Have you memorized the basic major and minor chords?

I've been playing uke for about 10 months and I realized I haven't memorized the major and minor chords in all keys. It's only 24 chords but I haven't memorized them because I play by myself and sorta lazy. I strictly rely on tabs, youtube, or look them up as I play and forget later on. Some of the keys have a different name ie A# is the same as Bflat. I better learn a few before I join a ukulele club.

Are you in the same boat?

C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G,G#,A,A#,B

I don't bother to memorize chords I don't use. I've never learned to speak Italian, either.

Seriously, I can make any chord using barre chords but as for learning the open chords I almost never use? Life's too short...

John

I remember only the chords I use in the songs I play, and build your chord memory library from there... you wouldn't try and memorize the whole dictionary if you wanted to learn english...would you?

Hmm, I can figure out how to play any of those chords quickly enough. So yeah, "memorized".

I never really made an attempt to memorize the chords, beyond knowing the basic shapes (on guitar or uke) as long as the shape translates to another position on the neck, for a different chord.

For example, one song I play has a change from a gm to an am - rather than completely change my hand position, I just slide up the neck 2 frets from the gm, and voila! Am. But that wasn't a memorization thing - I jsut followed my ears, and when I did that 2-fret slide, I suddenly realized I was playing the Am.

This happens with a lot of the chord progressions, when I'm playing.

I've got a copy of Ukulele Fretboard Roadmap, but haven't really used it, as I've been pretty much doing most of that stuff all along.

And, by the way, watching the videos of you playing your new Donaldson, it looks like you do that, too. (Great playing, BTW.)

ksiegel said:

And, by the way, watching the videos of you playing your new Donaldson, it looks like you do that, too. (Great playing, BTW.)

-Kurt​

Click to expand...

I wish I could take credit but I just memorize what I see. I couldn't tell you what chords I play. In the Eddie Vedder song, "Goodbye" that I play in the latest video, I know I play F chord and I think a Bflat and an E??...the rest of the chords, I'm clueless. BTW, I love the EV songbook. If all songbooks had fingerings on top, life would be grand!!