gobs and gobs of time creating basically this same material. Might be useful.

Click to expand...

Just bought it. Thank you!

My reply to @Rrgramps is lost in moderation for 4 days. (I guess it has images in it). I hope it resurfaces soon - even though it might be out of order. I'd like to continue the conversation.