Slack Key Ukulele Chord Charts (GCEG and DGBD tunings)

JonThysell

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I've done it again. Like my previous GCEA and DGBE chord charts, I've made a set of chord charts for taropatch GCEG and DGBD tunings:

http://jonthysell.com/2013/06/20/fr...chord-charts-and-diagrams-gceg-baritone-dgbd/

Just like the others I have one-page charts for each tuning, with Major, Minor, Augmented, Diminished, Sixth, Minor Sixth, Seventh, Major Seventh, Minor Seventh, and Ninth chords in all twelve keys.

And of course there's also a single page with both tunings and zip archives of the raw chord images I used.

Enjoy!

P.S. If anyone knows of other slack-key uke chord charts out there please let me know so I can compare. As I explain in the blog post these took longer than I expected due to lack of reference materials. :D
 
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Thank You very much creating these chord charts . . . your time and effort creating them is really appreciated.
 
Thank you~ really appreciate your sharing!
 
Nice, Jon. Thanks.

Another resource is BestGuitarChords.com (http://www.bestguitarchords.com/). They have chords for guitar, mandolin, and uke. My favorite feature is the Custom Tuning you can select for any instrument. That allows you to select your exact tuning, tell it the chord you want, and you get several or even many possibilities, from first position to around 16th or 17th fret.

While on the subject of DGBD tuning, having used this tuning for a while, I've noticed that some 7th chords can be hard to play. I found that substituting a diminished chord based on the third of the 7th chord you want gives you all but the root note of the 7th you want to play. For example A7 consists of A, C#, E, and G. C#dim is C#, E, and G, so it sounds pretty good anywhere an A7 is called for.

Leigh
 
Thanks for the resource. I made my own app for generating diagrams here: http://chordious.com. You're right about the 7th chords, though most of the slack-key songs I play are just the I and V7 chords, I've found that knowing where all of those are on the fret board have got me covered most of the time. For the "regular/jazzier" stuff that most uke groups play, I just use a regular fourths tuning (right now reentrant dgbe which I'm loving.
 
This is great thank you so much, I have always loved slack key just never knew how to do the chords
 
Thanks for this stuff! I know I'll use the slack key chord diagram, and I will probably use Chordious too.
 
Thanks for this stuff! I know I'll use the slack key chord diagram, and I will probably use Chordious too.

Hi, George, ya know Slack Key is also called Open Tuning, and it's also used for clawhammer Banjolele playing. I think it might also be used for other banjo playing. Google it if you wanna know more.

Goo, goo, google it! :eek:ld:
 
Well, there are more than one slack key tunings, and most uke tunings (including the standard C6 and G6 ones) are open tunings—the all 4ths and all 5ths tunings are the only exceptions that readily spring to mind. So I wouldn't label either as the "Slack Key" or "Open" tuning, at least without adding the key name, which would imply, for instance, the C major chord as opposed to the G, C6 or Cmaj7 chord, all of which are viable, and open. (I gather that tunings with major 7ths are common in slack key and are termed "wahine" tunings.)

You're absolutely right, there is no the "Slack Key" tuning. Dancing Cat (a slack-key music label) lists a bunch of "known" Hawaiian slack key tunings for guitar: http://www.dancingcat.com/skbook4a-tuningchart.php.

More than that, playing slack key isn't as simple as just retuning your uke. Like any genre of music it has it's own style, common techniques, standard songs, etc. Retuning is just the first step.

That said, there are hardly enough resources for playing slack key style on the ukulele in DGBD/GCEG, let alone other tunings. There are but three books which tackle the subject directly (Mark Nelson's, Dave Heaukulani's, and Heeday Kimura's) all of which focus mostly on the DGBD/GCEG tuning. They do have some short info about other tunings, like the wahine tunings, but just enough to whet one's appetite. Even UU's coverage of the topic is a single two and a half minute video that is basically, tune down your first string and have fun!

There are some indirect resources, for example, for chords, scales, and such, if you use the DGBD/GCEG tuning you can look to banjo and cavaquinho material, or if you're interested in other tunings, books like Ondrej Sarek's "Open Tunings for Ukulele".
 
Thanks for your labour in putting this together and thanks even more for sharing this freely Jon, found it just when I needed it.
 
Nice- thanks- printed out
 
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