Ukulele Chords

Ukulele gets StrumAndKey's narrowest chord roster on purpose: 10 qualities across 12 keys, 120 pages, versus guitar's 21 and piano's 17. That's not a lesser instrument getting a lesser treatment — it's an accurate reflection of what a 4-string ukulele in standard reentrant tuning (G-C-E-A, with that G tuned UP an octave rather than down) can voice as a genuinely distinct, commonly-played chord shape. With only four strings, a ukulele physically cannot sound more than four different pitch classes at once without doubling a note, and most extended chords (9ths, 11ths, 13ths) need five or more distinct tones to sound like themselves rather than a plain triad with an extra color note. That's the real, physical reason 9, 11, 13, and 7sus4 don't appear in the ukulele roster the way they do on guitar and piano — not an editorial trim, an acoustic one.

The word "reentrant" is the single fact that makes ukulele chord shapes genuinely different from "a small guitar," and it's worth understanding before the individual chord pages make full sense. On a standard guitar, string pitch rises steadily from the lowest (thickest) string to the highest (thinnest) — low to high, pitch only goes up. Ukulele's G string breaks that pattern: it's tuned to G4, actually higher in pitch than the C string next to it (C4), so the string order isn't low-to-high at all — it goes G(high)-C(low)-E(mid)-A(high). That reentrant G is why a ukulele's characteristic bright, chiming, slightly percussive sound doesn't resemble a scaled-down guitar chord even when the two instruments are voicing the identical named chord — the ukulele's top note is frequently NOT its highest-pitched string, which changes which note rings out on top. See Ukulele Reentrant Tuning Explained for the full acoustic reasoning behind why this tuning exists at all (it traces back to the instrument's Portuguese machete/cavaquinho ancestry and the small body's need for a bright, present tone).

Because there are only four strings, ukulele chord fingerings tend to be genuinely simple relative to guitar equivalents — many major, minor, and dominant 7th shapes need only one or two fretted fingers, which is a real, substantive reason ukulele is often recommended as a first instrument for absolute beginners (including many guitar teachers, who use it to introduce chord-shape thinking before the added string count and barre technique of guitar). A beginner can play C, F, G, and Am on ukulele within a single first lesson in a way that isn't realistic on guitar, where F specifically requires a barre.

The 10-quality roster here — major, minor, dominant 7th, major 7th, minor 7th, sus2, sus4, add9, 6th, and diminished — covers the working vocabulary that shows up in the ukulele repertoire's dominant genres: island and folk styles built on straightforward major/minor/7th progressions, and the sus2/sus4/add9 colors that give strummed ukulele parts their characteristic open, ringing quality without needing a five-or-six-note extended chord a four-string instrument can't cleanly voice anyway.

Not every ukulele is tuned the same way, which matters for anyone cross-checking these diagrams against a real instrument. Soprano, concert, and tenor ukuleles are all normally tuned reentrant G-C-E-A, and StrumAndKey's diagrams and prose assume that standard tuning throughout. Baritone ukulele is a genuine exception: it's tuned D-G-B-E — the same pitches as a guitar's top four strings, and NOT reentrant (the D is the lowest-pitched string, not the highest). A baritone player using this hub's shapes should treat them as a reference for the note content and general shape logic rather than an exact fingering match, since the underlying tuning is a materially different structure.

The instrument's own history explains a lot about why its chord vocabulary stayed this narrow and this specific. The ukulele descends from small Portuguese instruments (the machete and the cavaquinho) brought to Hawaii by immigrant workers in the 1880s; Hawaiian craftsmen and musicians adapted the instrument and its tuning locally, and the reentrant G string is generally understood to be a Hawaiian-era development suited to the bright strumming style that became the instrument's signature. That's a genuinely different lineage from the guitar and piano, and it's part of why treating ukulele chord shapes as scaled-down guitar shapes — rather than their own real, distinct system — produces wrong or misleading fingerings.

Strumming technique interacts with this hub's chord choices in a real, practical way too: the ukulele's nylon or fluorocarbon strings and small body favor a light, rhythmic strumming attack over the harder pick-driven strumming common on steel-string guitar, which is part of why open, ringing qualities (sus2, sus4, add9) are disproportionately common in ukulele arrangements relative to guitar's heavier reliance on power chords and barre-heavy progressions.

Because the ukulele's four strings are tuned in a genuinely compact range (roughly a major 6th separating the lowest and highest open strings in standard reentrant tuning), chord shapes here read as noticeably more "clustered" than the equivalent guitar shape — a guitar C major voiced across all six strings spans well over two octaves, while a ukulele C major voiced across all four strings sits within a much narrower band. That compactness is part of what gives ukulele chords their bright, almost bell-like quality, and it's a genuine acoustic consequence of the instrument's small body and short scale length rather than a simplified or lesser version of the same chord.

This hub's 120 pages skip several qualities that appear on both guitar and piano — m6, m9, dim7, and aug among them — not because ukulele players can't theoretically play those notes, but because they're genuinely uncommon in real ukulele repertoire and instructional material; StrumAndKey's 10-quality roster (major, minor, 7, maj7, m7, sus2, sus4, add9, 6, dim) reflects the chords that actually appear across published ukulele chord charts and method books, rather than an arbitrary cut of the full 21-quality guitar list.

Ukulele sizing is a related but genuinely separate topic from tuning: soprano, concert, and tenor ukuleles share the same G-C-E-A pitches but differ in scale length and string tension, which changes playing feel (a tenor's longer scale gives fretted notes slightly more room and often a fuller tone) without changing which frets produce which chord — a beginner can learn this hub's shapes on any of the three standard sizes and expect them to transfer directly.

The ukulele's rise in mainstream popularity over the past two decades — driven partly by its low cost and physical accessibility for children and beginners, and partly by high-profile recorded uses across pop, indie, and internet-video culture — has pushed its chord vocabulary further into pop and contemporary songwriting than its island and folk roots alone would suggest. That broader context is part of why this hub's roster, while narrower than guitar's, still spans a genuinely wide stylistic range rather than being a niche or novelty instrument's afterthought.

Fingerpicking on ukulele is a real, distinct technique from strumming that this hub's diagrams support equally well — because a fretted chord shape defines which notes are available regardless of whether they're strummed together or picked individually, the same 120 chord pages serve both a strummer working through a song's rhythm part and a fingerstyle player picking out individual notes from the same shape.

Because ukulele chord shapes so often need only one or two fingers, they're also disproportionately useful for guitarists recovering from a hand injury, learning music theory with young children, or simply wanting a genuinely fast path from zero to playing recognizable songs — a real, practical reason this instrument's chord vocabulary punches above its 120-page size in terms of how much real playing it unlocks quickly.

Duet and ensemble ukulele playing — two or more ukuleles voicing the same chord in slightly different positions up the neck — is a genuinely common arrangement technique in traditional Hawaiian ensemble music, taking advantage of how compact this hub's shapes are to let multiple players interlock complementary voicings of the same 120-page chord vocabulary without stepping on each other's register.

Classroom and group instruction settings favor ukulele over guitar for exactly the reasons this hub's roster reflects: nylon strings are gentler on young or untrained fingertips than steel, the shorter scale suits smaller hands, and the narrower, simpler 10-quality chord vocabulary gives a teacher a genuinely complete, closed system to teach from without needing to reach for guitar's wider and more physically demanding roster. Ukulele orchestras built entirely around this teaching model exist in schools worldwide for exactly these reasons, often using this exact 10-quality chord set as their complete working curriculum from first lesson to performance-ready repertoire, with no need to ever borrow vocabulary from guitar's wider roster.

Every chord page in this hub documents that pairing's real note content and interval structure, a fingering diagram reflecting the ukulele's 4-string G-C-E-A layout specifically (not a guitar diagram missing two strings), character-and-use prose, and practice guidance. Browse the full 120-page roster below, or jump into a cross-instrument family view: Major Chords, Minor Chords, Seventh Chords, and Suspended Chords each fold ukulele's pages in alongside the matching guitar and piano pages.