Slashed chords on a uke...how to play?

PureGouldUke

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I'm completely and utterly frustrated with this right now, and finding this forum has been a godsend.

This may be a stupid question, but how are slashed chords played on a uke? I can't find anything in my uke chord book.

When I play bass, I usually take the bass note as the one to play, but it doesn't seem to work with uke.

Any ideas?
 
I'm completely and utterly frustrated with this right now, and finding this forum has been a godsend.

This may be a stupid question, but how are slashed chords played on a uke? I can't find anything in my uke chord book.

When I play bass, I usually take the bass note as the one to play, but it doesn't seem to work with uke.

Any ideas?

Nine times out of ten it works best to simply forget about the bass inversion and just play the chord - some of the standard uke chords are inversions anyway. If you are playing with a keyboard, bass, or guitar chances are good one of them is going to pick up the bass inversion. If not, hey, it should sound like a uke arrangement of the song, right? :)

John
 
What It Boils Down To

As one becomes better and better at the uke, one comes to realize that different inversions, or voicings of the same chord can fit better in a song. Why? Because the notes are just arranged in a different order and one order might place the melody note on the A string which makes it easier to hear and if the next chord also has the melody note on the a string you can feel the melody movement as the chords change, or maybe just chromatic or diatonic or scalar movement.

Anyway, the slash tells you what voicing to use because it tells you to find a version of chord with that note as the lowest note. But you could just let the bassist handle that.

Or, to become better: Learn to play all of your basic majors and minors and sevenths in at least three places on the neck and try to play songs using different voicings in combination.
Then go on to learn minor sevenths and ninths in different positions.

Start playing ninths in the place of 7ths. Does it make a better difference. Try substituting a 6th for a major. Add colors to your pallette.
 
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