Ha!! The Jack Daniels belongs in that circle that starts on your left ear and goes around your head and ends up on your right ear and then goes all the way back around to your left ear.
First of all, I'm very happy many of you are finding the Ukulele Circle of Fifths useful. Unfortunately, sometimes it brings up more questions than it answers and sometimes the questions are more confusing than the answers. I always hesitate to jump into the music theory discussions because I've never seen one that actually clarifies the questions at hand, but rather they obscure the simple beauty of western music's rules.
Nevertheless, I proceed...
I built this chart to help myself write new songs ... not necessarily to solve the riddle of music theory. There are plenty of things in the chart that need a little more elaboration if it was to be used for a music theory class. Nonetheless, if you want to write a song, you can pick any starting point on the wheel, and most every chord nearby will sound pretty good. For example, if you want to write a song in the key of F, you simply need to look at the Circle of Fifths and you can be darn sure that F, Bb, C, Dm, Gm, and Am will all offer you cooperative sounds for your song.
So what's the deal with 7ths, Major 7ths, Minor 7ths, diminished chords, augmented sounds, sus4s, flatted 13ths, and all that other fancy schmancy stuff????
Here's the secret ... and don't tell anybody you know this 'cause I swear the music police will come to your door and tear the ukulele right out of your hands ... all those other chords are just ways to slightly alter the color of the main chords.
GASP! You mean you don't really have to memorize all that nonsense, Gary??
Again, top secret ... do NOT tell people you know this:
There are only four types of chords in the world. Major, Minor, Augmented, Diminished. You will never need to play an augmented chord on your ukulele if you don't really want to, so forget them. There is only ONE shape for all diminished chords (and they barely come up anyway). So on the ukulele, you only need to memorize the majors and minors. You can learn them in an afternoon (because many of the shapes are bar chords).
If I can learn every chord I'll ever need in an afternoon, then why all the fuss over those fancy chords?
It's simple. On a guitar, or a piano, or in an orchestra, you can make a whole lot more complicated chords because you can make a whole lot more sounds happen simultaneously. Guys with bow ties and nothing better to do with themselves sit down and figure out the names of those fancy chords, and sooner or later they end up on your favorite internet lyrics site and if you haven't read this post, you think you should actually play those things.
Do you have to play a Cmaj7?
No. Just play C.
Will it sound better if I play Cmaj7?
Yes.
Then why play C?
Because you are still learning to be a great player and you don't need to waste your brain on this kinda nonsense. If you're just strumming and singing merrily away, you should feel just fine playing the easiest chord you know. Every professional musician does it. Someday you'll memorize the chording for an Am6, but for now, play Am and you'll sound fine. On the rare occasion when you fall in love with a song and really really want to make it sound extra cool, you can go look up the fingering for those complicated chords on a one-at-a-time basis. Remember, those chords come from guitars, pianos, or orchestras, usually not ukuleles, so even if you figure out the chord shape, there's no guarantee it'll sound good, or that your fingers will be able to hit it.
And let me get on my soap box. Stop playing other people's songs and write your own! I don't want to hear your rendition of Hey Jude anyway. I want to hear your zombie, robot, love, dead dog, Camaro driving at night song. And if you write the song, and use your own chords, you'll never need to know what a Bm7b5 looks like on your fret board. (Remember, if you want to write a song, look at the Circle of Fifths, find the chords that are near each other, and head to your basement with a pad of paper and a pencil. Three hours from now, you'll have a song that is all your own and they won't delete it from YouTube.)
Last secret I'll let you in on:
Most musicians playing in bands today have no idea what the name of the advanced chords they're using actually are. If you own a guitar, you noodle around with the chords until you find something that sounds cool. If you play the piano, you use a fourth or fifth finger in your chording hand and suddenly you have more complicated and interesting voicings. This is a good thing, but it's different for us ukulele players. We only have four strings and two octaves. We have more limits on what our instrument can do, and while the ukulele will certainly do lots of fancy chords, you shouldn't be spending a lot of time trying to memorize those things. Just noodle and find the cool sounds and don't worry what they're called.
Final soapbox speech: In an orchestra, the tuba plays ONE note at a time. So does the trumpet, the trombone, the clarinet, the flute, the oboe, usually everyone in the entire strings section is also playing one note at a time. ONE NOTE AT A TIME. It's called melody and it's what you've been doing with your singing voice. Have you tried it on the ukulele? If it's good enough for a violin, it's good enough for ukulele too. Forget chording altogether and give melody a chance. You'll find your ukulele sings a mighty good tune. You'll also find your fingers magically showing up in the shapes of the chords without you even trying.
We are so lucky to play this instrument. Every day I am amazed at how fortunate I am to be a part of its history.
Now go write a song.