How to Tune Up & Play a Guitarlele

Where Can I Find Songs I Can Learn?

You’re likely to find exactly what you’re looking for by simply searching the name of your favourite songs and adding ‘chords’ to the search bar. It doesn’t matter if the chords are meant to be played on a guitarlele, ukulele, guitar, piano, or other instrument! A chord is a chord! Of course, you can always use song books which are usually put together with a little more care, so the chords tend to match more accurately with the original song.

Want to Learn More Chords?

We’ve already learnt the open guitarlele chords and a few rhythms, which is already quite a lot. And while this is a solid base to start with, at some point, you’re likely to notice that there are some songs that you can’t figure out how to play. No problem! By making just a few sneaky little adjustments, you can quickly learn to play a large number of seventh-chords, and after that, it’s probably about time you learnt barre chords – now, these chords take a little while to really get to grips with but in the end, it’s really not as hard as it looks. Then, once you’re feeling super confident, you can progress to the lesser known chords like the diminished chords, ninths and sixths! But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

Open Sevenths for the Guitarlele

An open seventh chord looks a lot like a normal major or minor chord, but sounds a bit more ‘special’ thanks to the little addition of a ‘seventh’ note. We’ve included every guitarlele seventh chord below. Try them out and you’ll immediately see what we mean:

Note: E7 is not really an official open guitarlele chord, since it’s actually based on an F chord and doesn’t have a unique shape. But it’s used so much, we couldn’t leave it out.

Blues Progression

A great way to practice seventh chords, is to learn a blues progression. Each chord is played for a count of four:

| A7    | D7    | A7    | A7    |

| D7    | D7    | A7    | A7    |

| E7    | D7    | A7    | E7    |

You can play your progression along with this backing track:

Playing Barre Chords on the Guitarlele

Now that you’re familiar with open guitarlele chords, it’s time to take a look at barre chords. Most of the time, your index finger will need to press down on more than one string so you can make these chords – hence barre (bar). Learning these chords takes a lot of getting used to, takes even more practice and a little strength. We really recommend practising these chords every day so that your left hand can build up the strength. Do this, and you’ll quickly notice you’re getting better and faster.

Advantages of Barre Chords

• By simply playing songs, you’ll come across an enormous amount of chords. And if you only know open chords, you’re very likely to get limited. By learning to play barre chords, you can extend your repertoire even further.
• The shape of Barre chords can be moved up or down the fretboard. So, if you’re playing an F barre chord, you can also play an F♯ barre chord, a G barre chord, and G♯ and so on – by doing nothing more than moving your hand from one fret to the next.

The Most Essential Barre Chords

Here, we’ll focus on the two most essential barre chords: the A-shape and the D-shape. By nailing these two chords, you’ll suddenly be able to play countless songs on your guitarlele.

Hints:

• If you look closely, you might notice that these barre chords look a lot like the open chords you’ve already learned.
• How do you play the barre chords below? Lay your index finger across all of the strings – as indicated by the long stripe you can see in the diagram, then position all of your other fingers. With the A chord, you need to position your index finger so that it presses down the first, second and sixth string at the same time – in a ‘barre’. With the D chord, the fifth and the first string need to be pressed at the same time.
• You can make a barre by pressing down on every string, or by ‘arching’ your index finger a little, so that (in the case of the A barre chord) the base of your finger presses against the first and second string, while the tip of your finger presses down on the sixth string. Either way, this takes practice and strength.

And then?

• Ok, say you’ve learnt to play the A-shape with your index finger at the first fret. In the image included below, you can see that this is the A♯/B♭ chord. Shift all of your fingers and the same shape up by one fret and you have a B chord. Move it up one more and you have a C chord, and so on. This way, with just one chord shape, you can play a whole range of different chords. The Roman numerals including the image below indicate the fret.
• In the same way, you can use the A7 chord shape to play the A♯7/B♭7, B7, C7 chords, and so on.
• Some chords have a double name – as you can see with A♯/B♭, for example. The reason for this is not important right now, just learn them!
• Now you might say to yourself, ‘Hey, I already know the open C chord! Which one should I play?” When you’re a beginner, we recommend sticking to the open version of a chord wherever you can. But sometimes, you might notice that you have to make quite a leap to or from the open chord, so it really depends on what’s closest and what flows best when playing the song. An open chord also has a different tonal colour or timbre to that of a C barre chord. Try both versions to see what sounds best in the song you’re playing.

Tips For Playing Bar Chords

• Place your thumb on the back of the neck, making sure it’s flat – so not the very tip. Position your thumb so that its opposite your middle finger. Yes, we know the neck of the guitarlele is in the way, but place your thumb and middle finger as if the tips were able to touch one another.
• Is this still uncomfortable? Then try pressing down just the second and first strings with your index finger and playing those. Sounding good? Then try the simplified version of the A-shape included on the bottom row of chord diagrams above. With your index finger in the first fret, you can play the A♯/B♭ chord. Shift the chord shape up so that your index finger is at second fret, and you’re playing a B chord, and so on. This simple shape sounds a little less full, but it’s still a great start.
• Another way to make barre chords a little easier to play, is to learn to play them further up the neck first. So, shift the chord shape up to the fifth or seventh fret where the tension of the strings is lower and you won’t need quite so much strength to play them.
• The final and special barre chord included in the image above is useful if you need to play the D-shape further up the neck. This alternative to the D-shape is so useful because, higher up the neck, the frets get narrower, so you have less space to place your fingers.
• As you did when learning to play open chords, once your fingers are in position, play each string one by one to check that they’re all sounding good and aren’t buzzing or dampened. Play the chord for fifteen minutes or so, take a break, and do it again – rinse and repeat on a daily basis and you’ll only get better at it.

Even More Chords

Once you’ve mastered the open chords and barre chords, you’ll be able to play a massive range of different songs. But, you’ll still come across some awkward ones that you’ve never seen before like a maj7, 6th, dim, sus2, sus4 etc. But the fact is, you can look up these chords and learn to play them with little difficulty. Below, we’ve included a round up of all of the most common chords used in pop songs.

• If you come chords that aren’t included in the list below, then just look them up. Just remember to include the chord name and ‘guitarlele’ so that you get the right one. If you can’t find it at all, then read a little further for more help.
• If you want to understand chords a little more deeply, then see our blog on chord theory.

Playing Guitar Chords on the Guitarlele

There aren’t that many people that play the guitarlele. As such, it’s sometimes hard to find a lesser-known guitarlele chord on the internet. Luckily, guitarlele chord shapes look exactly the same as guitar chord shapes. The only difference is that the guitalele is tuned to a higher pitch, so every chord has one name on the guitar and another name on the guitarlele. So, it’s just a case of finding out which ones match up.

Here are all the guitar chord names in a row:

By counting five steps up from the chord you need, say from the A chord for a guitar, you’ll come to the correct guitarlele chord, so in this case, the D-chord for the guitarlele. In the same way, an F chord on the guitar is an A♯/B♭ chord on the guitarlele, and the G♯/A♭ guitar chord is a C♯/D♭ guitarlele chord.