This is the 3rd Ukulele lesson I have on my site and this one is meant for players who have moved through my previous 2 classes – this is not for total ukulele beginners!
Barre Chords – What Are They Anyways?
A barre chord is a chord shape that is moveable to different key centers. Up until now we have been dealing with open chords, that is chords that contain an open string. These are great chords to learn in the beginning because they are easy to play and you can play many songs with just open chords.
But they have a problem – they are not moveable. Let’s take this F major open chord, you cannot move it up one fret to get F# major. Try it and see, it sounds bad.
Our First Barre Shape – Based On F Open Chord
Look at this chord over here, what we have done is moved the F open chord up 1 fret, and ‘barred’ our 1st finger on the 1st fret.
Think of that open F chord as a barre chord, but the nut of the ukulele was your first finger. Does that make sense?
Root Notes And The Musical Alphabet – Oh My!
To really understand how these barre chords work we need to get into a little music theory.
This picture to the right shows the root of our F# chord – the root is the ‘main’ note in the chord. In this case its F#.
It’s important to know that these barre shapes can moved to any root to become different chords, just by shifting the shape up or down the ukulele.
One more piece of information you’ll need to do this is the musical alphabet – the 12 notes that make up all the music we play.
I started with A, but it’s important to know that the musical alphabet is a continuum that keeps on going up or down.
There are sharp and flat notes in-between most notes – those are the black keys on the piano. The white keys on the piano are the non sharp or flat notes. The only notes without a sharp or flat in between are B and C and E and F. Get aquatinted with the musical alphabet as it relates to the Uke – you can start with any open string and just ‘count’ up the musical alphabet.
With this information you can move these chords anywhere – just make the circled root note the note of your choice and you can move these shapes to become any chord.
Next Barre Chord Shape – Movable Open C
Just like we did with the open F chord, we can move the open C chord if we barre our 1st finger to replace the nut. This C shape has the root note in 2 of the strings, and if we move the shape up 2 frets we get a D barre chord. Refer back to the musical alphabet – if you move up two notes from C you will be on D.
Moveable Open A Minor Barre Chord Shape
Just like with the chord before we can move the A Minor open chord around as well by barring our first finger to replace the nut. If we move the whole shape up 2 frets we get a B Minor Barre chord shape. This shape also has 2 root notes in it.
Moveable D Minor Shape
If we move the D minor open chord up 1 fret we get Eb Minor , or D# Minor – they are both the same note.
Wrapping It Up
In this lesson we have learned 4 barre chord shapes. With these moveable shapes you will be able to play any major or minor chord on the ukulele. We have also touched on the musical alphabet – thats how you’ll know where to move the roots to make any chord from these shapes. Practice these shapes everyday and soon you will be able to switch between them quickly and will be able to play most any song!
Thanks so much for learning these shapes with me – barre chords are an important milestone in ukulele or guitar and if you need anymore help drop me a line.
Here is a video where you can see the fingers I use to play these chords and a little more explanation.