Welcome to the Play Ukulele By Ear 3 Chord Club. Each Friday we’ll choose three songs from a specific artist or genre of music that we’ll learn by ear. The great thing about this ukulele club is we only play songs with three chords or less! You’ll find links to the lyrics but not the chords. That’s where y0ur ears come in. Since you know the song only has one to three chords, try to figure out the changes, or chord progression by ear. Here’s a hint, most of the time the chords will be the I-IV & V or V7 chords. In the Key of C, that’s C-F-G or G7.
This week we’ll play some rock ‘n roll classics from the Buddy Holly catalog. Note that the video examples will be in various different keys. Just note the structure of the chord progression and you’ll be able to transpose the song to the key that fits you.
(Hint: Starts on V7 then immediately to IV)
(Hint: First line is I-V-IV-V)
What a cool idea! As much as I love that you can do all the jazz chords easily on a uke, I still love to play the good ol' three chords songs. A good song is a good song.And for people who have never tried to play "without the paper", this is a good place to give it a try.
I've been following your blog for a while- recently got your DVD "Play by ear". You have a lot of stuff in there and I will watch several times. This 3 chord song day is a great idea. The next step in basic playing is seeing/hearing how chords go together. Once I started seeing/hearing that the lights went on for more stuff. Thanks for your good teaching and I will be recommending your DVD to others. Ukester Brown
Great fun, Jim! I'm sending out an e-mail to "invite" others in our group to this effort.
Jim, the links don’t work anymore!
I’ll be fixing things as I find them. Thanks for pointing that out to me.