Yookin’ good!
I love playing acoustic string instruments, and I am simply infatuated with the ukulele. I come from South Carolina, where we call this little instrument, a yook-LAY-lee. I know that’s not the correct pronunciation, but we also consider pimento cheese and shrimp-n-grits the two food groups that make up the base of the nutrition pyramid. It’s a Southern thing.
One of the things I like best about the ukulele when played in American folk music, even in hillbilly music, is that you can vamp really cool chords and bless a song with something totally fresh and jazzy that other instruments may need to stray way outside of their traditional space to accomplish without distraction. Three of these favorite insanely cool “blessings” are: the root 6th chord, root augmented chord, and second diminished chord. I LOL’d writing this. I was just remembering my old Dad calling them “augminished and demented chords…” I miss ya, Pop.
Let’s Look at the chords
A major chord has a root note, a third note, and a fifth note. In the G chord, for instance, that is G (root), B (third), and D (fifth). Think of the “numbers” in terms of the major scale… Do (G – root), Re (A – 2nd),Me (B – 3rd), Fa (C – 4th), So (D – 5th), La (E – 6th), Si (F sharp – 7th), Do (G- octave).
Root 6th
G 6th would simply be adding a sixth note (E) to the G chord shape.
Root augmented
In the root augmented chord (in the example G augmented) we just replace the fifth note with a sharp fifth note – or D sharp note.
Second diminished
The second chord in the key of G is A major. We use the diminished shape of the second chord. Which will have us flat the 3rd and the fifth note of the A major chord. So the A diminished chord triad is A, C and D sharp (E flat).
Chord shapes in standard (my dog has fleas) tuning, and slack-key tuning for baritone ukulele.
Note that the Chord symbol for augmented is a little “+” sign, and diminished is a little “o” shape.
Now the cool stuff
As an example, we will use the G augmented chord as a transition to get us into the C chord and the A diminished chord to transition us from C back to G. The G 6th chord will simply be the root chord that we resolve into and finish with. Try this progression…
G /// G+ /// C /// Ao /// G/// D7/// G6 ///
Note that these chord shapes work the same for soprano or tenor ukuleles, however, when playing the soprano or tenor ukulele these shapes will be the key of C. ( C C+ Do G7 C6th )
Please take a look at my video demonstration of a couple of examples of the ukulele applying these cool chords to a standard folk song.
So when you pick up that ukulele, spice with augminished, demented, and 6th chords to taste… and enjoy some insanely cool pickin’.
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