Music, art & photography · course 95 of 105

Ukulele Chord Shapes, Up the Neck

Turn the ukulele’s four strings into notes and shapes into chords: name the note under any finger, read 12 common shapes, build major, minor and seventh chords, and move shapes up the neck.

4 modules

Try a question

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What it teaches

How a ukulele’s four strings (tuned G C E A, with the “high G”) turn into notes, and how a chord shape turns into a chord. Counting frets from the open strings to name the note under any finger; reading 12 common shapes (C, Am, F, G, G7, C7, Dm, Em, A, D, A7, E7) as four notes and a chord name; the three chord recipes (major, minor, dominant seventh) counted in semitones; and sliding a shape up the neck with a barre, or putting a capo on, to get a new chord. The AI asks 3 questions, places you, shows a short card per module, then gives you one question at a time.

For ukulele beginners who can strum a few chords from a chart and want to know why those shapes make those chords. Not a playing course: it can’t hear you, and it can’t judge whether your own chord sounds right.

How long

45 items. About 25 rounds for a student who gets everything right after the intake, up to about 70 for a beginner who misses a third of the first-time questions (runs of the tutor’s own picking rules in code, not real students), plus a 12-item final: 1-2 sessions (estimate, not timed with a real student). The tutor gives a one-line save code at the end of each session.

From the answer key · M1, row N8

On the E string, at which fret (1 to 12) is C?

Think first, then show the answer

Answer8

WorkingE → F (1) → F# (2) → G (3) → G# (4) → A (5) → A# (6) → B (7) → C (8).

The wrong answer it catches10 → you counted an extra note after E (E#) and after B (B#); E to F and B to C are one fret each, so C is 8 frets up from E.

Note at a fret = the open string’s note counted up one semitone per fret (fret 0 is the open string): “each fret represents one semitone in the standard western system, in which one octave is divided into twelve semitones”.
The 12 notes, sharps first: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B, then C again. “Written notes that produce the same pitch, such as C♯ and D♭, are called enharmonic.” So A# and Bb are the same note, and either name is right.

The modules

4 modules, drilled one item at a time.

M0
The tuning and the text diagrams
The tuning G C E A, why the G string is not the lowest, how a shape is written as four digits, how much a fret adds
M1
Notes on the neck
Name the note at a fret, find the fret for a note, match a fret to an open string
M2
The common chord shapes
Read a chord shape as four notes and a chord name, change one string to change the chord, name a chord’s notes
M3
Sliding a shape up the neck
Slide a shape up the neck with a barre, or put a capo on, to get a new chord; write the frets; name a fret pattern

Before it teaches, it asks

1
How long have you played ukulele, and what do you play now (a few chords, songs, nothing yet)?
2
Which note is at fret 4 on the G string?
3
Which notes make up an F major chord? (Each note once, in any order.)

What’s exact, and what isn’t

Show

Straight from the course’s own notes.

Words and rules, quoted (read 2026-10-13): The tuning (G4–C4–E4–A4, the “high G”, what a reentrant tuning is), how a shape is written as four digits in the order G C E A, “each fret represents one semitone”, the three chord recipes as Wikipedia gives them ({0,4,7} major, {0,3,7} minor, {0,4,7,10} dominant seventh), the major-scale pattern that fixes the E–F and B–C half steps, what barre chords and capos do. 32 quotes: 28 from 11 Wikipedia pages (CC BY-SA 4.0), 2 from ukulele-chords.com’s “How to read a ukulele chord?” page and 2 from chords-db. A script checks each word for word on a saved copy of its page and fails if any page or quote changes; it does not re-fetch the live pages. A separate live check on 2026-10-13 matched the quotes on 38 live pages.
The 12 shapes come from two sources that agree: The two sources are ukulele-chords.com (one page per chord) and chords-db, an open-source chord database (MIT licence). For each of the 12 chords the shape the first site plays is the first position the second lists. A script also works out the four notes of each shape from the tuning and checks they are exactly the chord’s tones (no extra, none missing), and that ukulele-chords.com’s own list of notes for the shape says the same. It can’t be shown that the two chord sources are independent of each other; the arithmetic is what makes each shape safe.
Computed by script: Every M1, M2 and M3 key and every number in a Working. A note is worked out two ways (from note names, and from absolute pitch numbers); a chord name is found by trying all 12 roots against the three recipes, and exactly one must fit; every slide adds the frets to all four strings and must spell the expected chord. The 8 fret patterns M3 names or slides to are also among the positions chords-db lists for that chord. All 27 listed wrong answers are recomputed from the slip they name and checked to differ from the key.
M0 is built from quotes, not computed: Each Answer is built from the quotes listed for it, and a script checks that its key phrases sit in those quotes. Two small parts are computed instead: “the C string is the lowest” (from the tuning) and which digit of 0232 belongs to the E string (from the string order).
Checked against planted errors: 20 deliberate errors (a changed saved page, a wrong shape, a wrong “wrong answer”, a card that gives an answer away and more) were all caught.
Honest limits: The course covers the common “high G” tuning G C E A only (soprano and concert ukuleles, and tenors strung with a high G). It uses only major, minor and dominant seventh chords, one shape per chord, no muted strings and no finger numbers. A “slide” assumes a barre across all four strings, and the course never judges whether you can play it. The tutor can’t hear your ukulele.
Not in it yet: Baritone, low-G and D tunings; sus, add9, major seventh, minor seventh and diminished chords; finger numbers; strumming and rhythm; tab and sheet music; muted strings; frets above 9; sliding a whole song.