The One Finger Wonder | A Little Daily Ukulele - Day 1

Easy One Finger Chords

Ever wanted to play the ukulele with one finger? Well, the good news is, you can.

Maybe your finger joints are suffering a bit from wear and tear? (in my case over use of the staple gun) or maybe you just want to get started with a few easy-to-play chords?

Here are a few good ones to try out. They all sound so cool and you only need to use one fretting finger at a time, which lets you concentrate more on your strumming hand.

Top Tip: The C6 chord is quite complicated to play on guitar, but it’s my favourite chord on ukulele because it’s completely finger free!

Ukulele Chords: Fadd9, C6, Am, C7, A7, Cmaj7 and C

Now you’ve got the chords, let’s practise playing around with them a bit.

Start by repeating these simple chord progressions:

C → C7 → Fadd9 → C6

Am → C → Am → A7

Fadd9 → C → C7→ Fadd9

C → Cmaj7 → C7 → A7

Get Stuck into Some Songs

I’m pretty certain that there of hundreds of songs that we can play by combining a few of these easy one finger chords, you could even make up one of your own.

Here are a few popular ones to get us started:

‘Are You Sleeping / Frère Jacques’ – Can be played by simply strumming a C chord.

[C] Are you sleeping, are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing
Morning bells are ringing
Ding-dang-dong, ding-dang-dong

[C] Frère Jacques, frère Jacques
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines, Sonnez les matines,
Ding-deng-dong, ding-deng-dong

‘Iko Iko’ (by Justin Wellington) – Uses Fadd9 and C in its simplest form.

Intro [Fadd9]
[Fadd9] My bestie and your bestie sit down by di [C]fire

My bestie say she wan' party so can we make these flames go [Fadd9]higher?

[Fadd9] Talkin' 'bout Hey now (hey now), Hey now (hey now), iko iko an-[C]nay

Jockamo feeno ah na-nay, Jockamo fee na-[Fadd9]nay

➡️ Get the full version

‘You Are My Sunshine’ – Can be played alternating between C, C7, Fadd9 and Am.

You are my [C]sunshine, my only [C7]sunshine,

You make me [Fadd9]happy, when skies are [C]grey. [C7]

You'll never [Fadd9]know dear, how much I [C]love you, [Am]

Please don't [C]take, my [Fadd9]sunshine a- [C]way.

➡️ Get the full version

‘The Wheels on the Bus’ – Uses Fadd9, C and C7.

[Fadd9] The wheels on the bus go round and round,

[C] Round and round, [C7]round and round.

[Fadd9] The wheels on the bus go round and round,

[C] All day [Fadd9]long.

➡️ Get the full version

The intro to ‘Imagine’ (by John Lennon) - Uses C, Cmaj7 and Fadd9

This intro is my absolute ukulele favourite! The instantly recognizable chords shift back and forth directly from C to Cmaj7 to Fadd9

[C] Imagine [Cmaj7]there's no [Fadd9]heaven
[C] It's easy [Cmaj7]if you [Fadd9]try
[C] No [Cmaj7]hell be-[Fadd9]low us
[C] Above us, [Cmaj7]only [Fadd9]sky

Before we go …

I hope you’ve enjoyed our first day of doodling together on the ukulele - only another 364 days to go!

Don’t forget to get in touch with any questions and I will try and answer them the best I can, or feel free to leave a comment below to share with everyone.

Happy Strumming 😊

Gill x

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