Category Archives: Music Theory
UD#101 Chameleon Jazz Chord
UD#101 Chameleon Jazz Chordfrom Ukulele in the Dark with Guido Heistek I love this chord shape. It’s super useful in jazz. There are many types of chords that this shape can play. I’ll just talk about one of them today, the 6/9 chord. How does it work? Let’s say that you are trying to play an F6/9 chord This shape can be used to play an F6/9 in two different places on the neck of the ukulele. First, a wee bit of theory. Here are the notes in an F6/9 chord. ROOT (1) 3 5 6 …Continue Reading
UD#90 A High-Tech Uke Tip
UD#90 A High-Tech Uke Tip from Ukulele in the Dark with Guido Heistek You Use Your Tuner for What? I was working with a student the other day, and I noticed that she kept glancing at her tuner during the lesson. I asked her what she was doing. She said, “I am trying to see what notes I am playing.” Interesting! I had never thought of using a tuner that way. Your tuner can tell you the name of any note you are playing, anywhere on the neck of the uke. Using your tuner this way can help you learn …Continue Reading
UD#52 Trimming Away: How to Simplify Song Sheets
Trimming Away: How to Simplify Song Sheets (UD#52) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek Today I want to talk about simplifying song sheets and chord charts. Sometimes it can be handy to know how to “trim down” or simplify chords on the fly. This is particularly true when you sit down to play with others. Sometimes there’s no time to look up chords you don’t know. It can help to know what your options are. I thought I would put together a few words on this subject today. CHORD CHART SURVIVAL: I often find myself saying something like …Continue Reading
UD#51 Play 12 CHORDS with THREE SHAPES
12 CHORDS with THREE SHAPES: Around the Clock (UD#51) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek Today I want to share an little activity that I use with my students. I find it helps for remembering the names of chords. Also, it creates a framework to see how chords are related to each other. And it’s a good introduction to chords “up the neck”. More on moving chords “up the neck” here: https://ukuleleinthedark.com/704/ We use three familiar open chord shapes for this activity: C, F and A. Images: If you are using a mobile device please make sure …Continue Reading
UD#47: Wine Tasting for the Ears (Ear Training Made Easy)
UD#47 Wine Tasting for the Ears (Ear Training Made Easy) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek This week’s photo is from Drinks of the World by James Mew and John Ashton, 1892 SOURCE: openclipart.org “I don’t understand how musicians can hear a song and then be able to play it. How do you do that?” It’s really tough for me to answer a question like this. When I was young and learning to play guitar I was lucky enough to discover that the notes I heard on recordings were “findable” somewhere on my guitar. I loved to work away …Continue Reading
UD#45 What do the Sevens Mean? (The Numbers in Chord Names)
UD#45: What do the SEVENS mean? (The Numbers in Chord Names) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek EVER WONDER what the numbers in chord names mean? C7, F6, A7… A student asked me an interesting question in class the other day: “What makes jazz different from other types of music?” This is a very tough question to answer but one potential answer did pop into mind: “Jazz music tends to use 7th chords (ex. Cm7, C7, Fmaj7) as opposed to triads or three note chords (ex. Cm, F, Bbm).” What’s a seventh chord? A seventh chord is a …Continue Reading
UD#40 Chromatic Walk in the Park (A Foundation in Music Theory)
UD #40 Chromatic Walk in the Park (A Foundation in Music Theory) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek Today I want to talk about something that is incredibly useful when building a mental model for music. It’s called the chromatic scale. And in many ways it is the basis for all theory in music. Knowing the chromatic scale forwards and backwards really helps with learning scales, transposing, using moveable chords and more. THE SPACING OF THE NOTES IN MUSIC: A few lessons ago we talked about the C major scale up one string. If you take a …Continue Reading
UD#36 Chameleon Chord: Diminished 7th Chords part II
UD#36 Chameleon Chord: Diminished Chords Part II (The coolest thing you can do with dim7 chords) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek The coolest thing you can do with diminished chords…in my opinion… NOTE: For simplicity I will refer to diminished 7th chords as DIMINISHED CHORDS in this lesson. ALSO NOTE: If you don’t feel like reading there is a video at the bottom of the page. Try this experiment Take a diminished chord like this one: Lower one of the notes in the chord by one fret. Let’s lower the note on the G string. What …Continue Reading
UD#35 Anglular Symmetry: Diminished 7th Chords
UD#35 Angular Symmetry: Diminished 7th Chords from Ukulele in the Dark w/Guido Heistek Diminished seventh chords can be found in lots of different kinds of music. There are a few different ways to write them. Here are three different ways you might see a C diminished 7th chord written down: Cdim, Co, or Cdim7. For this lesson I will use this format: Cdim7 or Fdim7 throughout. Or I will write out the full name C diminished 7th or F diminished 7th. Most chord charts use the shortened form Cdim or Fdim. Now for some cool facts… 4 …Continue Reading
UD#33 Mr. G7 Goes West: Low-Rider! (G7 in 4 positions)
UD#33 Mr. G7 Goes West: Low-Rider (Play a G7 in four different places on the neck) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek THE INVERSIONS OF G7: First things first. Let me introduce you to my favorite one chord song. Lowrider by War. You can strum along with this song with one chord: G7. Give it a go and come on back and we’ll look at some different funky ways of playing G7. Please find a fretboard chart on the right which you can use for reference as you go along through the lesson (click for printable version). …Continue Reading
UD#24 The Secret Life of Roots (Naming Moveable Chord Shapes)
UD #24 The Secret Life of Roots (Naming Moveable Chord Shapes) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek Last newsletter we talked about how to move chord shapes up the neck. We took the C, F and G7 chord shapes and learned how to move them up the neck to play a chord progression in different keys. https://ukuleleinthedark.com/704/ QUESTION: “What do we call the chords once we have moved them up the neck?” I’ll do my best to answer this question in this newsletter. Here goes… THE ROOT NOTE! Identifying the position of the ROOT NOTE in the …Continue Reading
UD#19 What Key is it in?
UD #19 What Key is It in? from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek I love this video of Bobby Mcferrin: What he demonstrates in this video is that on hearing a few notes of a pentatonic scale (5 note scale) people intuitively know where the rest of the notes are. This is because scales are all about the relationships between the notes. Once we’ve intuitively clued in to what scale we are listening to, we can guess the rest of it without hearing all the notes. It’s a kind of musical extrapolation.The same effect can be demonstrated with …Continue Reading
UD#17 The Building Blocks of Songs
UD#17 The Building Blocks of Songs (Where to start in song-writing) from Ukulele in the Dark w/ Guido Heistek “I’d like to write a song. I want to start with a chord progression but I don’t know which chords to pick from…“ Diatonic chords are a great place to start when you are trying to create a chord progression for a song. What are diatonic chords?Diatonic chords are the chords created from one scale. Every scale has it’s corresponding diatonic chords.If we create a simple three note chord starting on each note of a C major scale we …Continue Reading
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